CIS Hardened Image STIG on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  are primarily for our production servers where we run our ERP on RHEL , and some of our developers are using RHEL as delivered through Horizon as a VDI  for their development. I also use it personally.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) helps me solve pain points such as stability and multi-user access, making it easier to apply user permissions. The integrations with other environments are excellent.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) supports my hybrid cloud strategy by providing the ability to do a common build across everything, and while it is outside of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), using Ansible  makes the uniformity between all of the systems on-premises and in the cloud much easier compared to Windows.

In the implementation of the Zero Trust model, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) plays a crucial role as we run a lot of CyberArk, and all of the brokers and the PSM servers are running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), making it our infrastructure for identity and access management (IAM ).

In managing regulatory compliance, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) plays a vital role as audit is always asking for a sudoers list from our Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) servers, and my ability to collect the data easily and then deliver it to the audit department is valuable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped to mitigate downtime and lower risk primarily from a stability standpoint as we have fewer issues with those servers. The redundancy and the ability to run some backup software across the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) platforms are also beneficial.

We actually do not use any of the features such as Identity Management , Lightspeed, or Satellite in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL); instead, we are using Ansible . However, in discussions with some of the business people, we are looking at implementing Satellite.

While the features are great, making the documentation easier to navigate would be phenomenal.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for five years.

I rate the stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a ten out of ten; I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues.

For scalability, I also rate it ten out of ten; it is easy to scale out with no complaints.

I evaluate the customer service and technical support of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as great; I have had to open tickets and received prompt responses with no unnecessary delays. The information I need to get it fixed when I need it has been excellent.

From one to ten, I rate the customer service and technical support a ten.

Prior to adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I was using open-source Linux and Windows.

My experience deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is very straightforward; I have not run into any problems, and it is simple and very straightforward.

I have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) particularly in terms of minimizing downtime by moving some of our older systems running on open-source versions of Linux over to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). This shift has allowed us to get support and limit our downtime, which is crucial in our manufacturing sector where if the plant is down, they do not make money.

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing have been fair; I think it offers a good value, and I do not feel it is overpriced. You pay for what you get.

While using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we looked at other solutions such as Ubuntu  and SUSE, but there was no match.

We do not have any AI workloads.

I have not used Lightspeed either.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has pretty good documentation, although it can sometimes be hard to find and navigate.

Overall, I would give Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a ten and my advice to other companies considering it is to implement it. Move forward and implement it because the support, community, software, and product are phenomenal. I rate this review a ten out of ten.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  serves as the base operating system where all applications run. It is the platform I manage, and all applications run on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) . I run IBM FileNet  on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL).

Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) offers excellent security, reliability, and stable security as a secured operating system. Security features have helped my organization because Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is already a locked down version of enterprise Linux distributions and is managed by Red Hat, with timely release of vulnerability fixes and patches that give a lot of security and peace of mind for enterprises.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has positively impacted my organization by ensuring that timely release of vulnerability fixes and patches keeps the system secure. All the latest versions and new features with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as an image and with AI capabilities add more value for enterprises using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

A specific outcome showing how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has benefited my organization is improved security, and I am not aware of any downtime. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped to mitigate downtime and lower risk, as I have not heard of any server reboot or crash throughout my career when it comes to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which speaks to its reliability.

SELinux is the most important security feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), as it is the most security-oriented feature. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points such as management of servers with Ansible  automation, security capabilities, and timely release of vulnerabilities and security fixes, which combined create great value for enterprises.

An AI assistant specifically for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10 or the latest version of Red Hat Enterprise, such as an AI-assisted tool to get assistance on commands and syntax, would be beneficial.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for almost 17 years.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is stable.

I have not seen any issues with the scalability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL); it is good or great.

Customer support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is great.

I have only used Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and did not previously use a different solution.

I have not seen a return on investment, and I do not have that level of management information since I am an individual contributor.

All recent capabilities introduced in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10, including the AI inference server, are already great. I use Ansible  for the management of servers and patching, and I find that management experience quite satisfying. I have not used much of the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and I have not used much of the documentation recently, so I cannot speak to that with certainty. I would recommend making use of Ansible automation with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and automating as much as possible. I rate this review a 9.

Our main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  include managing systems for many customers whose systems are hosted on RHEL , as we have different kinds of verticals such as ports, hospitals, and critical services managed with RHEL.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) supports our hybrid cloud strategy through a huge partnership; we also have our own public cloud and still use RHEL servers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) helps us solve pain points by providing a really strong engineer team. Sometimes we need to pass the first level quickly because we also have really deep knowledge and really strong engineering teams. These things could perhaps be enhanced or improved, but with each major problem, we trust them and maintain a really good partnership, so we go to the market together.

What I like the most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that it is a reliable system. Regarding the features, I cannot exactly point out something specific, but we have also used many products, including Red Hat Satellite ; it is a reliable system.

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) benefit my company by being really important when we are working on critical services, as we are not alone when talking with customers; we collaborate with those who create the product, which gives us a lot of confidence and allows us to offer more professional services.

The features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that we use to navigate our security risks include using Satellite. We leverage Satellite by allowing us to download all the official packages to keep our platform updated, and with Ansible , we manage all the patching setup.

In terms of how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved, I think the next release should focus on enhancing AI capabilities, which will help us in managing systems and could lead to more autonomous systems.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for sixteen years.

We have experienced some downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), especially now with AI and many vulnerabilities that appear. We struggle with those issues, but whenever we raise a case to the maximum level, we immediately get a solution or they work on it.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales really well with the growing needs of our company; when we need a Linux solution, it is really easy, and we do not face any significant difficulties.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is really huge; I think that AI will become available there really soon, making it much easier to get information. Even now, there is a kind of AI integration, but it is not mature; that is why we directly try to contact the engineer team, as the knowledge base is good for learning or investigating, but in critical situations we do not have time to search deeply in that knowledge base.

The capabilities that assist with this include engineer support; each time we have a bug or something similar, they provide us with a workaround or something comparable.

I think we have a really good pricing model for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as a cloud-certified service provider, so we should maintain this partnership and relation with the pricing model.

Before adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we had different flavors of Linux; our whole farm is not only Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). However, if we can suggest to customers, we definitely go with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but we also have other Linux flavors, even a Unix one too.

The experience of deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is straightforward; we deploy it as a base image and then customize it with Ansible . We get the image from your store and install it, depending on which use case we have for that server.

Regarding major version upgrades with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Ansible Automation Platform, we generally do minor upgrades, and then start from scratch with the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) release because we feel much more confident in that way; we also try to do live patching, but it is not suitable for all use cases, especially for some applications.

From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that we achieve our SLAs, which is really cool as there are no penalties with customers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped to mitigate downtime and lower risk for my company.

Pros and cons of those other Linux distributions compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include support; you have really good engineer support when reaching that engineer team. I think you should maintain that; with customers, it is essential to connect directly with those who have a certain level of technology knowledge to avoid unnecessary back and forth.

The business value of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) compares quite similarly to the other Linux distributions we use; so for me, there is not a huge difference in that regard.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a really enterprise solution and an enterprise operating system. If you also see in the summit how many customers trust this operating system and how many in the industry, including critical services such as health and flights, you will understand its value; so why not use it? I give Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a rating of seven out of ten.

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  are patching and automation.

The features of RHEL  that I like the most are Satellite and Ansible , as those are the only ones I really work with so far.

They benefit our company by providing solutions that are quicker and save money overall, which reduces time spent overall and saves us resources.

I use Satellite for patch management of our Linux devices, including our Red Hat devices, which helps my company navigate security risks.

I think RHEL could be made faster.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) for about a year.

I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with RHEL, as everything runs smoothly, and we do not have many tickets regarding our RHEL products or RHEL VMs.

RHEL scales well with the growing needs of our company, as anything we add automatically gets pulled into Satellite.

I would rate the customer service and technical support a 10, because I have not used it much, but my coworkers who have opened tickets have not reported anything negative about their experience.

Before adopting RHEL, we mainly built the operating systems ourselves with a mixture of different Linux operating systems. For patching, we were using Ivanti before that.

The biggest difference between Ivanti and RHEL is that both have automation, but it is more seamless with Satellite, as it is owned by Red Hat and already integrated. We do not have to build out as many tasks and workflows inside Satellite, as it picks everything up and sends it out automatically.

From a technical point of view, the biggest return on investment when using RHEL is the time spent in work man-hours, as it has reduced our patching time by a very large amount in the Linux environment.

I would estimate that the patching time has been lowered by about 50 percent.

I have not considered switching to another platform that is not RHEL, as I am not part of those discussions.

We are using RHEL in the cloud.

RHEL supports our cloud environment mainly for patching right now, as we have not started using it for migrations yet, but we will probably start doing that eventually.

I have not done any AI workloads through RHEL.

RHEL does not play a role in our company's implementation of Zero Trust; it would be more for workloads and data running on our Linux VMs, as we do not use it for identity or access at this time.

I have used Ansible  Automation Platform somewhat and am learning it. My experience with it is good; I do not use it that much, but other people on my team are using it a little more, and we have not used it in production yet, although it is definitely something we will be doing soon.

We do not use RHEL for auditing, as far as I know; my boss sends me a list of things to fix, and I fix them.

RHEL has definitely helped to mitigate downtime and lower risks at my company, especially with patching, as we do not have to manually patch or reboot our VMs as much while managing the patching process.

The knowledge base that RHEL offers is pretty good; I use it personally the most for the training platform while trying to learn all the different systems they have, and I use that a lot.

I would rate this review a 10 overall.

My main use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  is hosting enterprise applications that are critical to our operations.

A specific example of one of those enterprise applications I host on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  is our human resources application or our learning management service because we're a university with many students who work with these applications. We also host proxy applications for both forward and reverse proxy, load balancers, and many other infrastructure components.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) effectively supports all of these applications, and we really appreciate it.

The best features Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) offers that stand out to me are the security and the consistency of the product. I know that I can trust it and that it will take care of my systems in a very secure way.

Regarding security features I rely on, the built-in capabilities of firewalld and SELinux come to mind. I also know that Red Hat's team is always working to proactively prevent things that might cause issues. Red Hat Insights  is a great tool that tells me about issues that might come up and provides instruction on how to fix them, and that has been very helpful.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has positively impacted my organization by providing a stable operating system that has been very resilient and useful. I have nothing negative to say about my experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The stability and resilience have affected my team's day-to-day work and my students' experience by allowing me not to worry about how my operating system is designed, giving me time to focus on building value in other areas.

Nothing really comes to mind for how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved. Red Hat's team is already working on many great things that I was not even aware of until recently, and they continuously stay ahead of anything I can think of.

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for 11 plus years.

We host Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in an on-premises environment with OpenShift virtualization.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)'s scalability is good; it can handle small and large VMs, so I would say it is pretty scalable. In general, an operating system is not really focused on that aspect.

Customer support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been great. Every time we open a ticket, we receive pretty fast responses, and anytime I have had a problem, escalation has worked very well. Our account team has done a good job of taking care of us.

In my previous job, I had used CentOS  because the company was not willing to pay for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). In my current job, they were already using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) when I moved in, but nothing has changed our mind since that time.

I have not used Image Builder because I do not use image mode for Linux. I have used System Roles extensively and have incorporated a number of them into our automation tools to provision and update systems.

We manage our Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems by automating many of those features with Ansible , which has been a great add-on tool. That has been very satisfying; in fact, our patching is done daily automatically, and I do not have to think about it anymore.

I do not know specific details on a return on investment, but I know that our whole organization feels that it is a positive for us.

As an engineer, I do not deal with pricing very much, but I find that licensing is pretty easy and works well.

We evaluated Ubuntu  in particular before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It works, but it does not have many of the add-on features that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) does. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is definitely very stable, which is something I have mentioned multiple times.

The first thing I would say to others looking into using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is do not turn off SELinux. Make  sure you use it; it is very valuable.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me keep track and stay on top of keeping my environment secure and reliable, allowing me to focus on doing other things.

I have used Leapp and Red Hat Insights  frequently, and they have both been really good. Leapp has been great for upgrading systems in place, and it is a pretty simple transition. Insights has been really useful for doing vulnerability assessments and remediation, and that has made that part of my job very simple.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)'s knowledge base is one of my other favorite things about Red Hat. The knowledge base is extensive and very useful, and Red Hat is always updating it with new things they learn. It has been great.

I give this review a rating of 10 out of 10.