We use Red Hat for everything or we have a Red Hat derivative.
CIS Hardened Image Level 2 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
Center for Internet SecurityExternal reviews
243 reviews
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At the forefront of built-in security features
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
We use it on-prem and on the cloud. We use it in a hybrid cloud environment. We see it everywhere. We have a more consistent view. We do not have the same churn that we have with other operating systems. The longevity of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is pretty cool.
We see it being used a lot for containerization projects. A lot of the things that I am involved in involve Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is a great experience. It is something that we know we can come into and have a good outcome. It is very reliable.
They are at the forefront in terms of built-in security features. I have seen a lot of things that they are doing. We would like to see more of that because security is something that is impacting everyone.
The portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is great for keeping our organization agile. It is consistent. When I build an image with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I know what is in it. I know it is trusted. I do not have the same churn that I would have with others. The way they support it and the way they communicate are well-known.
What is most valuable?
It is the number one Linux operating system that we've run in to, and the way it does things is the way I prefer. I do not know if it is because they did it first, or they just read my mind.
The number one feature we like is that it is a very reliable platform. It is a very consistent platform. There is very little that we cannot do with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and there is very little that we worry about when we are running a Red Hat distribution.
What needs improvement?
Red Hat started as a very open and outwardly focused release, but recently, some of the changes that were made have affected that reputation. From the standpoint of what they can add to the product, the product is pretty stable.
They continue to push the ecosystem forward, but as a consumer, what was most important for me was the reputation of openness that Red Hat has fostered. I would like that back. I wish they did not care about CentOS and things like that. I have seen my customers push away from Red Hat as a result of that perception, which is weird because it does not change anything. I wish they would value that. Because of new owners too, the perception has changed suddenly.
For how long have I used the solution?
I started with Red Hat before Enterprise Linux. I started in the nineties when Red Hat first went on floppy disks. They had a bunch of floppy disks. That was my first release, and then they started doing it via CD-ROMs. The first Red Hat Enterprise Linux release that I used was 2 or 2.1 in early 2000. I remember the Red Hat person coming to where I was working at the time and saying that they are going to start this enterprise distribution. We were really skeptical. We were like, "We have Red Hat. We love Red Hat. Why are you messing with a good thing?" It is kind of funny.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
It has always been solid. It is getting a little worse than it was before. When you get to the right people, you always get amazing support. It is just a bit harder to get to the right people. I would rate their support a ten out of ten. I love it when we get there.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
It has been very long since I started working with these types of solutions. I have used them all.
How was the initial setup?
We use it in the cloud. We use it on-prem. We use it in a hybrid situation. We use all cloud providers.
Its deployment has always been simple.
What about the implementation team?
I am a consultant and integrator.
What was our ROI?
For us, our ROI is the predictability of Red Hat. We know what is coming. It is well-communicated. We could see the upstreams. We know how it is supported. We know how they communicate about CVEs and things like that. We know how to iterate the ecosystems. We know how to deal with RPMs. Very rarely, you are like, "This is brand new." It always usually works into a construct. There is always a utility that you can use to wrap complex things, such as SELinux or containers. There is always something.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We have done bake-offs before with the big three that everybody talks about. There is Red Hat. There is SUSE, and there is Ubuntu. Personally, I am not a fan of Ubuntu. I do not run a desktop, which is probably why. The ones that I run into all the time are SUSE or Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
What other advice do I have?
If I were not going with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I would go with a Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone. In business, I would always use Red Hat. Personally, I would use CentOS just because I prefer the way Red Hat organizes everything, so it has always been Red Hat or a Red Hat clone.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. I love it.
Provides a reliable base to deploy applications and has a lot of features
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use it for enterprise software, databases, and some custom applications.
How has it helped my organization?
We have a stable base to deploy applications. We need a minimal amount of effort to troubleshoot problems with the applications that are related to the OS.
We are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud, in the on-prem data center, and at the edge. We are also using Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a hybrid cloud environment. It has had a positive impact. It is straightforward to deploy. There was no bottleneck.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled us to centralize development. The stable base that each developer can rely on is great. The consistent ecosystem of the repository makes it easy to rely on.
We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for containerization projects. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is quick to containerize, so when it started becoming mainstream, it was easier for us to sell to upper management to start doing more containerization.
There has been a positive impact in terms of the portability of applications and containers built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for keeping our organization agile. It is very portable. I do not have any issues with different ecosystems in relation to how Red Hat Enterprise Linux runs containers.
Our cost of ownership is not high. They are not very expensive. We are never surprised.
What is most valuable?
The repository ecosystem is valuable.
What needs improvement?
I would probably focus more on a rolling release schedule. Instead of a long-term operating support of ten years, I would just have one release and keep rolling it.
In terms of security features, overall, it is lacking cohesion. There are a lot of different options, and it is hard to choose the ones that best fit our business needs without a lot of investigative work.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for 11 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
It takes a little bit to get to the true answer. I know there is a lot of triaging. I am sure we can improve on our end. When we open tickets, we can provide more information. There could be a way to get faster answers from Red Hat support, and we might not be providing the most upfront information needed for the ticket. I would rate their support 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 were not using any other solution previously.
I know of only one other player, and that is Ubuntu. There is also OpenSUSE, but I have not yet seen that personally in my career.
How was the initial setup?
We have cloud and on-prem deployments. We have the AWS cloud.
On AWS, we had an EC2 instance. I clicked, and it was online. For the initial deployment, we just used the Amazon Web UI, and now, we use Ansible for deployment.
What was our ROI?
We have seen an ROI. It is fairly easy to deploy. We do not have too many issues with setting up a new environment in relation to the operating system. The bottlenecks are more related to the hardware or even setting up the cloud.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
When I came in, Red Hat Enterprise Linux was already being used. It has always been there.
What other advice do I have?
We have not yet fully leveraged Red Hat Insights. We are working on that. It might help with cohesion and security.
I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a ten out of ten. It is reliable for deploying applications. It has a lot of different features. I can find solutions to all my problems, and the industry support is there.
Secure and feature-rich with a good knowledge base and support
How has it helped my organization?
We are a Linux shop, so a lot of our engineers are familiar with Linux. We try to push Red Hat Enterprise Linux instead of Windows. The reason for it in the beginning was licensing. Some of it was because of the way the contract was set up. It was cheaper, but we do use it now just for the ease of it. I do not know if it is because of Ansible, which we use for a lot of our day-to-day operations, that we tend to lean more toward Red Hat.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has affected our system's uptime or security. I know Microsoft publishes zero-day vulnerabilities for Windows as fast as Red Hat, but we noticed that in terms of problems or alerts that we get for attacks or viruses, there is not anything on the Red Hat side. That is why we feel that it is more secure. It might be just the nature of Red Hat where all services and ports are off. It is not like Windows where everything is on, and you have to turn it on. I was having a conversation with one of the gentlemen who is also attending the Red Hat conference, and I got to know that there are built-in NIST features with Red Hat that we could turn on, so we do not have to try to figure out how to harden our system.
What is most valuable?
The testing of the updates or the packages of the kernel is valuable because I used to be a part of the Fedora project. I know it is all vetted out before it gets to production, but a majority of it is the support and the relationships I have with the Red Hat employees assigned to our account.
As they move over to newer versions, certain things change, which is expected as the technology matures or new things come out, but what really surprises me are the features that are there in the cloud, such as Red Hat Insights. They are not there on-prem. There are a lot of things on the cloud portal that I did not notice before, and I was surprised because we were unaware of them. Red Hat is doing a lot of investment in that sense.
The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux is good. It is easy to parse through all of the knowledge base. I do not know if Windows does it because I have not looked at it, but in Red Hat's knowledge base, there are a lot of things. They fast-track a lot of things in their knowledge base, even when they are not yet official. Especially with the tie-in with Bugzilla, even though it is not a true KB, we can see and follow if other people in the world are hitting a certain problem or something similar to what we are experiencing. I like that.
What needs improvement?
It would be great to have an overview of how various Red Hat products work together. They can show how to tie all those pieces together and how to have the products that we work together for our day-to-day processes.
For how long have I used the solution?
I started with the company around 2012, and they have been using it even before then. At that time, it was Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and now, we are up to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.
How are customer service and support?
In 10 or 11 years of using Red Hat solutions, I have opened only one or two support tickets. It probably was something during a patch and during Satellite 5 to Satellite 6 migration. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
In Linux, there are so many different flavors, but I am partial to Red Hat because I have been a part of the Fedora project. At our place, we have only two operating systems: Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I know CentOS, but that is usually because the appliance from the vendor was set up using that. That is why we had a few instances of CentOS in the past, but nowadays, I do not see any other flavors of Linux.
How was the initial setup?
For the majority of our use cases for Red Hat, we have on-prem deployments. There are some things that they are trying to spin up on AWS. I do not know if they are cloud-native apps or not, but I know our developers are now moving on to it.
I have been involved in the initial setup, upgrades, and migration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I did not have any problems while going from major OS versions. I always push new upgrades or homogeneous migrations, such as from version 6 to version 7 to version 8. There is probably an option to upgrade in place. Overall, with Red Hat OS, I have not seen many problems. A long time ago, when they went from Python 2 to Python 3, there were certain things we had to change in the script.
I know that Red Hat is moving to Wayland from X11, but I do not see any problems there. From Satellite 5 to 6, it was a bit hard in the beginning, but now, it is pretty self-explanatory. Overall, everything about which we had questions was very well documented.
In terms of our upgrade and/or migration plans to stay current, first, we look at the EOL and the roadmap of Red Hat because of security. We used to offer every single version before the said EOL happened, but now, we just do an n-minus-one. We try to maintain the newest and one level below version. SAP users are the biggest Red Hat Enterprise Linux users in our environment. They have a particular PAM and upgrade path that they have to do with Red Hat. We also wait to be certified to certain versions, but our main strategy is the newest and one major version down. We try to get everybody off the other versions.
Our provisioning is all done using VMware products. We have a vRealize automation, now called the Aria automation, to spin it up. Patching is done through Satellite. I do not do it, but when I watch them doing it, it seems it is just using remote SSH commands against the list of non-prod and prod servers. It is something simple. We do not seem to be doing anything complicated. I am wondering if there is a better way to do versioning control or patching and whatnot, but currently, it is very simple.
I am satisfied with the management experience not only in terms of patching but also the day zero to day one or day two stuff. We are interested in utilizing Ansible to eliminate human error and whatnot. During provisioning, we have Pearl scripts that we have to manually trigger. I know we can use Ansible for that, but it comes down to the cost of entry which is still very high.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
A lot of people are moving into the core count for licensing. We still have a few with one-to-one standard server licensing, but we are utilizing the virtualization host licensing. We license it based on the host, not based on VMs, which is cool. I was very happy that there was certain licensing with SAP to have access to SAP repos. Its cost was the same as the regular one, so I was happy about that.
The only pricing that bugs me right now is the Ansible pricing. We wanted to take a look at Ansible, but the biggest thing a year back with Ansible was that the management did not want to spend half a million on Ansible Tower. They wanted to see first if we would use it and not waste money. I do not know if things have changed now, but Ansible is probably still expensive. That is one of the routes that we want to go to. We will see if we can utilize Ansible Tower, so pricing-wise, that is the only thing that pops up. It is too expensive. The cost of entry seems quite high.
Overall, I do not see any issues with what we have spent on Red Hat. We also have learning subscriptions that we pay to Red Hat for the training, and I do not feel we have wasted any money.
What other advice do I have?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has built-in features, but we do not use them. It is one of the things about which I need to talk to our account manager. There are so many different ways to skin a cat. My department has so much money, so they bought everything, but a lot of the security features, such as SELinux, are disabled for us. We handle the firewall rules, access lists, and other things at another location rather than on the actual VM itself. It does not hurt to do it at multiple places, but operations-wise, it would be a nightmare, so we try not to do it. I know there are a lot of cool new things built in Red Hat, and that is something we should circle back and take a look at.
I have seen Red Hat Insights. I clicked on it one time when our account manager was showing us something. They have so many features in the cloud that we do not know we can use. Maybe it is wrong to assume, but the reason I do not look at Red Hat Insights is that a part of our patching is already included. We are not that strict about what we patch in terms of the versions. It is useful, but Red Hat emails us anyway. They tell about the severity of an issue. We do not look at Red Hat Insights. We see those emails and we see CVEs. If a package is installed and applicable to our VMs, we just use Satellite and patch that particular vulnerability.
I have also tried the web console once. It looked interesting, but we do not have much use for it because a lot of our customers or application owners are server admins. About 99% of our Red Hat installs are all minimal installs. We do not have a GUI. There is just a terminal screen. Even though they could console in and do whatnot, it is all done via SSH.
Overall, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux a 10 out of 10.
Enables users to roll out applications easily and provides excellent technical support
What is our primary use case?
We have a lot of Oracle databases, Tomcat, and Java microservices running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
How has it helped my organization?
A lot of our applications are like Java microservices. Deploying them on a Unix platform is so much easier. It's open-sourced and provides a lot of compatibility. It makes it easier for us to roll out applications. It is compatible with most Java microservices applications.
What is most valuable?
We like that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a vendor-supported product. When we have problems, we just call Red Hat Enterprise Linux for support. The product employs a lot of automation tools to manage its OS. We love using Red Hat Satellite. We have close to 5000 servers. Managing individual servers would be a nightmare.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Red Hat Satellite help us automate our repetitive tasks. Every flavor of Linux distribution has its own specialties. The product offers a lot of integration within the Red Hat products suite. We use Red Hat products mostly, so it works for us.
What needs improvement?
The vendor keeps rolling out many packets, which complicates our job. We keep patching our servers. CVEs come out all the time. However, having a solid and secure OS will make our life much easier.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux since 2004.
How are customer service and support?
I never had any problem with support. I didn't have any issues that I did not get a resolution for. Sometimes, it takes a little bit of time, but eventually, it gets resolved.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I was using AIX, which is also an IBM product. IBM bought Red Hat Enterprise Linux. AIX was more expensive and required IBM System p. Moving to Red Hat Enterprise Linux was much easier because it is a lot more compatible with the regular hardware like HP and Dell that we buy on the market.
What was our ROI?
I have seen an improvement in our deployment. When we have applications running on Windows, it takes longer to get them set up and provisioned, and the security is different compared to Red Hat.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing could be better. The tool is getting expensive. Before, we could license only the hypervisor where Red Hat Enterprise Linux is running. Now, if a customer has a 12-node hypervisor, Red Hat Enterprise Linux forces customers to license all 12, even though they use only six.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated SUSE. At that time, SUSE did not have good support. We needed good support worldwide.
What other advice do I have?
We use AWS and Microsoft Azure as our cloud providers. We don't use the off-the-shelf product that we get from the cloud. We build around it because we have a standard template. When we deploy our solution in the cloud, all the security features we need are already within the OS, as opposed to using the cloud OS and applying all the changes we need. It's easier to get our template to the cloud and use it.
The licensing for the cloud environment is totally different than the on-premise one. We use the Virtual Datacenter license on-premises. I don't see any difference because Red Hat Enterprise Linux still supports it, whether on-premise or on the cloud.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux knows its product. Whenever I have an issue, an engineer gets assigned to me. I can always escalate if needed. We're not using every host that we license. We ensure that we can fail over smoothly on every single hypervisor. It's fair to license them. We're not using it, but we're still paying for it. I do not like it, but it is a business cost.
We migrate workloads to the cloud. I never upgrade an OS. I usually replace the old OS with a new OS and migrate the application. I use the OS versions 7, 8, and 9. The migration is pretty straightforward. AWS and Azure have a tool that we can use to integrate with our environment. It's a lift and shift. We grab the VM from our on-premise hypervisors and move it to the cloud.
We use Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform mostly for patching and upgrading to the next revisions. We don't upgrade from one OS to another. We build on a new OS and get all the applications running there. Once the application is running, we move all the workload from the old OS to the new OS. There's no impact on the existing system.
I don't do the day-to-day patching because we have a managed service. However, it does create interruption. When we do a patch, we have to reboot, especially when there's a kernel update. It causes an outage. I have used Red Hat Insights. It gives us insight into what's happening on every single Red Hat VM that we have. It tells us if it's behind or has some performance bottlenecks. It gives us visibility on the health of the whole OS.
People who are looking into the product must get a good account manager. We must have a good account manager who we can always contact and who gives us all the updates that we need. They keep us in the loop on what is happening in the Red Hat world. We are satisfied with the product.
Overall, I rate the tool a ten out of ten.
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Efficiently separates databases from applications and 90% of operations are successfully running on Red Hat
What is our primary use case?
We use it for databases and applications. In the new model, we keep databases separate from applications. Currently, about 90% of our operations are running in Red Hat 8. Some systems are still on Red Hat 7, but those will be migrated off by the beginning of next year.
How has it helped my organization?
It's been great since we have it. It's been reliable and fast. We keep all the security agents, and we've been taken care of right away, and that's the improvement in our company. It's with the new RHEL. There's always something new, something good that works for us.
Moreover, we might need to move workloads from the cloud in the US to China in the future.
What is most valuable?
As we're migrating and doing the Elite upgrade, which is an in-place upgrade, we find it great. We use it for databases, and we're testing it for applications. Some applications don't work, but some are functioning well. So far, it's been a positive experience.
Since I'm more focused on migrating, Leapp is awesome. We are able to do something that will work the way it's working. There are no issues or breaks.
RHEL's knowledge base is great. It's very good. Especially when you try to open a case, it gives you all the options you need, so you don't have to wait for the case to be opened. You can get all the information you need right there.
Moreover, I am in the process of testing Leapp and Red Hat Insights. And then create our images from there rather than create MIs.
For how long have I used the solution?
At the new company, we've been using it for three years. At my previous company, we used it for over five years. Personally, I have been using it for almost eight to ten years.
How are customer service and support?
We often have to go through people who have the same labels as us and who have the same knowledge base articles as us, which takes time. But they do it first; it's searching the knowledge way that I search. That I can do. That takes the time before. They do the payment. They sent me exactly what I had already found. And then we can go to the next level. That is taking a little bit more time that we can be a little bit better. So, the initial step of the support process could be improved.
90% of people who open those bases are administrators who already look on the Internet for all these knowledge bases. So by the time we get there, we're gonna get the knowledge base back. And that's not helpful.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I used to use HPUX and Solaris. We switched to RHEL because HPUX started looking like it was going away, so we started moving to Red Hat. We thought it was our best option. We tested different flavors of RHEL.
When it comes to provisioning and patching, we have a satellite server. We use a lot of Ansible. We are getting used to Ansible and Satellite servers.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup wasn't complex, but since we wanted to make it easier to use, it became harder to make it work the way we wanted. Not out of the box, so we can just build a server that is ready to be deployed right away without any more interventions.
We use RHEL with AWS because it's easier for us to maintain since we create our own AMIs and we update that as we need it. So we don't need to follow their schedule until we get it more secure and more reliable for us.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
A stable solution with good built-in security and a responsive support team
What is our primary use case?
Our use cases are pretty broad. We develop the automation that provisions the VMs, and then anyone in the company can request the VM for whatever intended purposes.
What is most valuable?
Red Hat Support is really good. Support has a fast response time. The product has good security. We deal with very urgent issues. The response time should be optimal if the issue requires Red Hat Support.
My company is a utility company. Outages are a major issue for us. A faster response time is very important to get the applications back up so we can keep up with our production time. Red Hat's documentation is always really good.
What needs improvement?
As a software developer, documentation is very important to me. The solution should provide better documentation.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The product is scalable. We're able to provide as many VMs as we like. We never run into an issue with how many VMs we are provisioning.
How are customer service and support?
Support can always be improved. I rate the product’s support an eight or nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution can get pretty pricey depending on how many machines we're licensing but for a good reason.
What other advice do I have?
We purchased the solution from Red Hat. We use Packer by HashiCorp to build our templates. I am a junior developer. I have been employed with my company for about five months. I don't know the initial issues that led to us choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux as our Linux solution. I speak from a developer’s perspective because I deal with Ansible.
The product has really good built-in security. The product provides good support, which helps us manage downtime and get the service back up and running, thus producing more money.
Overall, I rate the product a ten 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)
Simplifies risk reduction and aids in maintaining compliance with industry standards and regulations
How has it helped my organization?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux specifically was a hard requirement for certain software that we wanted to utilize. In fact, purchasing Red Hat’s enterprise version was necessary to run AP. That was the primary objective.
Apart from that, the robust networking capabilities offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux were highly valuable. They have numerous partnerships and dedicated efforts in low-latency technologies, which are particularly beneficial for trading firms. They possess extensive expertise in external tuning and similar aspects.
What is most valuable?
Overall, the reliability stands out the most for me. While the package selection might be somewhat restricted, it is highly integrated and cohesive.
What needs improvement?
I'm really excited about some of the developments happening in the workstations and the Fedora Silverblue space. There are advancements like rpm-ostree and the OCI container format, which enable deploying RHEL in new ways.
As we have numerous developer workstations, being able to deploy them in an image-based format is highly desirable. This would allow us to use the "toolbox" concept, where developers can choose any desired operating system within the toolbox. Some of our developers also work with Ubuntu and Oracle Linux. Having a consistent developer platform with full pseudo permissions and zero permissions within that container or toolbox would be beneficial.
Additionally, having an image that includes all the necessary software and provisioning it so that subsequent updates provide the updated image, would significantly enhance the developer experience. It would be great if teams could make modifications and changes to the image, like rebasing. I think it would be an awesome feature.
Let me provide an example of why this would be valuable for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation. We recently switched from one security software application to another similar application on our workstations. We had to manually remove the unwanted software and install the new one. It was manageable for servers or edge devices, but for remote devices that are not always on the network or VPN, it became a cumbersome task to reach out to each device and remove and install the software. If we could update an image with the old software removed and the new software installed, and then allow users to update their image, it would simplify the process for everyone. Currently, it's possible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge, but it would be fantastic if this capability could be extended to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation as well. That's what would be really cool.
For how long have I used the solution?
The company has been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a significant period of time. As for myself, it's been around five years or so. I have also contributed to GNOME. About ten years ago, I was one of 12 individuals who wrote documentation for GNOME 3.
I don't think we are leveraging Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the cloud. Since we are primarily involved in trading, our infrastructure is predominantly on-premises, accounting for about 80%. We have our own data centers. While we do have some cloud workloads and our cloud presence is growing, it isn't a major focus in my role. I serve as the lead engineer for 700 developer workstations that run Linux. For parts that use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the cloud, we are split between different cloud providers, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
For the most part, we are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, which we support alongside Ceph and a bit of AAP. Apart from that, there is still a significant amount of CentOS 7 in use as people are gradually transitioning away from it.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is good. I would rate it a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is impressive. I would rate it a nine out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
The customer service and support were pretty good. We encountered an issue, and we involved some people for assistance. In retrospect, we should have engaged higher-level support sooner for that specific issue. Support can be challenging when you're dealing with Linux problems, especially in our environment where we have a lot of skilled engineers; it feels like we're already operating beyond the normal troubleshooting space. So having access to escalated help when we need it is valuable. The support fixed our problem.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was complex because we were using a newer version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the server team's workloads. Normally, we go with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for hardware, but this time we got a better deal from a different vendor whose IPMI Redfish interface wasn't as advanced as Red Hat Enterprise Linux's. This caused some issues specifically related to deploying the newer version. However, once we managed to overcome most of those challenges, the use of Ansible for OS deployment became more straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
For the OS component, we worked directly with Red Hat. However, we utilized a company called Bits, based in Elk Grove, Illinois, to handle the hardware provisioning and setup.
What was our ROI?
We've seen an ROI. For instance, we were able to run a storage workload on one cluster that had an immense capacity. I calculated it to be the equivalent of either 16,000 iPads or 64,000 iPads. It was a significant amount. This capability is beneficial for us as we deal with a lot of trading data. We can perform analytics and machine learning workloads on it, which aids in compliance and enables traders to make more informed trades. It's a win-win situation.
The compliance aspect ensures that we stay out of trouble, and the machine learning capabilities help traders make better trades, which ultimately contributes to our success. I'm glad that they make money. It's wonderful.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Red Hat is making efforts to simplify the SKU system, which is a positive development. It's beneficial to have the flexibility to allocate a certain budget to explore different licenses within the Red Hat ecosystem. We can try out products and decide if they meet our needs. If they don't, we can decommission the corresponding SKU. I have noticed that we have some Red Hat entitlements that we are not currently utilizing, so having granularity in the SKU structure would be an advantage.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
For our specific use cases, certain products like SAP, AAP, and OpenShift require Red Hat Enterprise Linux. That played a significant role in our decision.
What other advice do I have?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s built-in security features, in terms of simplifying risk reduction and maintaining compliance, are an area where I've observed some of the developments with Satellite and Red Hat Insights. But since we have different operating systems, such as Windows, Mac, Linux, and a mix of server and desktop environments, I'm not sure if Satellite or Insights can integrate seamlessly with all these platforms. Currently, we use a different product to assess our CVE vulnerabilities across hosts, including phones and other devices. I do find the discussions about software supply chain security intriguing. Focusing on that aspect seems really promising.
The portability of applications and containers, specifically for those already built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, seems pretty good. Red Hat offers UBI images that are freely available without the need for licensing. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and container platforms provide a solid setup for portability.
Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Gives us good performance and ensures availability across different infrastructures
What is our primary use case?
I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for deploying servers to install Oracle Databases.
How has it helped my organization?
The performance that we get is very satisfactory. Usually, when you compare the results against previous databases that were run, you realize, "Oh, this is really good." But the performance depends on the hardware you put it on. If you put it on a very powerful server, the performance will be better. If you put Linux on a server that is not powerful, the performance will not be there.
What is most valuable?
All of its features are valuable. It's very good when it comes to building with a sense of assurance and for ensuring availability across different infrastructures.
Because most databases run on Linux, that's what makes this solution so important. If you install a Unix system and want to use a database, you won't have trouble finding a database to run on it. But if you are using Windows, other than using a Microsoft database, you're likely going to have problems. For example, if you want to run Oracle Database on Windows, it could be problematic. Linux, on the other hand, is wide open. People use it for development and that's why we have chosen to use it.
Also, it's great to have IP tables for firewalls in open source. That's the way things are supposed to be going. When you create a file system they ask you if you would like to encrypt the data, and that's great for securing things.
What needs improvement?
If you download Oracle Linux, it is very easy. And when it comes to updating Oracle Linux, it does not require subscribing to the repo to do the update. When you install Oracle Linux, the repo directory contains all the files needed to run a DNS or VM update. Whereas with Red Hat, if you download the ISO and do the installation, once you finish, they force you to subscribe to their environment to do VM updates.
I understand that Red Hat would like statistics on how many people are implementing certain kinds of servers, so they force them to create an account. I agree that, when first downloading it, it makes sense that I have to provide my information. But when I want to update, it shouldn't be necessary.
Sometimes, I'm just doing a proof of concept and once I'm finished, the server is gone. In that situation, Oracle Linux doesn't ask me to subscribe for that server, because they don't need to know. The server may only be there for a second and, once I finish, I delete it. If Red Hat would remove that requirement, that would be great. If I want to download the OS, I understand that they need to know who I am, but they don't need to know that information when I'm building a server, unless it is a production server. If it's not a production server, they shouldn't force people to register.
Also, it can be difficult to find the RPMs I'm looking for. For example, if you want to recognize a Windows file system in Red Hat, you have to download a package outside of Red Hat. I searched on Google and found the RPM, but I struggled to find it. Once I put it in, everything worked fine. When Red Hat doesn't have something, and others develop it as open source, they should include that RPM in Red Hat's repo so it's not a struggle to find it.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Red Hat products for more than 20 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product is very good. Very mature.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We intend to increase our use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We are using it more for new stuff.
How are customer service and support?
I barely call Red Hat when I run into problems. I Google them and find out the solution and move forward. You can find fixes for most of the issues online.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I also use Oracle Linux which is the same as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Everywhere that I deploy Oracle Linux, if I deploy Red Hat it works fine.
How was the initial setup?
I was involved in the initial testing. We tested it until we could make it work fine and then we provided documentation for the people who would put it into production. But we only did the testing. We work on how it is deployed and document any problems we run into and how to fix them.
The ease or difficulty of the setup will depend on a number of things.
What other advice do I have?
The solution is self-explanatory. Most applications run on Red Hat Linux and related products.
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