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4-star reviews ( Show all reviews )

    Benjamin Frederick

Consistently reliable platform mitigates downtime and lowers risks

  • May 21, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are mostly as our platform, control plane, and for VMs.

How has it helped my organization?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped me mitigate downtime and lower risks. Anyone coming from security will tell you that more patches in a timely manner will save you a lot of time.

What is most valuable?

What I appreciate the most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the DNF feature. DNF benefits our company since it's my personal preference; that package manager makes sense to me. I've also used it longer than other ones, which contributes to my familiarity.

Package managers in general are a core component of our operations, keeping our platform clean and running smoothly, and it's essential.

Insights is nice since I get information on my background and security matters, and it's been helpful to have it there as well.

What needs improvement?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved regarding security-side integrations that can be tightened with the releasing of images compliant with CIS controls or DISA STIGs, so they're built in and not an extra step.

To make Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a ten out of ten, the best Linux OS solution in the market, the only immediate change that comes to mind is security-related; releasing images available at different security levels would be helpful. If something is locked down to DISA STIG Level two or whatever environment, having that as a baked image to pull down and deploy would save a lot of time for many companies since building that pipeline is difficult and time-consuming.

There's also a limited number of those they'll have to deal with for Red Hat, so it's a lot of work. If they're doing those images for each level for STIG and then CIS, there will be a finite number to go through, and if anyone else needs to tailor them beyond that, then that's on them. It should be pretty small changes; it's kind of locked in.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for seven months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

My thoughts on the stability and reliability of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) platform are that it has been excellent. When I consider reliability problems we have had and how much relates to RHEL, most of the issues aren't Red Hat-related; something else fails, and the Red Hat side has been consistently reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales with the growing needs of my company very effectively. My specific team is not on a huge scale right now, however, it's growing quickly, and we haven't had any issues with RHEL so far.

How are customer service and support?

My experience with customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) so far has been really good. I haven't encountered just a create-ticket-get-a-response type of interaction yet since we still have a consultancy going on for different pieces identity management and AAP. That remains to be seen in terms of what it will be when we don't have somebody readily available. So far, the response times and helpful responses have been good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I've used other solutions. The main difference between Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and the other Linux solutions we use is a level of comfort. I sleep better knowing I have official support and can call someone, or there's probably a consultant or somebody on Red Hat's side ready to help me figure things out. If I'm running a Debian system, I'm really relying on the community, which can take time, and if I'm running something at work on that, then that can hurt.

Regarding usability, I've gravitated towards RPM-based Linux systems in general as I find them more intuitive.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment is super straightforward. We do some environmental stuff, and that gets a little bit trickier based on the core running on top of it. 

What about the implementation team?


What was our ROI?

From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the number of things tied together in a somewhat neat package. There's something to be said for setting up Satellite or the other pieces of the infrastructure, AAP, or whatever it is I'm going to be using, however, all the tie-ins are there, and once I've done some initial footwork, having those things work in tandem and reliably with support on hand when they don't is really helpful.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We consider different solutions while using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Actually, we use a few different Linux OS solutions. There's some Canonical in our environment through VMs, and there are tools particularly suited for deploying on bare metal that we use. So, we have a bit of a mixed environment within Linux.

What other advice do I have?

My upgrade or migration plans to stay current depend on where it's at or the platform team; our stuff is going to be separate, and I'm unsure exactly what the cadence is for release and into the patching cycle. That'll be a pretty quick turnaround. We have situations where it needs to stay on older systems since the team using it needs that to prove out or test whatever they're working on. 

On a scale from one to ten, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises


    MichaelJones3

Reliable performance reduces troubleshooting time, allowing focus on new projects

  • May 20, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

Our main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are to host Java enterprise applications and middleware.

What is most valuable?

The feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that it is solid and reliable. This solid and reliable performance helps our company as it makes it less problematic to troubleshoot issues; things just run and I don't have to be involved every day. If it runs smoothly, then we move onto other projects, but if it's wavy and bumpy, we have to pause and address the issues.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a great product, and we don't have any major pain points.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) definitely helps to mitigate downtime; we reboot our servers twice a year and do our patches, and that helps reduce our risk of exposure to malware, worms, viruses, but also increases our uptime. My upgrade plans for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to stay current include going to the website for RHEL 10; it has a lot of new features. I'll have to work with the server team to see if they're ready for it since it's a big jump.

What needs improvement?

I'm not really sure what I would like to see more of from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is an area they could improve.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) at my company since 2007.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) have been great; we never have to reboot unless it's scheduled.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales very efficiently. We're able to add CPUs as needed and add memory, and we're really happy with our Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

How are customer service and support?

Customer service and technical support needs work. 

We submit an issue to them and go back and forth for three or four days just defining the issue so they understand the problem. That's frustrating when it could be solved in a 20-minute phone call; they just don't do that, it's just back-and-forth emails. 

I would rate the customer service and technical support a six out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

I don't really have much to compare to, as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the only Linux that we've used.

How was the initial setup?

I'm not too involved in deploying it. We just mainly use it.

I have been involved in the upgrade of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as we upgraded from 8 to 9 a couple years ago.

What was our ROI?

For me, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is having something that is widely supported; it's not a one-off that you have to hope there's support for. There's definitely support for it, and the Red Hat people are always good to deal with.

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

Another department takes care of the pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I'm not aware of the licensing costs, but they seem to set our new systems up pretty quickly, so I'm overall happy with that.

What other advice do I have?

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution a nine.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

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

Other


    Abhay Agrawal

Security and reliability boost confidence and support growth strategies

  • May 20, 2025
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are mainly all of our business applications, as they all run on RHEL.

What is most valuable?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points related to reliability, stability, and security, mainly. 

Feature-wise, what I appreciate the most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is security; it's much more secure, and I don't have to patch it that much. For us, security is a very key aspect of our operations, especially since we are even more security-conscious due to what happened with us in the past, so having Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in our environment makes us much more confident. When we deploy new applications, it's RHEL by default; we don't even consider another operating system right now since it keeps our environment secure and our business stable.

Security requirements are always a consideration in choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for the cloud since it is much more secure than other operating systems and has a proven track record of being compliant and secure for many years.

When it comes to managing my Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems for provisioning and patching, it's about 50% manual and 50% automated, and we are currently starting a project with Ansible to fully automate it end-to-end. Right now, it's all semi-automated, and we want to make it fully automated.

For us, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) supports our hybrid cloud strategy mainly through seamless migrations from on-premise to cloud, which has been really helpful. Frankly, we don't use the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that much; our team prefers to get help from Red Hat support directly.

What needs improvement?

One of the suggestions I have for improving Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is finding better solutions around domain authentication, as we are facing several issues with our current methods.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for 20 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been excellent for us; aside from a couple of upgrade challenges, we generally don't face any issues during a normal business day.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales with my company's growing needs, as we are increasing our footprint in both on-premise and cloud, with all new deployments on Linux without any scaling issues.

How are customer service and support?

In terms of customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), it has been good in general, although we have recently faced some challenges around domain authentication where support is lacking. 

At this point, I would rate customer service and technical support a solid eight out of ten due to recent issues; I would have given a nine otherwise.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

We deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) both in the cloud and on-premise.

The deployment has been great. I've never had any issues either patching or upgrading it. We are right now on Red Hat 9. I saw that Red Hat 10 has been announced. Our team has been able to manage the entire life cycle from starting at Red Hat 4 until now. It has not been a problem at all.

I am involved in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) upgrades all the time; we are currently in the process of upgrading from Red Hat 8 to 9 for all of our environments. Upgrading Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has its challenges; we had a couple of hiccups in a couple of cases. Overall, about 95% of the use cases have been issue-free, with just 5% of cases occasionally encountering problems.

What was our ROI?

The biggest return on investment for me when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) comes from security, as we experience fewer incidents, more stability, and less business impact, without outages resulting in revenue loss.

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

My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been good; the licensing isn't very expensive compared to other products we're using.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

While using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we still consider other solutions as we do have other operating systems, however, for business-critical applications, we usually prioritize RHEL.

What other advice do I have?

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a nine.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud


    reviewer2707398

Provides seamless support and strengthens security for virtual machine deployment

  • May 20, 2025
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

My main use case for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is running virtual machines. That's probably the most important use case for us.

How has it helped my organization?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps us solve pain points related to security. We want security, so it is hardened, and just supports us. As a financial institution we take security very seriously.

What is most valuable?

The feature I appreciate the most from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is support and simplicity. 

The knowledge base is good; they have a lot of documentation. 

We manage our Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems when it comes to provisioning and patching through Ansible. Everything's straightforward and efficient.

What needs improvement?

Adding more relevant features to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) would be great. I have seen some issues on GitHub where people are suggesting things, such as Ansible. There are many community issues that could be implemented into Red Hat.

For how long have I used the solution?

We try to stay two versions below the latest one just to make sure that we have security checked there and to avoid running into any bugs or issues with the latest release. We just try to apply patches as much as we can.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are smooth as we have not encountered any problems or issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales perfectly with the growing needs of my company. It's easy to scale up with the tools we have.

How are customer service and support?

My experience with the customer service and technical support of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been amazing; they are very helpful. We open up a ticket, and we get someone to help right away.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The deployment is a smooth process. Some of the issues we have are just related to multiple vulnerabilities, and that's on our side to fix, however, everything else is smooth. We have no complaints.

What was our ROI?

The biggest return on investment for me when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is how they have their foundation set. They have everything organized, documentation's there, it's globally used everywhere, and it's good software with good tools.

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

I'm not in the pricing conversation. I can't speak to costs.

What other advice do I have?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped me mitigate downtime and lower risks. They specifically thrive on criticism, and they don't take it lightly. They mentioned earlier in the panel that they wanted to prioritize the big CVs and any vulnerability that's important. Although some don't get exploited, it's good to have fewer of those numbers. 

We try to stay two versions below the latest one.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) overall an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud


    Sheldon Kroner

Seamless deployments and responsive support enhance operational efficiency

  • May 20, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

Our use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) involve a lot of infrastructure; we run Ansible on it, and we run any other containerized utilities we're using on Podman. We run OpenShift as well, so I don't think we have any RHEL workloads on there, but we definitely use RHEL for a lot of our internal infrastructure.

What is most valuable?

The Podman feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is very valuable; that's probably the core of it—just a simple containerized solution that allows us to stand it up in a server really quickly. This feature and other features benefit our company since we are able to quickly deploy containers to support our infrastructure with minimal management needs from our engineering team. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps us solve pain points such as automation, as well as supporting other file servers using NFS and other kinds of development workloads we're running on it.

My experience with RHEL has not been too complicated; most of our stuff is on RHEL 9 now. A lot of times, our security team comes to us for some of the patching and upgrades, so we're following their lead, however, it hasn't been too difficult for us. We manage our Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems for provisioning and patching using Ansible and Terraform a lot, so we've been happy with that management experience.

My assessment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)'s built-in security features is that using SC Linux is helpful for us to lock things down, and our security team is pretty happy with it whenever they're doing their vulnerability scans. From a security standpoint, we're happy with it.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped to mitigate downtime and lower risk. If there ever is a problem, it's quick to stand up a replacement system.

It's pretty lightweight, so I'd much rather deal with a RHEL system any day versus a Windows system. If you compare it to a Windows system, which has a much bigger attack surface, there's a big reduction there.

When it comes to our security team having to scan for vulnerabilities and such, there is a lot less vulnerability scanning that needs to be done, so it's been a better fit for us for our infrastructure.

What needs improvement?

I am interested to see how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved. It can be improved overall. Specifically, I'm interested in seeing some of the image incorporation with RHEL 10, as that might improve some of our upgrades and help in moving to the newer versions. I'm eager to learn more about that.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in my company for ten-plus years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It has been very reliable and stable; I have not had any major crashes or outages with RHEL.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales very well with the growing needs of our company, as we can spin up instances quickly whenever we add new environments or data centers.

How are customer service and support?

I have been pretty pleased with the customer service and technical support; it's infrequent that we have to engage support, but when we do, they've been responsive and we've gotten some answers, so we've been happy. I would rate the customer service and technical support as eight out of 10.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We have considered other solutions before or while using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). We've considered other Linux distros in the past, however, the ability to have a fully supported platform allows us to reach out to support from Red Hat if needed, which is the reason why we've stuck with Red Hat versus others.

How was the initial setup?

In terms of deployment, it's been good standing it up and then maintaining it with patching through Satellite. Upgrades have been not time-impacted. They're pretty quick to get patching done. Everything is pretty easy. Migrations aren't too complicated. 

What was our ROI?

The biggest return on investment for me when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is certainly the ease of use for the engineering team; they can get things done without taking a lot of their time.

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

My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) platform has been pleasing; it's pretty straightforward and we haven't had any major concerns with costs on it compared to others, so we've been happy.

What other advice do I have?

Currently, we don't have any upgrade or migration plans to stay current with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as far as moving to RHEL 10; that's going to be coming, I'm sure. Most of it involves keeping on the latest versions, and sometimes it's just a driver for keeping Podman up to date whenever Ansible needs to run, as Ansible is core for us.

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an eight out of ten overall. 

What could make it a ten comes down to us being able to have time to dig into some of the features we're not using, so it's probably just on us to get wowed by some of the stuff we're not doing today. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

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

Other


    Matias Calleja

Innovative support and extensive knowledge improve service and minimize downtime

  • May 20, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) include working with applications such as Middleware and databases to provide services to different technologies, including Middleware, databases, and applications such as SAP, while managing these in my company.

How has it helped my organization?

The innovation benefits my company by providing good support through Insights, which offers comprehensive vulnerability scanning.

What is most valuable?

What I appreciate the most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the innovation; it constantly drives the need to go faster. 

The TAM support is excellent with weekly meetings where the representative has extensive knowledge, allowing us to resolve all questions. 

The software consistently releases new versions with features and ensures stability compared to other systems, such as Ubuntu.

We have reduced downtime issues from patching by 30% over the past year, thanks to our TAM who provided a testing site where we can check patching in our test environment first, allowing us to find any issues before they reach production and thereby minimizing impact.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points due to their good support team, which usually has quick access to information, resulting in minimal downtime when problems arise. You only need to call, and they can provide a solution, often found in the Knowledge Base on the internet and web page.

What needs improvement?

I am not sure how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for 20 years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales effectively with the growing needs of my company due to our global contract, which allows for more VMs than we initially anticipated, ensuring we receive the necessary licenses.

How are customer service and support?

My experience with Red Hat's technical support and customer service is positive; they have good support, always trying to find solutions and understanding my requirements, which is important for me.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

In the past, we considered other Linux OS solutions, specifically demoing with Canonical, however, it was not suitable for us.

How was the initial setup?

I find the deployment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) easy. We automate everything in one pipeline, so you only need to execute that pipeline and in a few minutes, you have your new server.

What was our ROI?

From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the meantime to repair issues; with good support, our downtime is practically nothing, which is a significant return for us.

What other advice do I have?

The innovation benefits my company by providing good support through Insights, which offers a good scan of vulnerabilities, and the TAM support is excellent with weekly meetings where the representative has extensive knowledge, allowing us to resolve all questions. 

I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) eight out of ten.

To achieve a perfect score, we need more focus on version management.

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?

Other


    reviewer2706813

Seamless integration with Ansible and less overhead than others

  • May 19, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

My main use cases are related to Ansible, mostly involving software automation, software installation automation, and data collection.

How has it helped my organization?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has less overhead compared to other operating systems for my company. The command line interface is much easier to use—there's not as much navigating around screens. The command line interface is much easier to instruct and manage in that sense.

What is most valuable?

There's less overhead than using Microsoft products in general, as is the case with the Linux operating systems. I enjoy the command line interfaces a lot more than the UI. For me, that's a plus, but it's also nice to have the GUI interface on top of that if I need to.

The seamless integration with Ansible is always a plus. I can just get it running. Podman, as well, is valuable. Having it just there and ready to use is such a quality of life increase. I don't have to mess around with dependencies. 

What needs improvement?

It's been good and reliable. I haven't dealt with it much, but I would say Podman and containerization could use a little more work, although I don't know exactly how that would proceed. 

The UI could use a little bit of work. The graphical interface could be improved. I'm not too big of a fan of it right now, but some of that can be customized. Right out of the box, I'm not the biggest fan of how it looks, but that's personal.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for about two years now. I've been dabbling in it on and off. I started with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and went all the way up to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 most recently.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very reliable. It's fairly robust. I haven't had many issues with it.

How are customer service and support?

I haven't had any issues with customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Their customer service has been great.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

It's seamless. When it comes to managing my Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems, I most often do manual patching, and it's not any more challenging than any other system I've dealt with, so it's standard in that sense. 

What was our ROI?

For me, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is ease of use and quality of life.

What other advice do I have?

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises


    Troels Hansen

Long lifecycle facilitates strategic planning and reduces maintenance costs

  • May 19, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We deploy it. We are a Red Hat partner and have been for 20 years. We help customers with all sorts of day-to-day Linux operations, and Red Hat is one of our partners for Linux.

How has it helped my organization?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the platform being used for running applications. Customers often have some sort of applications they need to run, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been the go-to standard for running applications that need to run on top of Linux for many years.

What is most valuable?

The feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is its long lifecycle. The long lifecycle helps my company by allowing us to plan ahead; we don't have to redeploy everything every five years or so. It helps to plan ahead.

What needs improvement?

The support can be better. 

Satellite 5 was great at what it did. Satellite 6 is still a mismatch of different things. It's not really the optimal solution for many things yet. I hope they will release a new version soon that fixes this. I know it's been planned for three or four years, possibly five years.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for about 20 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are very good, even according to what my customers say. We have had very few bugs where the actual operating system was to blame for any problems. There might have been one or two bugs that I could name that influenced our Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) running. It is quite bug-free. It's not perfect, but usually bugs are fixed if you raise a support case.

I don't think I've ever seen downtime caused by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I'm not sure if we have had any less downtime compared to other Linux distributions. We also see a lot of Ubuntu, and I don't see any less downtime on Red Hat than on other community Linux subscriptions.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Our use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) internally is quite limited. We have some customers who run thousands of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) instances. It scales perfectly fine.

How are customer service and support?

Their support isn't great, but it's good. It varies significantly depending on who you get hold of. It can be quite hard to get to someone who is actually able to answer the questions. We see instances where we have done all of the debugging ahead, but still are asked questions that we have already answered when we created the support ticket. We have to start all over again and use the first two or three days explaining exactly what we do, even though we have already written it. I have done this and they say, 'Have you done this?' And I respond, 'We have done that. We also wrote it when we created the case.' It can be difficult when the supporters don't always read what you have actually tried ahead of creating the support ticket.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

We also work with SUSE. The main differences between SUSE and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) currently seem to be very political. Red Hat is an American company, and we are based in Europe, so we see that come up frequently.

How was the initial setup?

It's easy to deploy. When it comes to managing the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems for provisioning and patching, I see one of two things normally. We have many customers who just do cloning, having a golden template which they clone and then create new VMs from that. We also have many customers who use Satellite. Those are the two methods we see at scale.

I have been involved in upgrades or migrations of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for 20 years. The process of migration just works.

Our upgrade or migration plans to stay current involve knowing the lifecycle for a specific version. It's just a matter of planning ahead. The long lifecycle and predetermined lifecycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) make it easy.

What was our ROI?

The major cost of maintaining Linux is when you have to do reinstallations and upgrades. Having a long lifecycle really reduces the cost of maintaining an operating system. A long lifecycle is key to having a good return on investment.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises


    Donald Hardy

Engineering simulations run smoothly without question and with reliable vendor support

  • May 19, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for engineering simulation activities.

How has it helped my organization?

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) benefit our company as we're able to run the simulation software without question.

What is most valuable?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps us solve pain points. We design our engineering products and need Linux systems to design the products. 

The feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is that it's supported by our vendors that support the applications we run. 

What needs improvement?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is fine; I don't know how it can be improved. I don't think they could enhance one of their features. 

When we go from version seven to eight, and eight's a little slower, or certain things don't work, they should ensure there's 100% improvement or stability; I don't want anything broken.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability and reliability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are fine; I'd be surprised if it wasn't stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales to my needs just fine.

How are customer service and support?

The customer service and technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are okay; I would rate it a five out of ten. What could make it a ten are improvements in customer service to reach Dell quality. It might be an unfair advantage since Dell is all hardware, and the quality of their support is top-notch for hardware, while Red Hat's all software. It's a whole different situation; support is easier with hardware than it is with software. My only suggestion would be to get support to the right people. 

I don't want to go through two levels of support to get somebody who can solve my problem; I want to talk to somebody who can work with me around the globe. If I call and get someone who's in the UK on his shift when it's ending, give me someone in San Jose to pick up where he left off.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

I considered other solutions before choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). We were all open to CentOS, AlmaLinux, and similar options, which is why I've been using the open-source software for 15-20 years.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment process of Red Hat is good. There were no problems.

What was our ROI?

The biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for me is just its compatibility. We have one source of truth that's generally accepted in the industry for application software.

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

I don't handle the pricing or setup costs for my company as we've got a big contract.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) due to the fact that when Red Hat bought CentOS, they eliminated the model; otherwise, we would probably still be using CentOS.

What other advice do I have?

Our upgrade or migration plans to stay current with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are limited by the applications we run, so I won't upgrade to version ten until the applications say they can run it; that's the number one thing. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped us mitigate downtime and lower risk as we have plenty of extra systems. I don't have an application that's a 24/7 application that I can't shut down. 

I would rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in general an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises


    ScottPalmer

Achieved increased performance and minimal downtime through robust configurability

  • May 19, 2025
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

Our main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are running application servers, specifically database servers, and caching servers for our applications.

How has it helped my organization?

Many features benefit my company by ensuring the uptime is really great.

What is most valuable?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps us solve pain points. It is much more configurable, increases our performance, allows us more flexibility in management, and the automation for it is much greater. 

It is very stable.  

Flexibility and ease of use are great. I'm very familiar with it and I have a good team. It allows us to manage it with very little downtime. 

When we switched from Windows to Linux, we got about an instant 20% increase in performance, which was a very big deal. 

My favorite feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the way the disk management works. I appreciate the fact that it's all text-based.

My assessment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux's (RHEL) built-in security features is that the security is fine.

All of our systems are internal, so a breach would have to go through firewalls and other protections before reaching the system. We do patch them regularly and scan them for vulnerabilities, running the ADE product on them among others.

What needs improvement?

The improvements for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that I suggest are mainly around increasing reporting on how patches are applied as it all revolves around Satellite. Any product that Red Hat is developing to help with patch management would be awesome, and that's my biggest pain point. I would like to see better reporting on automated jobs, and once Red Hat Insights gets looped to Satellite and on-prem, I'd like to be able to take advantage of that.

For how long have I used the solution?

At this company, we've been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for six years. I have personally been using it for 15 to 20 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has definitely helped to mitigate downtime and lower risks. As far as I know, we've not had a service outage with Red Hat in six years. We've had system outages if all systems fail, since we produce a high availability setup, Red Hat has been very stable, and there's been no unplanned downtime.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales with the growing needs of my company very well, as we've been able to maintain our footprint with an increase in performance. This allows us to actually do more work with the same amount of resources.

How are customer service and support?

I haven't had to open very many cases with customer service and technical support. The documentation is excellent, and the few cases I've had were solved within a few minutes, with one exception regarding NFS, which wasn't their fault. 

I would rate the customer service and technical support a nine out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We switched from Windows to Linux.

What about the implementation team?

Deploying is very easy. We run everything via virtual machines. We create a Red Hat template, and then we use Ansible to configure it from there. So we have a generic template we deploy and actually give the machine an identity to use Ansible. I can deploy a system from start to finish in about an hour.

What was our ROI?

The biggest return on investment for me when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the ability to get an increase in performance, which allows us to not have to scale our hardware so fast.

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

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that we get a very good deal through our third-party VAR or reseller.

I don't deal much with the pricing. I do know the price of some things, such as the AP platform, which allows us to migrate off other solutions that are substantially higher.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have considered other solutions apart from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), specifically evaluating Oracle Linux in the beginning. Between the price considerations, as they claim to be bug-for-bug compatible, it's questionable, however, the price of Red Hat Enterprise Linux was substantially lower than Oracle's, even though they claim it's free.

What other advice do I have?

We generally don't use SELinux since it causes more problems for us than it solves. 

I actually recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to everybody. It's a solid product, and I stake my reputation on it. 

If anybody wants to learn Ansible next year, this is a good platform to use. 

Our upgrade or migration plans to stay current include rolling out Red Hat 10 as soon as it's available and once we get an antivirus product that's supported on Red Hat 10. My thought is that we'll probably try to test Image Mode to see if that works for us, as it may simplify our monthly process to keep things in sync. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) a nine.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

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

Other