Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP with HA and Update Services

Over the period of my career, I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  initially in my first job at a research center, where we used it as a base operating system. Different variants of Red Hat, including CERN certified Linux and Red Hat, were used extensively at that time as a base OS for our organization. We have used it for running various infrastructure services. In my current office, we are using it to run an OpenShift cluster, so the base operating system is Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) .

We have performed a couple of migrations from cloud to on-prem with Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL), and they were smooth. They did not cause us much trouble.

The security requirements when deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) are essential, and you have to perform certain steps to harden the core OS, which we have been following over the years. We have developed a regime on how to secure the OS when putting it into production, and for any OS, whether it be Windows or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or any other variant of Linux, we have a process of hardening the OS, performing some basic security checks before putting it into production. That has been the key throughout my career. There are no particular security requirements for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but as a general rule, when you put an operating system into production, you perform a set of processes to harden the OS. Obviously, patching is one of them; you patch it up to the latest level to keep clear of known vulnerabilities. Then, you harden the OS in your own environment, ensuring certain services are up and running, avoiding any extra accounts on the machine, shutting down unnecessary services, and making kernel configurations for hardening. There is a long list that is common for any Linux operating system we use in our production environment, and we harden it before we put it into production.

The most reliable function I find in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the stability of the platform. The stability of the operating system is crucial when you are running mission-critical services; you want to keep them running 24/7/365 with no downtime for the services. Unlike other operating systems, for example, with Windows, you have patches after which you need to reboot the OS. If you are not running your services in a cluster, you have to afford downtime for that service. What I really appreciate about Linux, particularly the latest versions and other variants like Oracle Enterprise Linux  (OEL), is that they have developed mechanisms where you can patch even the kernel vulnerabilities without rebooting the OS. That is a key feature for me because we have been running some mission-critical services over the years, and I have kept my servers up and running for almost four years in a row with not a single second of downtime.

The main benefit that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) provides for me is the stability of the environment in which I am running it. When running mission-critical services, I need a reliable operating system, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) provides the maximum stability of the infrastructure. It also offers scalability, which saves money when things are scalable, and there are no issues running the system without downtime, as that also costs money. Stability and scalability are key benefits.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps to mitigate downtime and lower risk because mostly, the infrastructure runs in the form of clusters. With OpenShift, I do not run a single node; we have underlying operating systems, and then we deploy clusters. When running clusters, there is very little chance of downtime. Whenever there is a problem in a node or a service, especially in today's microservices architecture, the nodes run on different hosts, and the application remains up and running in no time with no downtime for the service.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can improve the pricing a little bit, but nothing else comes to mind.

I have been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for about twenty plus years, and my overall experience with Linux is extensive.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps to mitigate downtime and lower risk because mostly, the infrastructure runs in the form of clusters. With OpenShift, I do not run a single node; we have underlying operating systems, and then we deploy clusters. When running clusters, there is very little chance of downtime. Whenever there is a problem in a node or a service, especially in today's microservices architecture, the nodes run on different hosts, and the application remains up and running in no time with no downtime for the service.

The scalability process with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is pretty much scalable. The servers support a lot of resources, and as long as you have resources at the hardware level, the operating systems are scalable. There has never been any issue regarding scalability or supporting the resources which are required for applications to run smoothly. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has never been a bottleneck in that regard.

I would rate technical support from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) somewhere between eight and nine because they have been very good in providing support. I never had any issue with the support; whenever we raised a ticket, we got a satisfactory answer and reply from the support, with a timely response. That is a key feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and it makes a significant difference compared to using a community edition of a Linux variant. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a company that supports you, and they are there with the support and all the other services they provide.

When running a community edition, you have to put in an effort and rely on the community for any issues or help needed. When you buy Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), a company sits behind your operating system, providing support. The same goes for Oracle Enterprise Linux , which is binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL); Oracle is there to support at the backend. With these kinds of operating systems, knowing that a full-fledged company is behind your operating system provides the required technical skill, manpower, and resources to support you in case you encounter any trouble.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is simple to set up; the setup process is very straightforward and not complex at all.

I would rate the price for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) quite high because in my part of the world, payments are made in dollars, and buying Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) comes at a significant cost. If 1 is high and 10 is low, I would rate the price somewhere around 2.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can improve the pricing a little bit, but nothing else comes to mind.

In terms of technical aspects, I find Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) mostly the same as they are binary compatible. It does not matter to a service whether I am running it on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or Oracle Enterprise Linux. The final decision point for me comes down to pricing; Oracle sometimes offers very good discounts due to their various services such as databases and Oracle Cloud . Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has similar pricing models, but cost can often be a concern for me because Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) tends to be a bit more expensive compared to Oracle Enterprise Linux, though technically they are quite similar with no issues.

I am pretty much satisfied with managing my Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system. There has never been an issue when it comes to provisioning or patching. When you are running an environment with a lot of servers, you can now use configuration manager tools to keep your cluster up and running in no time. You can manage your configurations across the clusters to be similar, down to a dot in the config file, and that is not a problem. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) supports these tools, and provisioning has always been a pleasant experience without any issues causing us much trouble.

I have experience with the knowledge base and it has always been very helpful. We have utilized the documentation extensively because when deploying new services, they have comprehensive and detailed documentation which is very helpful.

I can recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to other users without hesitation. My overall rating for this product is 9.5.

In my current role as an Enterprise Systems Engineer, my daily responsibilities involve provisioning Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  servers, dealing with all the assets, users, storage, troubleshooting whenever there is an issue, and everything in between.

The business value of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) , especially in a production environment, is highlighted by response time when I encounter an issue. When my production is down, every additional minute of unplanned downtime means a fine from the regulator. In situations like that, if I have major downtime and support responds to my emergency in fifteen minutes, that is much better than a response in thirty or forty-five minutes. Beyond support, I appreciate Red Hat's commitment to security; my servers require third-party packages for my applications. The fact that Red Hat tests every package before adding it to their repositories gives me peace of mind regarding security. If any problems arise with Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) packages, I am eligible for support, and they often provide analysis and patches. Therefore, the three biggest selling points for me are patching, security, and support.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the technical support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) at nine out of ten.

My major appreciation is how quickly they respond to calls; in my experience, it is much faster than all of the other major OEMs we have, such as Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM. Their response time is roughly the same as IBM, which is far better than the other OEMs I have. Especially if you raise a severity one case, they will respond in less than an hour, and you can always get an engineer on a Teams or Zoom call to actually see the problem you are having, rather than just sending commands to collect log files, uploading them to the portal, and waiting for their analysis. It is much easier, especially when you are in a crisis, to have someone on call with you.

In terms of provisioning and patching Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems, I utilize Red Hat Satellite  servers that essentially collect all of the patches advertised by Red Hat. We store these on-premises on a distribution server, the same server as the Satellite server, but for automation, we currently use Ansible  to trigger the updates we want applied to the servers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) makes it easier to manage my hybrid cloud environment in some aspects, especially in terms of patching. Around Red Hat Satellite , I can onboard any server I have as long as I maintain a direct line of sight in terms of network. However, for comprehensive management of both private and public clouds, I honestly have not interacted with a solution from Red Hat that allows for that. I might not be aware of such a solution, but I have not experienced it.

My initial setup with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is straightforward; it is not substantially more difficult to deploy any Red Hat-based systems than it is for other Linux or open-source systems. The process is essentially the same, but with the backup of support, if something goes wrong, having enterprise support allows for quick assistance. Overall, I find it somewhat easier to deploy on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

The upgrades and migration on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) are also straightforward; Red Hat provides a step-by-step guide with instructions and commands for upgrading servers from Red Hat seven to eight, and from eight to nine. They even include potential issues you might face and how to resolve them, which is very helpful.

I have not interacted with either Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Image Builder or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) System Roles.

I do not have an answer ready for how Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can be improved; I need to give it some thought.

Regarding deploying clusters on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I do not have experience with that either.

I agree that deploying clusters was quite complex in the past, but I have not interacted with that particular product.

Overall, I have been working with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for approximately four years.

I find Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scalable, though it is not necessarily with regard to Red Hat-specific tools; it is more about open source and Linux tooling in general. For instance, whether creating a cluster or using Pacemaker, it is the same package I run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as on Oracle or SUSE. It is not really Red Hat-specific.

Recently, I had a significant incident on one of my servers; although I spent an entire day troubleshooting it, Red Hat support helped us bring it up within three hours of the call. Considering that I experienced financial loss during the downtime, I would say the ROI is definitely there, though it might depend on the industry.

My initial setup with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is straightforward; it is not substantially more difficult to deploy any Red Hat-based systems than it is for other Linux or open-source systems. The process is essentially the same, but with the backup of support, if something goes wrong, having enterprise support allows for quick assistance. Overall, I find it somewhat easier to deploy on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Regarding return on investment, I think it would be difficult for me to justify, but I would say it exists. In the finance industry, support is key. Recently, I had a significant incident on one of my servers; although I spent an entire day troubleshooting it, Red Hat support helped us bring it up within three hours of the call. Considering that I experienced financial loss during the downtime, I would say the ROI is definitely there, though it might depend on the industry.

The pricing for Red Hat's Premier support is on the higher side.

I do not really see advantages that Red Hat's competitors have over them; for most of the products I interact with in the Red Hat ecosystem, they are mostly available on almost all other distributions. While Red Hat does offer security and support advantages, most other items are similar across different distributions.

My company uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on a private cloud, but I have a mixture of both; I have some of my servers on VMware and others on Azure .

Approximately, us admins and application support teams consist of a team of thirty people. Others normally access through whatever application is running there, meaning that if it is a web application running on Apache, end users will access it through the web portal but not directly to the server.

My system lifecycle practices in the cloud are similar to my on-premises or virtualization practices; it is the same template in terms of how often we patch and perform vulnerability analysis. The lifecycle is pretty much the same, only that I have only test environments on the public cloud and production on my private cloud.

In East Africa, I see that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is popular among financial institutions, but non-financial institutions tend to prefer more open distributions due to cost. For financial institutions, security and support are key selling points, which makes Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) quite popular.

The knowledge base offered by Red Hat features documentation that is quite easy to digest and organized well, allowing users to find articles based on topic. They provide descriptions of what you are dealing with and any commands necessary to get particular functionalities working; overall, they are doing a good job with documentation.

There is no exact limitation when integrating Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with other products or third-party solutions; they do not discourage running other applications on their systems. Essentially, the same capability available on a supported version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can also run on an unsupported version and on any other distribution besides Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Therefore, I do not see either an advantage or disadvantage there.

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

Apart from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) , I work on Ansible , Azure  Cloud, and AWS  cloud. I also work on Kubernetes , Windows systems, and Linux. We deal completely with customer data, which is hosted in the cloud, and I have experience in disaster recovery.

In Linux, we use a few of the DBVMs, with all DBVMs hosted in the Linux boxes. During this time, if any drive gets full or shrinks, we connect to that particular DB box and run queries to clear up space.

The use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  involve having a particular jump box to connect to specific regions. For East, we have a separate jump box, and then for West, Central, and Canada. If any drives shrink, we log into the particular region's jump box and provide the username, which for me is my Azure  username. After providing the password and logging in, we write the command sudo su -Oracle. After that, we use commands to find the Oracle services running on that particular DB box, such as ps -ef, and we use a pipe with a grep command for the service known as PMON. In a similar way, we use SMON. We check these two services. Running this command shows the Oracle services running on that particular DB box. After that, to add spaces, we take help from the Ansible  template. In that Ansible template, we provide the DB name and then data in the field, such as DATA. We can check whether the hosts are connected or not. As per the Ansible template, using this, we can clear the space and add up the space. Sometimes we check the logs in the particular Linux DB boxes.

The pros and cons of Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) when compared to Windows and Oracle Linux  are quite notable. Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) is more efficient, used for servers and cloud, and most DevOps people prefer it. If you install Kubernetes  in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), it is quite efficient. When it comes to Windows, it is mostly used for desktops and office work. When we compare the operating systems, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the most powerful one, whereas Windows is quite user-friendly. Windows is an older system that is easy to use and mostly used in desktop applications only.

With Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we can do automation, and multiple servers can be hosted on it. Stability is quite good in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). When compared with reboots, a Windows reboot takes more time, but Linux takes only a few minutes to reboot the boxes. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has stronger security as well. The firewall is implemented in such a way that hacking the Linux system requires much more effort. With Windows, most security incidents have happened in the Windows boxes themselves. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), there are fewer viruses and lower malware exposure.

For better health of the servers and a better lifecycle, if they are installed in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), the environment would be more efficient, and the cloud systems and web servers will be more efficient when compared with Windows. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has better performance and resource usage. In Windows, more RAM, CPU, and services are involved in the boxes, but in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), it can efficiently run even on normal hardware. For better understanding of DevOps, Kubernetes, and Docker , if all these are installed in Linux boxes, they integrate extremely well.

The best features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) when compared to Windows is that with Windows we need to navigate each thing in a different way, but when connected to a Linux box, everything runs on commands. Commands are the mediator to interact with the Linux environment. The entire black screen we see when we run commands is very effective. PowerSchool  is a very large-scale company, and we use many servers and cloud platforms with operating systems in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) environment. The best features are stability and reliability. The crashing of VMs or servers is very few in Linux boxes. When I compare it with Windows boxes, we receive more outages. Windows boxes have more outages when compared with Linux.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is currently one of the strongest operating systems in the market. However, I have seen many times when the license would expire, and we raise a ticket for our team to renew the license. This is an area where we can make improvement by giving more time and a longer duration for the subscription.

Regarding improvements we can make in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we can simplify the licensing part and provide some free-tier usage. Free-tier usage could be offered for one month or something similar. We can also make the repository access easier. Sometimes it is clumsy, and it is very tough for people to manage the repository access, so we can make improvements in that particular area.

I have been working on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for two years on that particular project.

There are no complexities found during the deployment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) because it is straightforward and helps optimize many things. System monitoring, resource optimization, and performance profiles are very good. We do not get any particular complex issues. If we do encounter them, we have the onsite DBA team, and we reach out to them for help if we receive any complex issues during the migration or other operations.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is scalable because it has long-term support, which provides a stable environment. Migration also takes place in a very minimal way. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has perfect package management where we internally receive RPM packages. Once the software installation has been made with those packages, we can push patches during that time. During OS patching, patches are pushed, and the servers are restarted. All these features make it scalable and reliable.

Regarding pricing, we are not aware of it because there is a different team responsible for checking and validating price costing. These aspects do not come under our purview.

The initial setup of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) was done by the DBA team, and we were involved in the activity, but we did not get much to check on that. As far as I remember, they were having some complex issues during that time, and it took a bit of time to migrate the instances from the Windows boxes to the Linux boxes. There were some challenges.

We did not use any third party for the setup.

I extremely recommend Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to people because it is more efficient and not like Windows. We have more work power, and everything is more efficient when compared to Windows. We do not need to use multiple screens and navigate around. Simply running the command gives your output on the screen. It is better for automation.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) was purchased from the Azure Marketplace .

Regarding the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), I am still in the learning path. I started using it a few years ago, so I am still in the learning phase.

We use the New Relic  monitoring tool. New Relic  is a monitoring tool where we can check app performance, and if any customers are facing issues in their servers, we can monitor the server performance, check CPU spikes, and monitor all instances if any are down.

Hybrid cloud in my company means that we do not have any on-premises cloud. Everything is hosted in Azure only.

A few days back in the automation call, they were discussing that some customers are going to get involved in on-premises cloud and implement it in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) environment. As of now, we have not received any update, but they said they are going to implement it as soon as possible.

Regarding security in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in the cloud, I have not found any security concerns or faced any issues in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) environment. It is quite secure, and the data is stored safely.

For provisioning Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we have a different team known as the Entitlements team. They do the provisioning using Terraform  templates and Ansible templates for new customers. When it comes to patching, I work on those patching activities. Each month in the second week, we follow the OS patching process. To restart the Linux VM boxes, we have an Ansible template where we provide the Linux IPs and launch an Ansible playbook. Once the Ansible playbook is launched, the job runs, and when complete, it creates sub-jobs. If we have provided ten Linux box IPs, then ten different sub-jobs are created. We monitor all these jobs, and once the job is completed, the Linux box is restarted. If the job fails, we log into the Azure portal where we have troubleshooting steps. We go to the boot diagnostics and health center, check whether the system is stuck or hung, and follow the troubleshooting step. Once we follow the troubleshooting step, the monitor resumes. If we see the kernel, we can finally  predict that the Linux box has been restarted.

We use Oracle as well with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Regarding mitigated downtime, I can provide an example. While migrating, importing data in Windows used to take a lot of time, but after migration, when importing data into Linux boxes, it happened within ten to fifteen minutes. Multiple gigabytes of data happened within minutes. This complex issue that we had in Windows, we do not have in Linux. Linux is more efficient than Windows.

The main issue that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped us with is the same—migration of data and everything. It has been quite efficient. I cannot make a comparison with other systems because it has been two years where we have gotten access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and this is the first time I started working on the original Linux process. I would rate this product a ten out of ten.

My main use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  are for applications, primarily. We provide Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  to other teams because we are from the operations team and have infrastructure responsibilities. We provide Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) VMs for developers and other teams to run their applications on.

Before adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL), my company used many Windows VMs. From the time I have been working in the company, we have been a Linux shop with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) VMs, along with a few Windows VMs.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points because Linux in general is easy to work with. The automation is straightforward. Because we have an ecosystem of Red Hat OpenShift , Ansible , and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), the integration flows naturally.

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that I prefer most are the security features, which are very useful. The domain join realm and SELinux are also excellent.

For navigating our security risks with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we currently use SELinux for security. We do not use Lightspeed at this time. We have FirewallD and other services for security. For identity management, we have our own Kerberos agents that we use for identity purposes.

Satellite helps maintain our environment overall because we have integration with Ansible  and the Ansible Automation Platform. When we need to create a new VM, we start with Satellite and have all the bootstrap processes integrated with Ansible. The VM then comes up automatically, and we provide it to customers or whoever wants to use it.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped me mitigate downtime and lower risks.

The capabilities of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that have assisted me with this are mainly the integration aspects, such as Satellite and the Ansible Automation Platform. Everything has helped us reduce downtime for customers and accelerate VM deployment.

The security portions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) could be improved and made easier to work with. SELinux in general is not intuitive because customers and developers do not know how to work with the VM. This part could be more user-friendly.

In my company's implementation of the Zero Trust model, we have not yet implemented this with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Because we are from the operations team, there is another team that handles other responsibilities. We do not necessarily handle that aspect.

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

We have occasionally experienced downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but not frequently. Overall, it has been reliable.

Scalability-wise, the scaling process for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is smooth. We have scaled many applications and have not encountered any issues. The performance has been solid.

I evaluate the customer service and technical support from Red Hat as very good. I have never had any issues with the technical support. I have created multiple tickets with the Red Hat team and they have been quick and effective at responding and fixing the issues. I would rate the customer service and technical support a nine out of ten.

The advantages of having Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) instead of Windows servers are that the development process is easier. I think Windows is limiting. Linux in general provides more opportunity to try different approaches, work on different projects, and avoid being restricted to certain functionalities that are imposed on clients who use the operating system. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has done an excellent job overall.

I would describe the experience of deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as straightforward. It is not complicated. We use Satellite to deploy the VMs and the process is very straightforward with minimal complexity.

We have used the Ansible Automation Platform through a dedicated automation team who handles all the automation for us.

From a technical point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the integration aspect. Working with OpenShift and having VMs on it is very smooth. Even though some features are not intuitive, the integration is seamless.

My company has not considered switching to another solution that does the same thing as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). We are committed to continuing with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

I would assess the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as very good. I believe there could be more information available. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in general is excellent, but counterparts such as OpenShift could improve with respect to documentation and the knowledge base.

We performed a major version upgrade of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) using the Leapp upgrade tool manually. Although the process has been automated, we have not used automation to upgrade many VMs. We successfully upgraded forty to fifty VMs from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version seven to eight and from eight to nine using the Leapp upgrade.

The advice I would give to other companies is that from the time of deployment until the customer uses the system, having a pipeline ready and integration prepared for every component makes it much easier to deploy and use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I would rate this product an eight out of ten overall.

My use cases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  at my company include application servers, infrastructure servers, web servers, and virtually every server type.

The features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)  that I appreciate most are ease of automation and ease of deployment, particularly because we also use Satellite for deployment management. It scales well.

These features benefit my company by resulting in less time spent working on servers and issues and more uptime.

I have not identified any immediate areas for improvement in Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL), as I cannot think of anything that there is not already a product for.

We have encountered some issues with the high availability clustering lately, and it seems that could use some refinement.

The deployment process for Red Hat Enterprise Linux  (RHEL) has been somewhat rough around the edges to get it up and running with Kickstart, but once I have it dialed in, it is fantastic. The documentation for Kickstart can leave something to be desired sometimes, so that may be an area of improvement.

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

I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with the platform that were not caused by some kind of misconfiguration. The platform itself is solid.

I have been able to scale and expand usage as my needs have grown.

I assess the knowledge base offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as outstanding. The Red Hat Learning Subscription  is great, and usually when we enter a ticket with Red Hat support, we can get a subject matter expert to help us resolve our issues.

I would rate the customer service and technical support as probably an eight out of ten. Sometimes when we enter a ticket, it takes some time to get to the level of technical resource we need, but once we get that resource, they almost always help us get a problem solved.

When I came in, our department was already heavily using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

The deployment process for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been somewhat rough around the edges to get it up and running with Kickstart.

From a technical point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the stability and uptime.

I have worked with Ubuntu  and CentOS  in the past while using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but I do not particularly care for Ubuntu . I prefer Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) wins over Ubuntu for me by being a more stable enterprise platform and more mature.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) helps me solve pain points by being more reliable and easier to work on than Windows. It is simply good at what it does.

The features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that I use to navigate my security risks include Satellite, which helps us keep everything patched and up to date and keep package-related CVEs down. We are looking at doing OpenSCAP scanning with Satellite, and we use Ansible  for automation, deploying configurations and packages. We are also looking at implementing OpenShift, as our department has OpenShift.

I have worked with System Roles and have used Image Builder before, finding it useful for tightening a gold image and standardizing deployments.

I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) only on-premises in my department. Some other departments might use it in the cloud. I do not know that my department has a cloud strategy yet, but I know we are exploring alternatives to VMware, so that could happen in the near future.

My department does not have a hybrid cloud yet, but as far as on-premises is concerned, Satellite helps us with patch management and controlling what packages we present through content views. We build systems through Kickstart, so it helps with deploying systems.

I have worked a little with Lightspeed for AI workloads with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) but have not really scratched the surface too much yet.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) plays a critical role in my company's implementation of zero trust by tightening down configurations when we join a system to Active Directory through SSSD, locking down what users and groups can touch a given system.

We have used Leapp to do a major version upgrade using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but we have not coupled that with Ansible  Automation Platform yet.

I have been using Ansible Automation Platform almost as long as I have been using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL); I used Tower  before it was Ansible Automation Platform, and it is incredibly useful. It is invaluable for deploying systems, standardizing server builds, deploying compliance, and hardening. I have not found a use case it is not useful for.

We are working toward using or building Ansible jobs to help with our regulatory audits and evidence collection, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) plays a significant role in our compliance and auditing workflows.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has helped to mitigate downtime and lower risk with capabilities such as its stability. If you standardize and deploy a system and have it tightened, you tend not to have unexpected issues, or the issues you do have are ones that you would have seen many times and can easily remediate.

I rate my overall experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as a nine out of ten.