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4-star reviews ( Show all reviews )

    Ayomide Omole

We have experienced high performance, improved security, and easier system management

  • August 02, 2024
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

The primary software utilized across our business units is S4HANA, which runs on our SAP server hosted on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Consequently, most Red Hat systems in our environment support SAP-related services. We operate approximately 105 Red Hat Enterprise servers dedicated to running these SAP services.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux was implemented due to its robust infrastructure, which allows us to efficiently manage our enterprise servers on a large scale using tools like Red Hat Satellite, Insight, and Ansible. This centralized management simplifies the orchestration and control of our extensive RHEL environment. Red Hat Identity Manager also ensures secure authentication and authorization for our remote systems. Beyond infrastructure, Red Hat's robust support is invaluable, providing timely solutions to complex issues. The operating system's strong security posture, including rapid patch deployment for vulnerabilities, further solidifies our decision to implement RHEL.

How has it helped my organization?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux simplifies risk reduction by integrating Red Hat Insights. This provides a comprehensive security posture assessment of our Red Hat systems, offering easy-to-understand best practice recommendations and applicable actionable remediation steps.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux is detailed and contains numerous articles that can help resolve our issues.

Red Hat Satellite simplifies our patch process by helping us meet audit and compliance needs. We've set up a lifecycle environment within Satellite to test patches on development and quality systems before deploying them to the operating system. This allows us to roll out patches based on the environment, ensuring thorough testing before reaching production. Additionally, we leverage Ansible automation to streamline provisioning and manage patches effectively. While automation is ongoing, we have successfully implemented Ansible and Red Hat Satellite for provisioning, and we continue to identify areas for further automation within our environment.

Red Hat Insights provides best practice recommendations based on regular system assessments. Like other security tools like Microsoft Azure Defender, it can access a system to offer security improvement suggestions. I have a Red Hat Insights certification and find the tool valuable. It generates actionable recommendations that can be easily implemented through automated processes like FastScript, making it an efficient way to leverage data insights for enhanced system security.

Since implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we have experienced high performance, improved security, excellent support service, and easier system management.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enhanced our security posture through timely security patch releases and best practice recommendations, which collectively have increased the protection of our data systems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux allows me to manage all my Cloud and on-premise systems from one console.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable aspect of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is its ease of management. A robust suite of tools, including the user-friendly GUI and the powerful Red Hat Cockpit web portal, simplifies system administration. Cockpit provides a centralized platform for managing hosts, while Red Hat Satellite or automation servers excel at overseeing large fleets of radar systems.

What needs improvement?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux training and certification opportunities for engineers and administrators could be improved. While I have benefited from free training offered by other companies like Microsoft, I have not had similar opportunities with Red Hat. Despite holding a Red Hat certification, I incurred significant costs to achieve it. The training required for these certifications is expensive, and it would be advantageous if Red Hat provided more affordable training courses.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for seven months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is highly stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The support is good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used Ubuntu Linux, Windows Server, and other solutions. Compared to these alternatives, Red Hat Enterprise Linux stands out as superior in terms of ease of management, security, and support.

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment is straightforward. Deploying it manually takes about fifteen to twenty minutes from start to finish using it manually.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten.

We have 15,000 users all across Africa that use our systems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux requires periodic maintenance to apply security patches and updates.

I recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux and conducting a proof of concept to ensure it aligns with our requirements.


    Jeffrey Donovan

Bulletproof systems and fantastic support from Red Hat and Community

  • May 09, 2024
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

We run web apps. We run databases. We run a high-compute platform on Red Hat Enterprise Linux variants.

All of our customers run Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We run Red Hat Enterprise Linux for mesh nodes. For anything Linux, if we can use Red Hat Enterprise Linux because it is supported, we put it on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Probably 60% to 80% of our infrastructure is Red Hat.

How has it helped my organization?

Having a stable Linux platform means I am not spending my time rebuilding Linux systems, constantly patching, and doing things like that. It helps to have an approved and supported platform. I know they have tested everything and when I patch my system, it is not going to blow up. It just does not happen. The other thing is that we have had catastrophic failures, and they have helped us out of these catastrophic failures. The support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux has always been good, and the community around Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been fantastic.

We were also CentOS users, so we have committed to AppStream as well. Being a part of the community has been a huge benefit for us. Community adoption means it is easy for people to find information. It helps new people get on boarded into Linux.

We mostly have an on-prem environment. VMware is a significant chunk. We do have some Red Hat clusters. We do have clustered applications, both physical and virtual, running on the cluster. We do have some cloud. We have our own internal cloud with VMware running behind the scenes. Having a consistent image means things always look the same. It is boring, but it is cookie-cutter. That is what we like. We like everything to come out the same. We have consistency and the ability to patch across our entire environment. We are also a Satellite user, so we are able to patch everything and maintain everything in a single pane of glass. It means I can have fewer admins administering many more machines. If you have a reduction in failure and an improvement in automation, things just work.

We have created what we call creator nodes. We have built a platform on Red Hat with Podman so that they can connect with Visual Studio code and do development or Ansible development. We now have our mainframe people developing automation with Linux with all of the plugins right there. It is a consistent environment for them, and that has been awesome. That has been fantastic. We have a few hiccups with Podman. They are working on the permissions to be able to have multiple people run Podman. They are working on the UID and GID problem that we had earlier. Right now, we are running Docker, but I am planning on moving to Podman once they fix that. We have also automated the build process for those nodes. If we need to scale up, we build a couple more VMs, and we are done.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. We are containerizing applications. We are pulling the Windows container that we have and converting it to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux container. At the Red Hat Summit, the keynote about image RHEL with systemd blew my mind. It is a change from what we have been doing, but it should make a lot of things more reachable for us. It is cool because now my container image looks like my VM image. You cannot make it simpler for people to develop in a container. It looks the same. There is no difference. That is going to drive heavy adoption with us because if there is no difference, people are not going to have that fear of something new. It has 100% impacted our projects in a positive way. We have started to migrate all of our workloads to OpenShift now that we have got it in the door. It makes a lot of sense. I can redeploy. I can patch. I can do all this with code. I do not have to maintain a VM and a container. It makes life simple.

We have seen a drop in TCO because we ended up buying more than building. When you build something, there is the hidden cost of support, training, and the precarious position you get in if you deploy something you do not fully understand. We were there. We had five instances and a bunch of complexity. We reduced that down to one. We were able to simplify our complex nature. That is what Red Hat has allowed us to do. We have been able to roll out and we have been consistent. I have got machines out there that have been running for two or three years with no problems. They just patch them in the background. It just works.

What is most valuable?

I love systemd. They have made some significant improvements with the firewalld console. I do not use it that much, but I know it makes Linux reachable for people who are not normally Linux admins.

I just love the command line configuration. It makes that easy for me. Another thing is that when you combine that with Ansible, your life is simple. You can do a lot of your jobs without having to touch the system. That is my ideal.

I appreciate everything they have done. The systems are just bulletproof. We do not have problems with it. Support for file system differences and migrations has been solid.

What needs improvement?

There have been a few things that I have run into. They have significantly improved DNF and YUM, but there can be better communication around what is going on. A lot of it is related to communication. They are building solid products, and quite often, people do not find out about them until two or three years have passed. We still have not discovered everything in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. A lot of it is because we have not had the time, but it would be helpful to have a little bit more communication around it. Maybe that is on us to make sure that we stay updated with the community.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.5. It has been around 20 years. I love Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability. It is stable. It is fairly bulletproof. There are a lot more things that they are adding to make it better.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have had no problems scaling up or scaling horizontally. I have had some very large Red Hat Enterprise Linux nodes with 254 gigs of memory and a big chunky Oracle database system. We have had no problems with them. We have not had any problems with running with multiple memory cluster nodes. We have had 100 gigs network, and we had no problems. We had a high-end SAN and a high-end network, and we had no issues.

They have good integrations, and they have not had too many problems with external SAN providers. They have been fairly consistent with keeping up with everybody else and keeping their drivers good.

How are customer service and support?

They are probably one of the better ones in the industry. I can get a real answer, and I do not feel like people are breathing down my neck and saying, "I am going to close your ticket. I have not heard from you in 15 minutes." It has been a very positive experience. They have always helped us out when we have completely gone sideways.

They are very patient with the level of experience that a lot of people have. We have a significant number of junior admins who put in tickets that probably should not have been put in. They have been very patient. Overall, it has been a good and positive experience.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I was strictly using Solaris and AIX. I never used Ubuntu. It was just straight, big-frame Unix before I went to Linux. I did not change too many platforms.

How was the initial setup?

We use Ansible to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux machines on VMware. That is 80% to 90% of our workload. For everything else, I have done PXE boot and kickstarts.

We are using a hybrid cloud. Our cloud providers are Azure and AWS. We work with both. The deployment on Azure and AWS was simple. We built Elasticsearch inside of Azure. It was a click-button deployment. We use TerraForm to deploy most of it, and then we have Ansible to do the rest.

I wanted to try to do more infrastructure as code, but it is hard to get traditional admins into that mindset, so it is always a mix. I deploy these servers for them with TerraForm, and then I pretend I never did, and they can do whatever with them. It then goes back into traditional life cycle management. Sometimes they delete them, and sometimes they forget about them. Satellite has helped us keep track of where everything is. It has helped us track our life cycles. It has been helpful for us.

What about the implementation team?

We have used Red Hat consultants multiple times. They helped us set a few things up and clean up our pipelines. We have been very happy with our Red Hat consultants and our last deployment of OpenShift AAP. We loved their consultants. They were fantastic.

What was our ROI?

The biggest ROI that we have seen by using Red Hat Enterprise Linux is accessibility to information for frontline support people, midline support people, and developers. There is a ton of information, and there is a ton of community support.

For us, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a consistent platform because if we are on a customer's Rocky machine, we already know Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We can deal with that. It is a skill set that is very broad across multiple platforms. That means we can apply what we have learned and what we have been trained in. While working with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux team, we have learned best practices, and we can apply those across the board. That partnership has helped us better our internal practices whether it is Red Hat Enterprise Linux or not. That is a positive. Satellite has also been a real positive for us because we can now manage all of our systems from a single pane of glass. That is what my frontline people have been asking for. They wanted one place to patch the systems, and now they can.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Our experience was incredibly positive because we started working with OpenShift before we were fully licensed. They knew we were going in that direction. The same thing happened with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They knew we would buy tons of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so they were a little bit more relaxed. We wanted a thousand licenses, and we could pick those up. We true up. Our license experience has been positive with the exception of having to deal with all of the broken-up accounts, which is as much our fault as anybody's.

My biggest complaint is that we have eight or ten different contracts. It is hard to keep track of what is on what and where we are getting the most value-add out of our benefits.

They are helping us solve that problem. We have reached out to our account executives. They will help us solve that problem. That is a huge step because that has been a problem for 15 years. It will help us consolidate and understand what we are spending across the board instead of seeing what we are spending in chunks.

OpenShift has come close to paying for itself in the first year and a half. That is an easy business case to make if you have the direct ability to show cost savings. We are getting cost savings, and we have the ability to show those cost savings. These are the two major benefits we have seen with AAP and Red Hat Enterprise Linux bits. That has been a positive for us. Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI and some of the other things they are starting to do are probably going to enable a lot of our developers to start taking advantage of them. Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI changes the belief that AI is out of reach for a normal developer.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We considered the idea of building this entire platform on Rocky as a free solution. It just was not cost-effective. There are hidden costs of patching and maintaining. They require care and feeding. We wanted cattle, not pets. We had a bunch of pets. Red Hat Enterprise Linux enabled us to get into that cattle methodology and mindset. Our mesh nodes are built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. If my mesh node goes sideways, I do not care. I just delete the VM, redeploy it, and run my playbook. In 15 minutes, I am back up and running again. Why would I troubleshoot it? It takes time. I do not care about troubleshooting. It enables us to rinse and repeat a lot of our processes.

What other advice do I have?

People turn off too many of the tools way too often. We have a lot of room for improvement as an organization to embrace SELinux. We are still working on that. That has a significant amount of value. We want to embrace the GPG sign code in AAP. I do not want anything but approved containers and code running on our platform and our customer's platform. They have enabled us to be incredibly secure, and we are yet to fully take advantage of those offerings. It is a goal, and we are going to get there.

To a colleague who is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would say that Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based variants are the best in my opinion. If I have a choice, I will always go for CentOS, Fedora, Rocky, or something else that is Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based. If they were not going to go with Red Hat, I would probably tell them to go with CentOS but stay behind a little bit because they do not want to be at the bleeding edge of CentOS. That relationship kind of changed when they took it to AppStream instead of a more supportive platform.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. They keep doing well, and they keep getting better. As long as they stay on the same path, I do not see us not using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the future. It has been consistent. Why would we change?


    Jason Dew

A rock-solid, scalable OS that allows you to do things that you want

  • May 09, 2024
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for running various things. We have a lot of virtual machines. The applications that are running on it are a bunch of shell scripts for processing orders, marketing campaigns, generating reports, or running some Java applications.

How has it helped my organization?

We have the customization capability. We can easily customize it, and we can also automate and deploy it. I have a command line interface. I am a command line junkie, and I am able to use that, config files, and Ansible to be able to easily figure out what I need to do to automate things. It feels like I know what it is doing and how to make it do what I want. I do not have to weave some magical arcane hack the way I have to do in Windows.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development in a lot of ways. We have it hooked in through our GitHub. We are trying to combine where we are storing things and then have a standard way of how we are deploying things and have some standard configurations. With every single server, we do not have to worry about how to set this up because we are doing the same thing the same way. We can just do it across the board, and then we only have to worry about the interesting parts.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's built-in security features are great for risk reduction, business continuity, and maintaining compliance. There are published CVEs, and there is SELinux, which I do not use and I always turn it off. Firewalls and tooling around that make it easy to use. The automation on top of that makes it easy to configure. With a push of a button, it is done.

We do not have to worry too much about portability. We are coming from Oracle Linux. We were primarily an Oracle Linux shop, and because that is based on it, it just works. We have not had any issues.

What is most valuable?

The fact that it is Linux is valuable. Why I like it in general is that I know what it is doing. I can figure out what it is doing, and I can make it do what I want. I am not delving into arcane registry things.

What needs improvement?

I am still trying to figure out the features it has. There is so much that it can do. What it does really well is that it allows you to do things.

For how long have I used the solution?

It was probably 2008 when I first started using it. The company was using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and I was with the internal help desk supporting the Linux side.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Its stability is great. It is stable and rock-solid.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Its scalability is also great. It does not matter if the host is beefy or not. It is just going to run on it, and it is going to handle the work. Whether you have a couple of cores or 64 cores, it is just going to do it.

How are customer service and support?

Their support is good. There is good responsiveness. They quickly get me to the person who knows the answer, but I have not used them much.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using Oracle Linux. We are switching because of some of the things. Oracle licensing has been a point of frustration. Their support is comparably difficult to work with, and the support documentation is a mess.

Red Hat is so much easier to navigate. It has been overall a much more pleasant experience to work with Red Hat.

How was the initial setup?

We are using it on-prem, and then our cloud is a Kubernetes cluster on AWS, so it is basically on-prem.

Our deployment model is a manual kickstart with Ansible for configuration. My experience with deployment is good. I kickstart it and then hit it with Ansible, and it is done. It is very easy.

What about the implementation team?

I did the deployment on my own.

What was our ROI?

We have not yet seen an ROI. It has not been in for long enough. There are no savings in terms of manhours because the actual day-to-day usage remains the same with Oracle Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. However, getting some of the metrics with Red Hat Insights is going to be helpful as we get into a better patching cycle. I am anticipating an easier life.

We are expecting an overall decline in the costs because of the differences between the Red Hat licensing and Oracle licensing. We are expecting a net decrease in overall cost. For using it, other than the license, there is no cost.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The setup cost is non-existent. With licensing, there was a little snafu because I misread something. There was a slight learning curve because we use virtual data center licensing. We had to understand how it all maps. We had to understand how that mapping works when the hypervisors are Red Hat or VMware. There is a slight learning curve, but it worked out. It ends up being easy.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I did not evaluate other options mainly because I have had experience with it before. From my prior experience, I already knew what I wanted.

What other advice do I have?

We are trying to use Red Hat Insights. I need to finish updating the playbooks to hook our host. We are in the midst of transitioning from Oracle Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I have not fully hooked everything in, but we will be using Red Hat Insights.

We just started using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. We have not yet seen any impact of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on containerization projects.

If a colleague is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a lot of it would depend on their use case, what they are going to need for it, and whether they have an enterprise environment. There is a cost associated with it which can be a downside. I am an open-source lover. I do not like paying for stuff, but I get it. They need to look at the cost, and if the cost is prohibitive, they need to look at something that is compatible and as similar as possible.

Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten. I generally do not give out a ten. There needs to be something spectacular for a ten, so that is my personal bias against the top of the scale.


    reviewer2399139

Enabled us to centralize development, all of our developers get their own developer environment

  • May 08, 2024
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for just about everything in my company. Our use cases stem from three-tier applications up through cloud deployments, Kubernetes, containers, etc. Prior to this, I worked in an enterprise as a Linux engineer.

How has it helped my organization?

Being able to onboard faster is definitely an advantage to other Linux systems. In the enterprise, we had an onshore and offshore model. Our offshore model was hard to get onboarded into Linux, even if they said they had Linux experience. There is a big difference between managing one or two systems in your basement to managing a fleet of Linux systems, and that does not always translate over. Having a Linux system that has a cockpit with it where you can give someone a GUI, even though the engineers do not really use it, helps onboard new people into the enterprise, into their jobs, and into their roles a lot faster.

We have a lot of really smart people. They are constantly figuring out ways to do things better and faster with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The openness of it and the ability to create whatever we want to create or have to create to make our actual job easier has given our operations people more time to focus on the things they need to focus on, and not the nitty-gritty of the operating system. Tuning becomes super easy. It is scriptable. It is easy to automate. That gives them all the time back in their day to be able to go solve cool problems and not infrastructure problems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. All of our developers get their own developer environment, and that is all based on containers and some version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It depends on what they are at and what they are doing. So, we build and give it to them. They are up and running, and they just go. We have some legacy guys who are still helping our customers with older versions. Those people exist. I talked to someone earlier who still has a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 deployment out there.

When it comes to security and compliance, I like firewalld to do things at the host level and to complement what we are doing out in the enterprise with next-gen firewalls and things like that. I have had SELinux enabled on my systems and in my enterprises since it was available. It was a little bit of a learning curve, but it has helped to keep our systems as secure as possible. It complements well with what security groups are doing for the rest of the enterprise.

The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is great for keeping our organization agile. It is fantastic. We can run them on-prem. We can run them in the cloud. We can move them wherever we need them at the time. If something has to go to the edge for any reason, such as a bandwidth issue or an on-prem issue in the data center, we can push those workloads out. We could push all those containers to where they need to run and when we need to run them. It is super easy to do.

I have not used Red Hat Insights for long, but when I was a Red Hat Insights user, it was the first place I stopped to see what was going on and be able to quickly address and fix issues that Red Hat Insights found.

Red Hat Insights provided us with vulnerability alerts and targeted guidance. In terms of their effect on our uptime, we were able to plan our maintenance windows around what we were seeing in Red Hat Insights. We had the visibility and the ability to go in and plan things out. We could plan what needs to be done and then make that change and say, "This is what we are doing. Here is the playbook for it. We are going to run this in tonight's maintenance window." That prevented us from having to take machines down during the day because we found something critical at that time.

What is most valuable?

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that are most valuable to me, both in the enterprise and now as a partner, are the enterprise features. We are able to have a Linux system that is open-source and that allows us to do domain trust IBM and all that fun stuff. We have a good solid enterprise Linux.

What needs improvement?

It is not broken. Linux is Linux. It has been since Torvalds created the kernel back in version one of the kernel. We have added more features. More things have come to Linux and kernel. All the AI stuff is a bunch of buzzwords. In the keynote today at the Red Hat summit, Chris Wright talked about lightspeed coming to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. What do we need that for? What are we doing with AI? Just the stability of it is fine. If anything cool comes out, I will be the first to check it out. It is a stable platform. It is a workhorse, and that is how we use it.

However, there should be training materials for new enterprises that do not cost an arm and a leg. Red Hat training is phenomenal, but it is expensive. There has to be a better way to onboard new engineers into Linux to really and truly compete with Microsoft. Microsoft is just easy. Everyone uses it. You have to use it in school, and you have to use it everywhere. From an onboarding perspective, we can improve and have an affordable training solution for someone who might not want to be an RHCE or an RHCA but still needs to do their job. It is not Linux's fault. It is what it is. It is a workhorse. It does its thing, but we can do better to enable customers to utilize Linux better.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. It has been about 20 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is super stable. When Red Hat comes out with lightspeed or integrates SELinux, there are no huge rollbacks. Once it makes it downstream in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you know that is going to work. Everything has bugs, and we get that, but we know it is going to work. We know that nothing terrible is going to happen to our production environment, so stability is fantastic.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We can roll out more machines if we need more machines. We pull machines back if we do not need them anymore. One of the things that is lacking is that currently, there is no way to have ephemeral Linux instances for compliance month or your audit month. If you have to bring up a hundred machines, you have to pay for that upfront. That might be changing now, but in terms of scalability, that is a detriment to how smaller organizations can operate. Not everyone can absorb that cost. It is very scalable, but the pricing is a little prohibitive for scalability.

How are customer service and support?

Their support is awesome. Their TAMs are awesome. The technical support that you get is awesome. There is the ability to attach yourself to bigger customers. When you are a small enterprise and you have an issue, you sometimes filter to the bottom of that list because there are other way-bigger customers who are way louder than some of the smaller ones. Being able to talk to your team and ask how to get a problem fixed is phenomenal. They are able to look at the backend and go, "Oh, there is a large telco that is having the same problem. I am going to add you to that one." From a customer service standpoint and tech support specifically, engineering has been fantastic.

The ability to talk to the people out in the community who work for Red Hat and maintain all of that, from the open-source side and the closed-source side, is amazing. A lot of people do not realize that they can jump on Slack or other platforms, and they can talk to the guys who are responsible for it and figure out what is going on. Sometimes, they ask to open a case, and other times, they say that they know and they are fixing it. Having that accessibility is amazing. You cannot call Microsoft and ask them to let you talk to the engineer who made X, Y, or Z.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have been using Red Hat for 25 years.

How was the initial setup?

We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux everywhere. We are using it on-prem. We call it the fourth cloud, so we have our own cloud like every enterprise does. They might realize that or not. We are using it everywhere. We have it at the edge, in the cloud, on-prem, and hybrid. It is the whole nine yards.

Our deployment strategy is to make it work and get it out there fast. We use all three cloud providers: GCP, Azure, and AWS.

Its deployment is super easy. Once you know what you need, rolling out Red Hat Enterprise Linux is super simple. You just go and repeat until you need to change something and then you change it.

We are using OpenShift to deploy Linux containers for a virtualization competitor migration. We are using it to migrate workloads from that vendor to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so we have Linux running in containers to do their virtualization. We are running Red Hat Enterprise Linux containers as well for some workloads, but for the bootable container aspects of it, we essentially have a VM. This is how we use it there, and then everything else is pure containerization. It is not Red Hat Enterprise Linux-specific.

What about the implementation team?

We take care of the deployment for customers.

When I was in the enterprise, we did not take external help. We did all of that in-house.

What was our ROI?

We have seen an ROI but not specifically with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the workhorse. Everything else that supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux is where you get your ROI. When you take Ansible, you start automating all of your configurations. You take Insights, and you are getting those playbooks to remediate security issues and all that fun stuff. That is where you get a return on your investment. That is where you see your engineering dollars go down and they can focus on other aspects of the business. That is not specific to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is the whole ecosystem.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I have had sales folks who have been transparent with the pricing, and then I have had other ones who were not as great. Most of those ones that were not as great are not working for Red Hat anymore.

From a pricing perspective, there is supportability. What you get with that support is the ability to open a case before you do something. You can tell them that you are going to be upgrading your Satellite system or all Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems and that you need a case open. They open a case, and then when the day comes, they are there. They are ready, and they know what is going on. The price point for that is phenomenal because you are paying for support. From a pricing perspective, it is on point. It is definitely a value-add, and it is extremely transparent from a customer standpoint.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have evaluated other solutions. Manageability is the main difference. I have successfully ripped out other solutions in enterprises that I went to and replaced them with Red Hat. They had large fleets and no centralized management. When you come to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you have the Red Hat Satellite server. You have Red Hat Insights. You have all of those things that help you manage large fleets and a large number of Linux machines. When you evaluate other solutions, they have some centralized management now, but that was not common previously. It is kind of a hodgepodge. They are stitched together with all these other solutions, but it does not make sense. In one case, they jammed Linux into their management platform used to manage databases, and it did not work. How do you manage a thousand machines on some busted piece of management software?

What other advice do I have?

If a colleague is looking at open-source, cloud-based operating systems for Linux instead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, they should go for something based on the use case. They have to look at what they are trying to do and what they want to do. They can get away with Fedora, for instance, but the question for me always comes down to supportability. Do they want to be able to call someone and say, "This is broken. Help. Hurry," or do they have the skills in-house to do that? Most companies do not have those skills. They have one or two very good engineers, but they cannot fix everything at the same time. If they want portability, then they should not look somewhere else. They should go to Red Hat Enterprise Linux because they have the Red Hat name behind it.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. There is always room for improvement in a product. Tens are unicorns. No one gets a ten. Maybe if Jesus made an operating system, he would get a ten.


    reviewer2398734

Affordable, feature-rich, and has enabled us to centralize development

  • May 07, 2024
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

We have a database that we maintain for root passwords, and sometimes I need to break the root password to reset it. We work a lot on logical volumes where I need to grow and shrink volumes on the fly. I did not have to shrink the logical volumes much, but I worked a lot on growing logical volumes on the fly to make them available for the database team. I have done network-related things. I configured network multipathing or IP multipathing where we can parallelly route the traffic to multiple ethernets.

I work a lot on user-related issues as well. We are also using Ansible a lot for automation. I am writing some playbooks, so there are a lot of use cases.

How has it helped my organization?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps us a lot. We host a lot of our applications on the Red Hat platform. We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for both on-prem and VM platforms. Most of them are VMs, but we do have some old legacy systems where we have Linux running on some Dell architecture. Our goal is to get rid of them this year and implement everything on virtualization because virtualization is growing a lot.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. We are using it in the production and lower environments. We are using a common platform for our deployments. We have a centralized environment.

In terms of portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for keeping our organization agile, it is flexible. Agile methodologies are very popular nowadays, and they help with coordination between dev and production teams. It is fulfilling the gaps between these teams. It is helpful.

What is most valuable?

I see so many features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux that I do not see in other Linux operating systems, such as Ubuntu. That is why Red Hat is very popular. All my experience is mostly on the Red Hat side. In terms of features, I like breaking root passwords, and I like the XFS file system over ext4.

What needs improvement?

I have not used it on the cloud side. I have not heard much about how Red Hat is doing on the cloud side. In the market, AWS and Azure are very popular, and they have captured most of the market. If Red Hat can improve on the cloud side, they can retain their customer base. Their customers do not need to go out for other cloud resources, and they can use the Red Hat cloud.

We are using it on-prem and in the virtual environment on VMware. We are using a cloud, but it is not a Red Hat cloud. We are using AWS in our organization. We have some EC2 instances deployed with Red Hat Enterprise Linux images, but I cannot say it is a Red Hat cloud. It is an AWS cloud, and we have instances. We are depending on a third-party cloud. If Red Hat provides that kind of service to our company, we can retain Red Hat. We do not need to go for a public cloud.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for almost 12 years. I started with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable platform, but our company still wants to stick to the older version. They do not want to change the application base. They do not want to take risks. Unfortunately, Red Hat is not able to help to provide the patches for older versions. They suggest upgrading, but management is not doing that, so the Red Hat Enterprise Linux side is good, but our management side is bad.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Its scalability is good. We plan to use it more. We are growing. As our infrastructure grows, we are buying more licenses.

How are customer service and support?

Their customer service is excellent. I like it. I am in touch with Ed who is one of the support engineers with Red Hat. He is helping me.

I am also in touch with a few other people at Red Hat. If I run into any issues, I can simply email them, and I get a quick response from them. Based on the support I am receiving, I would rate them a ten out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use any similar solution previously.

How was the initial setup?

We are using it on-prem and in the virtual environment on VMware. Our cloud provider is AWS.

We are using the CI/CD model for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are using blue/green deployments as well for our containerized applications, and we have some canary deployments.

My initial deployment experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux was not great. It was not as easy as the current version. It was difficult during those days. We had to load the GUI and then change to CLI. It is better now. Red Hat has made some improvements in the newer versions. The current version 9 looks better than any other previous version.

What about the implementation team?

I did not use any integrator or consultant. I downloaded an ISO image from Red Hat. I downloaded and installed it myself, and it worked very well. I did not run into any issues with the installation process.

What was our ROI?

Over the last few years, we have been within budget. We do not have any constraints about Red Hat. We are a big organization. We use a lot of products from different vendors. We are working on cost optimization for some of the vendors but not Red Hat, so Red Hat is still good. We are still happy with it.

The biggest return on investment is the customer base. We are in the telecom industry. We try to get as many customers as we can. Red Hat is not the only product that we are using, but it is a major product that we are using in our company.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We are good as of now. We do not have any concerns about licensing. Its price is still good for us.

What other advice do I have?

We are not using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. We are using Kubernetes and Dockers for that.

When it comes to patching, our goal for 2024 is to make all the systems compliant. Especially at the infrastructure and application levels, I am actively working on the compliance tasks, and our goal is to fix all vulnerabilities. I am working with someone at Red Hat on some issues because I am not able to find the exact patch for certain vulnerabilities.

For now, we are happy with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are happy with what we are getting.

Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux an eight out of ten. The reason for reducing two points is that I have not explored other operating systems very well.


    Manuel Paula.

Has a top-notch knowledge base, significantly simplifies risk management and compliance maintenance

  • December 13, 2023
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for my infrastructure and OpenShift primarily for its Kubernetes capabilities.

I wanted to build infrastructure based on Red Hat for commercial distribution for data centers.

How has it helped my organization?

The built-in security features significantly simplify risk management and compliance maintenance for on-premises deployments. The well-documented and regularly updated features make it easy to find solutions to any issues we might encounter.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux boasts a top-notch knowledge base. Compared to other distributions, it offers comprehensive information for each iteration of the operating system. This information is categorized by Red Hat Enterprise versions – seven, eight, nine, and so on. Likewise, the documentation and knowledge base are further organized by platform versions, like 13 and 14. This clear organization makes it easy to navigate and find the information needed for troubleshooting or understanding specific features. Given the ease of use and depth of content, Red Hat's documentation gets an A+.

The uptime has been reliable, minimizing infrastructure impact.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's security advisories typically notify system administrators of potential vulnerabilities, allowing them to prepare for patching easily.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the OpenShift platform.

What needs improvement?

The high cost of Red Hat Enterprise Linux has room for improvement. The high cost in terms of a platform is problematic.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux depends on its deployment environment. In a bare-metal setup, scalability is directly limited by the hardware server's capabilities. Similarly, virtualized deployments are still constrained by the underlying hardware resources. However, when RHEL is used within OpenStack, the Red Hat OpenStack platform can manage both virtual machines and workflows, enabling horizontal scaling by adding more nodes to the OpenStack cluster. In this scenario, the number of chassis in the infrastructure becomes the primary determinant of RHEL scalability.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is responsive and efficient, with a streamlined ticketing process. When troubleshooting hardware issues, their technicians typically check relevant files to diagnose potential problems with the chassis or related components.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I previously used Canonical in other open-source projects and pushed for a switch to Red Hat because of my familiarity with it in past projects. My current employer does not utilize Red Hat Enterprise Linux because of the high cost.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment complexity is based on the project and the architect of the particular solutions. There are scripts that we can use to perform the upgrades or migration. The number of people required for upgrades or migration depends on the size of the solution. For a small solution, we can automate and don't require any people. If we are using a third-party solution already in place we can achieve the same goal without a large team.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The combined cost of implementing in hybrid and cloud environments to fulfill all our client's needs can be considerable.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

There are only three distributions that offer commercial support. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Canonical, and SUSE. It all comes down to the cost for each organization.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a nine out of ten.

The amount of people required for Red Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance depends on the type and size of each project.

Red Hat already provides tools to maintain up-to-date migration plans. These tools can not only identify which components require upgrade but also preserve any already installed elements. Additionally, Red Hat offers a web-based solution for managing upgrade processes if required. However, we can choose alternative options: implementing the solution ourselves or employing open-source software for upgrades. I see no significant challenges with utilizing Red Hat tools for the upgrade process.

I recommend evaluating all the available solutions that offer the tools that Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers and comparing their functionality and cost to avoid issues after purchase.


    AsgharAli

Offers role-based access and the ability to seamlessly connect multiple systems with ease

  • November 13, 2023
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

I work as a consultant for a bank. They were using another type of Linux and facing some scripting issues. We are using Ansible for infrastructure, but they depend on different languages. In this fintech use case, the bank performs transactions between two banks. The transactions were getting stuck, but they detected that the money had been transferred.

The money comes from the bank. They transport it from the cloud and deliver it to the channels like Visa, MasterCard, etc. The national bank is also involved at that stage, so there is a pause. When we are using auto-scaling, it requires a small amount of time, so your application will have an error. This is a millisecond process. That is the duration. We were looking for issues like bank fraud. You need to conduct an analysis and restart the service. The data is on Red Hat Linux, and we use EKS for containerization.

We have a hybrid solution combining AWS with an on-premise environment. Moving data to the cloud requires a stable connection because we have multiple systems on-premises and on the cloud. This platform helped us communicate among multiple clouds and our private cloud network.

How has it helped my organization?

Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to subscribe to other Red Hat services from our portal. We can connect to Satellite with single sign-on logins. We can use the Spring CLI call and the Docker hub. We have a direct subscription.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has helped us avoid cloud vendor lock-in. We could easily migrate between cloud services from AWS to Azure if we wanted to. Everything is an SCL, so we could deploy the same thing on another cloud. It's highly useful. We can make a script and move the entire infrastructure.

What is most valuable?

The Red Hat Linux comes with Anaconda, a fascinating tool that is useful if I need to connect multiple systems. I also like role-based access.

What needs improvement?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a little expensive for some customers who don't have the budget. It depends on the client. They can save money by not purchasing some of the added packages and services. If the client has a budget of $10 million, we can go for the whole bundle.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux for four or five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is scalable, but it depends on the deployment.

How are customer service and support?

I rate Red Hat support 10 out of 10. I'm a big fan.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used Ubuntu, which has its own cloud service. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a better option if the client has a budget. Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be certified and meet compliance requirements.

How was the initial setup?

Deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux is straightforward, but the complexity and time required depend on whether we are deploying on a virtual machine or a desktop. If we have the correct documentation, the total process can be completed in three to five days.

I have used the Image Builder Tool, but in the latest deployment, I pulled down the repository from the Docker hub. We use our own XML file and create the repository. It's a two or three-day design process for Red Hat Linux. We need one data resource for that process and a second engineer on the support side if we want to set up more servers from their on-site services.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's affordable, but everything costs money. At the same time, everything adds value for our clients. For example, I was working on a machine-learning project, and they needed more team resources, and all the projects used computing power. By running multiple clusters, the client exceeded the rate for that data. We buy services from AWS, the Azure Marketplace, or directly from Red Hat.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of 10. I recommend buying the services in a package if you can afford it. If the client doesn't have the budget, we can find alternatives. It depends on the client's needs.


    Mohamed-Lotfy

A stable OS, quick to install, and easy to scale

  • October 24, 2023
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

We host Red Hat Enterprise Linux on our VMware Cloud and manage our customers' machines.

How has it helped my organization?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux machines are more stable than Windows machines.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps to avoid cloud vendor lock-in.

What is most valuable?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a reliable operating system that can run for long periods of time without any issues.

What needs improvement?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux should modernize its UI to make navigating the screens easier.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for around four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be easily scaled on a virtual machine.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in the initial deployment but it was straightforward. The deployment took around 15 minutes per machine.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux nine out of ten.

I recommend using Red Hat Enterprise Linux over an open-source OS because it offers better support.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux requires minimal maintenance.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a reliable solution and I recommend it to others.


    reviewer916965

Reliable, consistent, and well-documented

  • October 23, 2023
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

My primary use case for it is to run Jenkins servers.

How has it helped my organization?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is critical for our operations. We use it for all of our Linux servers.

What is most valuable?

It works. It's consistent. It's well-documented. These are valuable aspects to me.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 updates the Cipher Suites and the security proceeds it. I wasn't pleasantly surprised because a bunch of our server communication didn't work. Having the Cipher Suites updated is a good thing but was not convenient.

I feel positive about the built-in security features when it comes to simplifying the risk and reduction and maintaining compliance. I'm also a Windows Server administrator so, compared to my Windows Server experience, I have very positive feelings about Red Hat Enterprise Linux security based on how easy it is to keep things patched, up-to-date, and compliant.

What needs improvement?

Some of the repositories and some of the DNS versions are very old. I just deployed something using Ruby and the DNS stable repository was sufficiently old that the Ruby project I was using didn't work.

I would like more transparency and better options other than using something like Ruby Version Manager. I'd rather be able to get modern, up-to-date versions from the base repositories.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for ten years. We're on a bunch of different versions. We're anywhere between version six and nine. My personal project is on nine.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We still have Windows servers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very resource-intensive, and it's hard to secure because Windows, the base use case, is all things to all people.

I generally like Linux server products. I like the way they specialize, and I like the default security posture.

How was the initial setup?

We have a hybrid environment. We do have some things in the cloud. We're using both Azure and AWS as our cloud providers.

I was involved in the process of migrating our Jenkins servers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. It was not straightforward or complex because we changed a lot of things about our deployment. We tried to improve and streamline, and in the process, we broke some of our pipelines.

It was not smooth, but that was not necessarily because of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, except for some of the security upgrades. We could not use the old RSA keys that we were using with RHEL 6 with RHEL 9. This meant that we either had to loosen our security by allowing legacy keys or tighten things down. We chose to tighten things down.

Another challenge is that we have some old Red Hat Enterprise Linux applications that are running on very old versions. We are trying to get everything off of RHEL 6 and 7 and onto RHEL 9, but there are a few applications that are stuck on RHEL 6 for various reasons.

We are getting rid of all of our Linux servers, so the biggest challenge right now is migrating our applications to RHEL 9.

What about the implementation team?

When it comes to provisioning and patching, it is pretty manual. The company uses VMware, and the process is pretty manual and involves a certain number of shell scripts. I know we're trying to adopt Ansible, but we're not very far along.

What other advice do I have?

I've had a very positive experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. My only point of comparison is Ubuntu, which I use for personal projects.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a solid enterprise product with a greater emphasis on security. However, Ubuntu Server is easier to use in many ways compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This may just be a matter of familiarity, but I find it easier to get current versions of Ruby with Ubuntu than with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

This is based on my somewhat limited use, but it's my impression nonetheless. That's what keeps it from being a ten out of ten.


    reviewer2298852

Provides standardized processes, security effectiveness, and efficient updates

  • October 23, 2023
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

All our infrastructure uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Every service we run is all Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Even containerization is on it.

How has it helped my organization?

It has improved our organization. It has standardized processes. Everyone uses it. 

The upgrades are straightforward which helps when you want to move a major version of an upgrade. It's done in a standard way.

What is most valuable?

Everything we do is all Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat Enterprise Linux's security has been good because I have never seen any application going down due to security reasons. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux enables us to achieve security standard certification. For example, we have a very tightly SCC-regulated company so there are many rules that we are to follow and we are able to achieve this using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for six years. 

How was the initial setup?

We are all on-prem, but we also have some footprints in AWS but those images are also on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has supported our hybrid cloud strategy. We have a few things running on AWS. We have a few things on OpenShift. We are able to get all the basic images. It is easy to start and deploy anywhere.

One thing I like is the updates because when we patch it and upgrade it, we save a lot of time doing those upgrades and migrations.

Moreover, upgrades or migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux have been straightforward in some ways. For example, we are currently migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and we have all our servers running on RHEL 7. We have scripts that are very easy to migrate.

For our implementation strategy, we go environment by environment. We start with our development environment. Once we are done with it, we test it. We have some automation test suites, test them, and we go to the upper environment.  

What about the implementation team?

We worked directly with Red Hat for the deployment. We are already working on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 migration. Every year, whenever there is a major version release, we migrate to the major version.  

What was our ROI?

We see a return on investment in terms of saving time. One thing I like is the updates because when we patch it and upgrade it, we save a lot of time doing those upgrades and migrations.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)