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4-star reviews ( Show all reviews )

    reviewer2840478

Reliable platform has supported all our servers and improved security with faster patching

  • May 13, 2026
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include it being the operating system that runs all our servers that have applications running on them, and it is installed on our VMs as well.

What is most valuable?

I appreciate several features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), such as Red Hat Insights, which provides updates on vulnerabilities and CVEs. Red Hat subscription is easy to register for each operating system, the support is good, and Bootc is innovative with its new way to install the operating system with a container file.

To navigate our security risks, we use Red Hat Insights, as we have the complete Red Hat Insights portal where we register all our servers and operating systems installed on physical servers. It provides us with updates on security vulnerabilities found and automatic updates that help us maintain our servers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps us solve pain points by running our operating system that supports our SaaS application.

What needs improvement?

For the next release of the operating system, I would prefer a comprehensive suite package that combines the operating system and support rather than having to purchase individual packages for KVM, Satellite, and others.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for 10 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not experienced downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), thanks to the support available for debugging and crash logs, making it significantly better than Windows.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales exceptionally well with the growing needs of my company, and we use it on everything.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate the customer service and technical support an eight, as they act promptly and provide good feedback, though I have found them quick to detach from application-related issues without comprehensive engagement.

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

Before adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we were using CentOS until its upstream support ceased.

We switched because CentOS transitioned into a stream with limited support, prompting a necessary move to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

How was the initial setup?

I would describe the deployment experience of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

I have seen major version upgrades in the class related to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Ansible Automation Platform, and we regularly deploy Ansible playbooks through a GitLab pipeline using our own runners and Docker images for Ansible controllers. We regularly release upgrades, including going from RHEL 8 to 10 while we skipped 9, after having completed a significant upgrade from RHEL 7 to 8 a couple of years ago without using Ansible.

What was our ROI?

From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is its status as the industrial standard, which makes it very reliable and dependable.

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

I am not involved in the actual pricing; however, I know it has influenced our decision on not pursuing Ansible Tower as we did not find the pricing justified for a significant change.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have not evaluated switching to another Linux distribution. We have experimented with Ubuntu and Fedora, but we would not switch away from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as it remains the enterprise solution.

What other advice do I have?

I do not currently use Red Hat Satellite or LightSpeed, but I have used them in the past. Red Hat Satellite is similar to Splunk, enabling server management through the UI to automatically update, which we have not actually done because we have our own patch management cycle built in-house.

In our company's implementation of the Zero Trust model, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) plays a crucial role, as we register many things with it and depend on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to function properly for us to manage our operations.

We used to use AWX and considered implementing Ansible Tower; however, we decided against it probably due to the paid subscription costs and opted for a different deployment method.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped mitigate downtime and lower risk by allowing us to patch sooner and faster, which we base on the vulnerabilities found.

I would assess the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as good, as it provides substantial feedback when creating tickets and often allows for direct knowledge base access that avoids the need to open a ticket.

I rate this product an overall eight out of ten.


    Chris Crisafulli

Consistent support has enabled secure desktops, faster recovery, and streamlined patching

  • May 13, 2026
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include supporting engineering desktops, and when I was working in the healthcare industry, we also used it for picture archiving, such as when cardiologists would take chest x-rays. I have been supporting it in many different ways, including working on the program where we are doing Linux desktops for the developers who are writing code for some of the planes that we build.

What is most valuable?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points by always being consistently good, and the support is really there for us when we need it.

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that I value most include its ability to take innovations from upstream, bringing them down and making them stable.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) features including Satellite and the Ansible Automation Platform to navigate our security risks and deploy patching. We also use OpenSCAP in Satellite for security. Satellite helps us do provisioning to maintain a consistent build across the enterprise.

In my company's implementation of the zero trust model, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) plays a role by ensuring consistency among the groups that we use to control security on the devices.

Things built into the operating system, such as rescue mode, give me the opportunity to fix issues before we spend about two weeks deploying a new machine, since it requires certification before going on the network. If we can save a machine using rescue mode, we save ourselves that two-week hassle. Additionally, if we get locked out of a system, we use a specific remote execution user that allows us to unlock the system or provide any necessary fixes, based on best practices found within the Red Hat community.

What needs improvement?

From the perspective of versions 8 and 9, one area I think Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) could improve is being careful about ABI, particularly backward compatibility. Some improvements between versions seem to leave people scrambling; for example, the updating of crypto policies has forced some to run in an insecure manner to continue using their authentication systems. While I understand this is not Red Hat's problem, it is something they could consider improving.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for probably about 18 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Regarding the stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I have not experienced downtime, crashes, or performance issues, except I remember when they went from version 7.5 to 7.6, which broke the ABI; however, I think this issue stemmed more from Intel changing their chipset in the background than from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) itself.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales well.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate the customer service and technical support a nine or a ten because every time I have not been able to solve something, I usually call them, and we get to the root of the problem. They collaborate well with me, even when some problems are complex.

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

Prior to using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we were actually using a plethora of different Linux distributions, and some of them lacked someone to hold accountable for support, leading to more challenges, longer downtimes, and related issues.

How was the initial setup?

I describe the deployment process of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as straightforward.

What was our ROI?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)'s biggest return on investment, in my view, is when you get on the line with their tech support; when you submit an issue, the folks really know the product, so you get back up and running fast, which is worth its weight in gold.

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

In my experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I have been moved away from the pricing in this organization; at my old organization, we switched to a three-year plan instead of one year, and it improved significantly because we saved some money.

What other advice do I have?

We choose to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) not only because we believe it is the right choice but also because the federal government expects, especially for the projects I am involved with, that we use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in accordance with customer agreements.

I would advise other companies considering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to invest in the open source community, especially if they are paying a lot of money to other operating system vendors such as Microsoft. I believe that more workloads are running on Linux, and unlike Windows, which often runs one application per server, Linux allows multiple applications to run on one server, so they could save money in the long run by investing with Red Hat.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a strong eight or nine; while they are not perfect, they are better than most.


    Aswindev P.

Stable, Reliable, and Fast: Why We Trust Red Hat Linux

  • May 13, 2026
  • Review provided by G2

What do you like best about the product?
As an engineer, what I value most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux is its absolute predictability in mission-critical environments. Its 10-year lifecycle and strict ABI stability ensure that core infrastructure and proprietary applications won't unexpectedly break during routine patching. Furthermore, RHEL is engineered with security at the forefront, integrating mandatory access controls like SELinux and strict compliance profiles natively. Ultimately, when deep, low-level issues like a kernel panic occur, having Red Hat's enterprise vendor support provides an invaluable safety net, guaranteeing expert backing to keep production systems online and secure.
What do you dislike about the product?
What frustrates me most about RHEL is the administrative overhead of its subscription model and its inherently slow pace of adopting new software versions. Managing Red Hat Subscription Management (RHSM) in dynamic, heavily automated cloud environments with rapid auto-scaling often introduces unnecessary friction and deployment bloat. Additionally, while the conservative release cycle guarantees the stability we need, it frequently forces us to rely on workarounds like AppStreams when developers inevitably require newer runtimes or libraries than what the base OS provides. Finally, the strategic shift from stable CentOS to CentOS Stream disrupted our traditional one-to-one staging pipelines, forcing infrastructure teams to rethink how we accurately validate changes before promoting them to production RHEL clusters.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
RHEL is primarily solving the massive fragmentation and operational friction that occurs when balancing traditional mission-critical stability with the rapid deployment cycles required by modern AI and hybrid-cloud workloads. For an L3 engineer, the immediate benefit is a drastic reduction in configuration drift and pipeline maintenance. With the shift toward container-native OS deployments (like Image Mode or bootc), I can define a single, secure "gold image" and immutably deploy it across bare metal, vSphere, AWS, or edge environments without maintaining separate build processes. Furthermore, unified control planes like the Hybrid Cloud Console, combined with AI-assisted tooling like Red Hat Lightspeed, automate tedious tasks like drift analysis, CVE prioritization, and patching at scale. This ultimately pulls me out of reactive firefighting and manual server tweaking, allowing me to focus on high-level infrastructure architecture, complex automation, and ensuring our environment is hardened against emerging threats like post-quantum cryptography.


    Connor Stewart

Modern automation and security have boosted our trusted on‑premises infrastructure operations

  • May 13, 2026
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

As the DevOps engineer, my main use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) today is as our OS. All our runners run on that, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) UBI containers, which is what we deliver to our customers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) runs our infrastructure and is what we deliver to the customers as well.

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) all on-premises on Dell servers.

I have not tried doing AI workloads with any Red Hat AI product specifically, but we are running our AI model server with VLLM on Red Hat systems. We are using it on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but not with any Red Hat AI.

What is most valuable?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps us solve pain points by giving us security and trust. When we tell our customers we are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) images, it helps them trust us that we are using the security and we have all these controls. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) gives us trust and security.

I value the management features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) the most, such as Red Hat Satellite, which allows us to tell and monitor our whole fleet about the status of every system and keep it up to date. The management interfaces are really effective.

For navigating our security risks in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), it would probably be mostly Satellite. With Satellite, you can determine which of your systems are out of date. Containers might also show outdated packages. Satellite helps you find systems that have not been updated or systems with old packages.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps mitigate downtime and lower risks. Since Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has all these Ansible and Kickstart and Satellite features, we have a good process of redeploying systems. If something did go down or break, we have all the automation to be able to bring it back up, and we have all that as code. This has been helpful.

What needs improvement?

I am not certain how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved. We are still on Red Hat 8 mostly, and so I am not really certain about what features have already been released.

From a Red Hat 8 perspective, I think perhaps better container support for running them as services would be beneficial. Maybe Kubernetes support, such as something built-in for if you just want to use the system for running containers and keep them online as services would be valuable.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for the whole time, since 2021, which is approximately five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). We have had servers that are very stable for many years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has definitely scaled with the growing needs of my company. As we have grown as a company, we have expanded how many servers we have. It has been pretty smooth with Satellite managing it all. You can keep track of everything, so it has been good.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate customer service and technical support of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an eight. It is really helpful to be able to open up tickets and get a technical person that can walk you through getting the logs and getting the information. In an ideal ten out of ten, it would be instantaneous support or much faster response times, but we do have a good response time and good support.

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

I am not certain if my company was using another solution to address our needs prior to using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). There may have been some CentOS or Ubuntu used way back, but I am not certain.

What was our ROI?

I think we have seen a return on investment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) from a technical point of view. The investment comes from when we can deliver our software to customers and they can start immediately using it versus if we are delivering a different OS that someone might not be certain is secure. They trust in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and that we are using that. This allows us to keep delivering at a good pace and getting the software into our customers' hands.

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

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been really good. I am not at the level to buy it, but I think we have a company-wide Red Hat license. We can have as many Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) machines as we want, including all the packages and the containers. It has been positive and good.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have also looked at Ubuntu while using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Their management platform is Landscape, and it just does not seem as reliable for us. We have had much more issues with Ubuntu from deploying it and hardening it. It does not really seem to work the same for us as Red Hat.

The business value of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) compares favorably to the other Linux distributions we have evaluated, such as Ubuntu. Red Hat definitely has more value. We invest much more time in that because we have so many more Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems, and it has been a much smoother experience. If any project tries to come to us wanting Ubuntu, we try to steer them away and see if Red Hat will work first, because it seems to work better and is more comfortable.

What other advice do I have?

I have tried Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Image Builder, but only as testing. We are not using that in production, but I have used it and created a few images.

The testing with the Image Builder went really well. There were some limitations with what versions of Red Hat the Image Builder supported versus what we were currently using, so I could not really continue testing, but it worked for the walk-through I was following.

I do not know anything in particular in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that has helped me with my AI workloads overall yet. We are still just getting into the space, so I do not know if there is really anything about Red Hat specifically, because we are just running open source tools on Red Hat. However, it is still making us secure from a foundation with a secure OS.

We are not really doing a full zero-trust setup with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), not yet. Having all our devices, such as all our Red Hat devices registered in Satellite, helps you keep tracking them. This is moving towards it, having a management system for everything, but nothing really other than that.

We have not done a major version upgrade with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Ansible Automation Platform, such as moving from Red Hat 8 to Red Hat 9. Whenever we have done that, we just reloaded the system. We use Ansible Automation a lot, but never for a full upgrade.

My experience with the Ansible Automation Platform has been really good. We transitioned to it heavily. Before, we were just using each developer who were running the playbooks themselves. Now we can put them in the platform. The access is really good, so we can have students who can only run certain playbooks or not edit them, which is helpful. Full-timers can set up something that works and then the students can run it as they need. This has been really helpful for us for automating things.

From an OS level, when we are deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we can pick the DISA STIG profiles, and that gives us a good starting point for all our systems to be hardened a certain amount. Then we use the Ansible Automation Platform running Ansible playbooks that can finish the job and finish the rest of the STIG controls. This makes them compliant. We can also run Ansible playbooks that can verify all our systems are at that certain level. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) does a major part, and we use Red Hat for pretty much everything for our compliance.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is really good. Many times I am searching for questions and it will pop up as one of the first few results showing how to solve it. A few weeks ago it helped me solve an issue for a customer. The knowledge base has been really helpful.

The deployment process with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been pretty straightforward. We use the Kickstart process, and then Ansible to finish the deployment. My overall review rating for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is nine out of ten.


    Jayanth Reddy

Hybrid cloud platform has unified virtualization, networking, and secure AI workloads for clients

  • May 13, 2026
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include virtualization, day-to-day computing, general use cases, desktop use cases, and server use cases, treating RHEL primarily as a server system.

RHEL helps us solve tremendous pain points because we are a cloud service provider, and we do a lot of virtualization and networking. As a cloud provider, we basically rely on virtualization, networking, storage, and a lot of other things, so RHEL is a core platform for us that enables us to combine all these components together and provide a comprehensive solution.

Since we are a cloud service provider, we rely on RHEL's virtualization feature and sell these virtual machines to customers, making a significant profit from it.

RHEL supports our hybrid cloud strategy as we offer private and public clouds to customers and can burst into other public clouds. RHEL as an operating system provides in-built support that helps us burst into hybrid and other cloud ecosystems with our expertise.

What is most valuable?

The features I appreciate most in RHEL include virtualization, networking, and storage, and there is not a single feature that stands out for me because I appreciate pretty much everything RHEL offers.

RHEL acts as an enabler for running AI workloads, offering in-built security, particularly with features such as Podman that help secure the environment. With RHEL AI, there are many integrations, including Instacloud, providing significant security benefits.

RHEL plays a core role in our implementation of the Zero Trust model, operating many OpenStack clouds and utilizing systems for regulated industries such as financial services and government sectors. The good ecosystem of RHEL supports authentication, authorization, and zero trust, enhanced by features from OpenShift as well.

What needs improvement?

RHEL should cover more hardware, particularly since we face challenges with some hardware components, such as Intel VROC as a RAID controller, which RHEL has compatibility issues with. I acknowledge that it is difficult for RHEL engineers to cover all hardware, but collaboration with manufacturers such as Intel or Lenovo might alleviate some drawbacks.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since my university days, and it has been almost eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not experienced any downtime or performance issues with RHEL; it is a very stable operating system.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have been able to scale well with RHEL; we run a lot of distributed storage, and scaling up is just a matter of adding resources without limitations, as the platform supports scalability indefinitely.

How are customer service and support?

The customer service and technical support from Red Hat are perfect; they know what to do when we reach out, even when it is on behalf of customers.

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

We have also worked with SUSE and Ubuntu Pro, but our customers often prefer RHEL for general-purpose server workloads, while they go to SUSE for SAP workloads, indicating that RHEL has a strong customer preference for its compatibility and support.

How was the initial setup?

My experience deploying RHEL has been straightforward; the deployment methods are easy, utilizing PXE boot and cloud-init within our OpenStack environment, which makes maintenance and deployment very efficient.

What was our ROI?

From our perspective as a cloud service provider, the biggest return on investment with RHEL comes from the margins we make after selling licenses to customers. We operate clouds with RHEL as the core, and we see a good amount of margin through virtualization services provided to customers.

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

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing of RHEL work out for us as a cloud service provider, so we are satisfied with them.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We sell other products such as OpenShift that do similar work to RHEL.

What other advice do I have?

When it comes to navigating security risks with RHEL, we rely on SELinux as the main security feature, and we are also looking at Lightspeed, which provides a nice command line assistant. We also utilize PQC for core cryptography in RHEL as well as its TLS functionality, and container sandboxing is another major feature we leverage.

I tried the Image Builder in RHEL, and my experience with it was quite good. The image mode is beneficial because it allows us to create many portable images, which I find really good for our needs. I use the Image Builder in the cloud for internal purposes as well as for our customers.

I have used Satellite. Satellite helps manage and maintain my hybrid cloud environment, although not to a very good extent because we operate a single environment that we consider an on-premises or private cloud. Some customers use it to manage a fleet of systems across various instances, but for me, it is more focused on on-premises.

We have tried out RHEL AI, using Instacloud and other tools as well as OpenShift, which is outside of RHEL. We are not using the Ansible Automation Platform for major version upgrades, but we do use Leapp upgrades because the Leapp tool is necessary for our upgrades, although it requires manual oversight to ensure there are no compatibility issues.

We use both open-source Ansible and the Ansible Automation Platform, and it has been good for managing our fleet of servers as we run virtualization. The Ansible Automation Platform is particularly useful for managing many CVE patchings.

I believe RHEL effectively mitigates downtime, and I do not see any significant problems regarding this issue. The knowledge base offered by RHEL is pretty good; the documentation is top-notch and very helpful, and the support portal, including the AI features, is also excellent.

We have been able to scale well with RHEL; we run a lot of distributed storage, and scaling up is just a matter of adding resources without limitations, as the platform supports scalability indefinitely. Overall, I would rate RHEL as a top-notch, superior product, and it is a very stable operating system.

I would recommend RHEL to other companies, emphasizing that stability is key, especially for running enterprise-grade workloads or server workloads because everything is tested and reliable, which minimizes the risk of breaking things during upgrades. I would rate this review as 9 out of 10.


    Zgr Blm

Automation has transformed our deployments and has improved security and operational efficiency

  • May 13, 2026
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for applications. Our use case involves its very easy deployment and usability, along with substantial support from the community and open source resources. We are looking forward to using much more OpenShift applications and Red Hat Open as well. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points related to scalability, enabling us to deploy several servers in one.

What is most valuable?

The AI and automation features such as Ansible and Ansible Tower stand out to me. We build streams in our automation features, using playbooks in Ansible for patching the application servers in a timely manner. We are also using automations for fault detections and fixing configurations, as well as building pipelines to deploy new features such as Windows 2019.

The open source environment has positively impacted our organization due to the package feature with the satellite, allowing us to download open source codes, which has been very flexible, resulting in enormous savings. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has mitigated downtimes and lowered risks in our organization, especially with the latest features.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see smoother integration with the AI components that would use other Red Hat products such as OpenShift and Ansible in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I think the support should be more concerned about the new standards of technology. Customer support could be a little bit better, but it is definitely very good overall.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working for 26 years in the application management team.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is definitely stable, and we are very happy about it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)'s scalability is very well configured and very straightforward.

How are customer service and support?

Although my team is not responsible for patching and maintaining Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems, I hear from my colleagues that they are very satisfied with the features, stating that it is easy to maintain the Linux environment and flexible. I have a Red Hat account and look on the internet for knowledge bases.

Since I am not responsible for managing the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) hardware in our environment, I cannot give a detailed explanation of how I access the knowledge base. However, I research on the internet and with my account, I try to go into labs and find the appropriate knowledge base.

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

We used a different solution primarily for automation, which was the main reason for our switch.

What was our ROI?

We have saved costs, but I cannot provide specific metrics at this time.

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

Since we are a big bank, the pricing, setup cost, and licensing were through an end-user master agreement, which made us really happy because it was beneficial for both sides.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We had some options, but we were very enthusiastic about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), so we chose it.

What other advice do I have?

We navigate our security risks using features such as identity management, which we fall in love with more every day because it is really key to organizing security. The most important security feature for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that stands out to me includes the accessible accounts groups.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is part of an open-source community, so I advise others to develop their own solutions within the environment and community while still being supported and free of enhancements. I would rate this product a 9 out of 10.


    Suresh Babu Thatikonda

Security and patching have protected financial workloads and support simple, compliant operations

  • May 13, 2026
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

My main use cases revolve around managing my application, so I want to ensure there is an operating system on which I can keep it. Linux is one of the best options where I can keep my application, either containerized or running as a JBoss application or whatever else is needed. Therefore, I started with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 and have progressed to RHEL 7, RHEL 8, and RHEL 9 as of today. One of my main use cases is to ensure I run my application on an operating system, and RHEL provides the best security patches and quick fixes, and it supports a lot.

What is most valuable?

RHEL helps solve my pain points by providing patching. Security is one of the big pain points for me, especially as I work for a financial company, making it important that security is a critical thing, and RHEL solves that.

The features of RHEL that I appreciate the most include its various packages, which allow me to ensure that I can customize whatever I need and keep it in the operating system. I can discard the rest of the things that are not needed. It provides various ways, and whatever the package manager it provides and the connection to Satellite, it is a seamless process. I do not need to spend much time on that.

What needs improvement?

I think RHEL could improve by considering backward compatibility when making changes from version to version. For example, we were using OpenLDAP in RHEL 7, but when we went to RHEL 8, it was not available. I had to bring in some new systems because OpenLDAP is not a feature in RHEL 8, requiring a lot of re-engineering because of whatever new tools arise that are not backward compatible.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have experienced some downtime, performance issues, or crashes with RHEL, but these are not critical impacts. Our system is designed to minimize issues. We have seen out-of-memory errors, which we monitor through kernel logs such as dmesg. We were able to tune the system effectively. Issues arise, but they are solvable. It depends on the requirements, such as what application is running on it. Fine-tuning the operating system is essential to maintain reliability, especially for containerized applications. The base image requires fine-tuning, and similarly, RHEL does.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

RHEL scales well with the growing needs of my company. We used to have three hundred virtual machines, and now we have over seven thousand five hundred virtual machines in our environment across RHEL 8, RHEL 9, and RHEL 7.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate customer service and technical support eight out of ten. It depends on the issue I raise. Good support is provided for Sev 1 issues, but for those of lesser severity, the response decreases. This rating also relates to the type of subscription I believe we have; with a premium subscription, we tend to receive a good response.

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

I do not remember using another solution prior to RHEL at my company. It has been a long time, and I do not think we were using anything else before.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment process of RHEL is pretty straightforward. We have multiple strategies, including SaltStack, and we used to have Puppet; now, we utilize Ansible. We have control and manage the deployment, or we go to VMware, create the machine, and install the operating system. Everything is automated, and we have transitioned from SaltStack to Ansible, making it straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

I have not done a major version upgrade with RHEL and Ansible Automation Platform, but my team has. Recently, we migrated from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 using Ansible.

That experience was pretty straightforward. We tested it end-to-end, and then we just migrated.

What was our ROI?

From my perspective, the biggest return on investment when using RHEL is security. As a financial company, I cannot opt for an open-source operating system. I invest effort and money in RHEL 8, expecting the system to be secure and reliable when serving my clients. RHEL is definitely helpful in that regard.

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

I do not deal much with the pricing, setup costs, or licensing of RHEL. Most recently, I was involved in those conversations, and it seemed pretty reasonable. I do not think it is a significant issue for us.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have not evaluated other solutions while using RHEL. We recently migrated to OpenShift. If the application is containerized, we are moving to OpenShift, so it is not that we are actually looking for any RHEL alternatives.

What other advice do I have?

My thoughts on Red Hat Satellite are that it provides an easy way to pull the patches, and it has all the versions, allowing me to create the repo and just pull from Satellite to get the packages I need.

We use Amazon Web Services as our cloud provider.

I do use Red Hat Satellite.

RHEL helps solve my pain points by providing patching. Security is one of the big pain points for me, especially as I work for a financial company, making it important that security is a critical thing, and RHEL solves that.

To navigate my security risks, I use a security tool such as Wiz running on the system, which identifies if there are any CVEs associated with the systems. Whatever the CVE it had, I can get the latest. We always go back to the CVE report and see if Red Hat provided that patch or not. If it is there, we just do monthly patching.

I am not certain what role RHEL plays in my company's implementation of the zero trust model.

My company's process for managing regulatory compliance involves tying up with different companies for auditing. They ask for screenshots, versions, patching details, version numbers, and a lot of details. We take all the screenshots, document them, and send them. RHEL plays a key role in this process; without an operating system, it would not make sense to provide the audit team any compliance information.

Whether RHEL helps mitigate downtime and lower risk depends on how I configure it. I make sure I have high availability. I have high availability running on my systems and migrate the traffic as needed, especially to keep my application up and running and reliable. Keeping high availability is essential, and RHEL supports me with the versions or at least the keepalived or whatever packages it provides; we use them.

I am not completely certain which RHEL capabilities helped to mitigate downtime and lower risk at my company. An example would help me correlate. Satellite provides patches, and it helps with downtime. My system depends on Satellite. Ultimately, my packages depend upon Satellite, and it does assist us with high availability and downtime.

The knowledge base offered by RHEL is straightforward. It has been there for a while, and every version we go through its documentation, especially while doing upgrades. The support team is always there and helpful if needed. I can raise a Red Hat case if required, just a Sev 4 or Sev 5 ticket. I might get a response in a day or two, depending on the severity or the bug's nature. While documentation helps mostly, we reach out for additional support as necessary.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) nine out of ten overall. My advice to other companies considering RHEL is to definitely look at the support that Red Hat provides, especially regarding security patching, version upgrades, and how Red Hat listens to our needs. When I have an issue, I expect that while they cannot resolve it the same day, they will address it in the months to come. I always have faith that I will receive assistance; it just takes time. My suggestion to other customers is to trust Red Hat; they always listen to their users and take care of issues.


    Lee Meinecke

Security-focused platform has supported long-term uptime and strict compliance for critical services

  • May 13, 2026
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are primarily for IT services, as well as supporting Army programs. We use the OpenSCAP project in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) because we have a lot of security compliance requirements that we must address with STIG compliance.

How has it helped my organization?

Increased security posture through running minimal base images for critical services. Scalability through automated OS deployments.

What is most valuable?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps us solve the challenges that you potentially have with the Windows operating system being a much larger attack surface with services running which often are not needed. RHEL is a security-focused operating system.

I appreciate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)'s feature of supporting minimal installs because for a lot of our use cases, we do not need a full operating system with office productivity tools, which makes it much easier to provide just the minimal installation.

The compliance tools in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) help our company because they are a mandated requirement, allowing us to use those tools to remediate the system and provide quantifiable percentages and scores to show that we are compliant.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) plays a huge role in my organizations implementation of the zero-trust model, as we always end up with requirements that force us to use Windows. Traditionally, we use Active Directory for identity management, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been a staple for all of our server infrastructure. For anything that needs to have a long uptime or anything that provides a service, we always gravitate to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as opposed to Windows, which is primarily for office productivity-type purposes.

My organization's process for managing regulatory compliance involves working with the cyber team to provide a checklist and show that we are compliant with all the controls or at least document why we are not or tailor them out. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped us with that because out of the box, it is in pretty good shape, so there is only minimal work we have to do on top of it.

What needs improvement?

The biggest struggle we have with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the cost and the fact that a lot of our user base wants to gravitate to the free upstream offerings. I believe more competitive pricing would be my primary feedback.

My insights on the pricing model for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) go back to the annual recurring cost. At the end of the day, anything Red Hat can do to lower that to make it more competitive would help push people to a more stable enterprise product and not be so tempted to use the upstream free alternatives.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since RHEL 5 or around 15yrs.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped us with the mitigation of downtime and lowering risks because it is a stable operating system, and we are able to keep the uptime on our servers, with everything working great. We could not be happier with it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is very scalable. We have systems where we have 2,000 users logging into it, and we have environments that are both online and on closed, restricted networks, so it is a very easy-to-scale product with everything where it needs to be.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate the customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as a nine. Everything is solid there, and I am happy with it. There is always room for improvement.

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

Every company starts off with Windows, and that is where we were at. There was a lot of use of CentOS for a while, but I definitely got involved with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pretty much early in my career and have been with it through the evolution of the product.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment process of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is straightforward. We are able to do it at scale, having used Kickstarts for doing bare-metal installs and virtual machines, and now with containers using Ansible to roll things out. The automation built-in makes it very easy.

What about the implementation team?

We have used Ansible extensively and use it a lot. We also use the Automation Platform in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which is part of our build pipelines and what IT does for patching.

What was our ROI?

From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is definitely the relationship that we have with our account management team. I would say that is something we do not have with a lot of other vendors, so that is probably one of the big advantages we get with this product versus others.

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

My insights on the pricing model for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) go back to the annual recurring cost. At the end of the day, anything Red Hat can do to lower that to make it more competitive would help push people to a more stable enterprise product and not be so tempted to use the upstream free alternatives.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Ubuntu is still used a lot but I've found their distributions while more upstream, boated, and move likely to be impacted by CVE.

What other advice do I have?

We have not used any AI workloads with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). We are just beginning in the world of AI, and I saw the keynotes that looked promising. We have provided some OpenAI chatbot-type solutions, so I need to look at pricing for that and see how we can potentially shift some of the things that we have done on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to more of an enterprise offering such as Red Hat AI.

My thoughts on the efficiency of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are that it is a great product. We could not live without it, and I do not see it going away anytime soon, so I believe it is a staple of the offerings.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is solid, and it is what we always go to first before we open tickets. Red Hat is doing a great job of keeping that up to date and current, making it definitely a good resource.

I would rate this review a nine overall.


    NaveenKumar40

Secure infrastructure has supported hybrid deployments and simplified low-code app delivery

  • May 12, 2026
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to install our Linux versions. We are using a product called Appian, which is a low-code/no-code platform BPN. On top of that, we will be installing our products in Citibank, which means at the client location. We will run that installation and everything in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and we will be bringing that instance where end users develop their use cases on that. Apart from that, we have four to five products called Boardwalk and Apptio which are running on the on-premises Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)-based versions.

Before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I previously worked with Kubernetes, but for the past four years, I have been working on OpenShift administration and as an application developer.

Red Hat OpenShift has the best GUI for a friendly user experience, and regarding security, it is number one compared to open-source tools like orchestrating Kubernetes. Red Hat OpenShift also provides excellent customer support where responses come immediately when we get stuck with anything. Security constraints are an added feature because they restrict non-root users for all applications, making it immutable and not overwritable by any malfunctions, which represents the best practices in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

I am currently working with the Red Hat Insights feature, which is a customized one for us in the banking sector. Although I may not have all the features, the best things we have for enabling security come into the picture, including RBAC, security services, and firewalls.

System Roles are organization-dependent and will change from organization to organization, not only in Red Hat. Those are the default system roles, but the organization can create roles on top of that. If they have an enterprise license, they may ask to create some system roles which are defined for the organization with privileged access.

In my hybrid cloud strategy for my clients, they will select any data center and install the bare metal racks there. On top of the racks, they will install the physical servers, which involve CPU utilization, and they will apply the security policies to the cluster, making it the best for deploying resources.

I feel there are no pain points that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve, and I do not have any complaints.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) saves time because it provides the best GUI, making it easier to perform changes without relying solely on CLI.

What is most valuable?

From my perspective, the best features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include security patches which are the best, and the OS is very good compared to Ubuntu or other alternatives. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offers UBI images or UBI versions that are very eco-friendly for use by the end users of those Linux machines that are deploying their services or applications, making it user-friendly for them. Whenever we get stuck, the support from Red Hat is very responsive, and we receive the best support from them.

I decided to switch to Red Hat because our products have the capability and we need to have the flavor based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). With Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), the security and compliance are the best part, and building applications on that platform will give security constraints. The dependency can be installed, and whatever packages we get from Red Hat are the best things to have compared to Ubuntu.

I have worked in both hybrid and purely on-premises environments, specifically on-premises bare metal.

The business value of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) compared to other Linux distributions I have used is that a separate team is always engaged with our organization. Whenever we face issues, there will be a ServiceNow or an INC raised, and they respond immediately along with dedicated people available for support.

What needs improvement?

I would prefer better handling as sometimes the PVCs may get stuck, and there are numerous things like release notes that may affect some applications depending on the binaries, which they can manage and improve.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not seen any performance issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Performance issues may arise if any node goes down or a cluster drain occurs. When a new release happens, every organization receives notification via email that applications should be built per Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) guidelines to avoid any performance issues, which depend on how the applications are built on the platform.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I find Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scalable, and there are no limitations because scalability depends on the replica set, allowing flexibility from 100 to 10 or whatever you need.

How are customer service and support?

I would assess the knowledge base offered by Red Hat as four out of five because whatever issues we encounter, we immediately go to that customer portal and get those things and raise a ticket for them.

I rate the tech support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as nine out of ten.

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

I previously worked with Ubuntu, but currently we are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) flavors only.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is straightforward, and there are no significant complexities in the deployment process. Red Hat provides the necessary binaries or TAR files, allowing you to bring it into your Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system and run it with command line access directly from the local machine to the OpenShift cluster, demonstrating how user-friendly it is.

What other advice do I have?

The ability to mitigate downtime and lower risks depends on how I build my applications. If you create them on a good platform, they generally behave well. If a new release occurs, only then would it cause disturbances, but that usually does not happen.

For user benefit, end users do not know what platform it is sitting on. They experience the best latency with low latency, allowing them to utilize the products and resources running, making everything compatible, which is the best for them. Therefore, this is essential to design at an architectural level.

I have not faced any missing features, so I cannot comment on those.

I can provide advice if they need to migrate from on-premise to OpenShift based on my experience in working as an architect in that area.

I will recommend Red Hat because in OpenShift clusters, it is user-friendly with a GUI that offers excellent visualization alongside Kubernetes. There is no need to create additional dashboards. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a best security product managed globally by the Red Hat team, and all binaries are available for download. The support portal allows for quick issue resolution, with responses available in a fraction of hours depending on the ticket's urgency.

My overall review rating for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is nine out of ten.


    reviewer2839218

Standardized critical workloads and have relied on a trusted ecosystem for secure operations

  • May 12, 2026
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include everything from apps to web servers to HPC.

What is most valuable?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points primarily because the ecosystem has already been approved for use with our customers. That's probably the main thing. It's a single, trusted source to get everything from. That's really our main thing.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped to mitigate downtime and lower risk using Satellite because I rarely have any outages on my RHEL boxes. They're pretty solid.

Satellite helps reduce and mitigate risk through the quality of the packages that get put out and the dependencies that are already validated.

What needs improvement?

I've never really thought about how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) could be improved, but the only thing I wish they had that I've asked Red Hat for so far is something resembling managed service accounts. Since we have to integrate with a lot of Active Directory, that would be beneficial.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) since RHEL 4.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would assess the stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as excellent because I've not had anything serious that couldn't be figured out.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Regarding scalability, I've never had a problem there. We run HPC on it, and it's pretty rock solid.

How are customer service and support?

I don't really have an answer for the customer service and the technical support of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) because we have to handle most things in-house.

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

Before adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), my company was using a lot of Solaris, other flavors of Unix, and other options, but I think we've pretty much standardized on RHEL.

How was the initial setup?

I think the deployment process for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is straightforward.

If you're doing a network install, it's easy. It's easier than the Windows side.

What about the implementation team?

I'm brand new to Ansible Automation Platform. We're just rolling it out.

What was our ROI?

From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the fact that it's well-curated and it's a one-stop shop for most everything you need.

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

My experience with the pricing, the setup cost, and the licensing of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been pretty good. I have no complaints.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Though there have been talks of going to other distros while using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), that's a big ask to switch everybody over.

What other advice do I have?

The features I prefer most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) relate to my broader appreciation for Linux given all the history behind it and open source for all that it represents.

For navigating security risks, I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Satellite for patch management and deployment. We don't use Insights. That's probably the main one we use.

Regarding the role Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) plays in my company's implementation of the zero-trust model, it's pretty new to us, so I can't really answer that yet. We're still in the learning process.

In terms of managing regulatory compliance, we do use Nessus and other tools for auditing in our applications. That's probably about it.

You can usually find a good answer on the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

I've always been happy with Red Hat ecosystem, using it since before RHEL, and I just appreciate the flavor of it. I've tried other Linux distros and I just keep coming back because I'm so familiar with it. It's so helpful, and it's hard to beat. I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a nine out of ten.