CentOS Linux vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

In any role where you need raw server power, CentOS Linux is extremely well suited. It is extremely stable, and in my experience, probably the most stable of the Linux distros available. It has a very wide base of support from 3rd party sources for additional functionality that do not come already in the CentOS Linux distribution itself. It is not as appropriate for situations that are customer facing or end user facing. For those, I recommend Ubuntu Linux. But for everything server & compute related, I recommend CentOS Linux.

Incentivized

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is best suited for its stability, fast reboot time, and minimal resource requirements which reduce overall cost. The patch time for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is also extremely fast which benefits application up time. For environments or applications that require many changes, for a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) support person that is not well trained and experienced in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), this can be challenging.

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We use it for every linux service we need to have running. It really works great and is easily manageable with the SUSE Manager, which helps a lot with the updating process. Although it is not stressfull on the CMD itself, it really does simplify things. Besides that, we are really happy with working with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

• First of all, CentOS is one of the most secure and stable OSes straits from the box.
• High performance on the average hardware.
• In most of my scenarios—easy and quick deployment.
• Huge KB community that helps to build and support different services on CentOS.
• Versions lifecycle.

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• Virtualization, like the operating system level task. I see this product is very good and it blends very well with the middleware components like all the JBoss and other things. And other than that, either you install it or a virtual machine or physical servers, it works seamlessly anywhere. And if you want to go further, like Red Hat OpenShift or those things also work very nice with it.

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• Consistently performs well across various CPU architectures.
• It's very well supported both by the parent company, as well as SAP and other third-party companies.
• It is upgradeable across versions. We've performed upgrades from version 10 to 11 and from 11 to 12 without any major issues.

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• CentOS is not a great desktop platform. Although some would disagree with that statement, I think that CentOS is better suited to life as a server.
• Since CentOS is community-supported some software vendors will not officially support it because it isn't Red Hat.

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• In the LEAP process. The upgrading process, which I'm hearing, like I said it before, prior that I was on rail seven, eight, and nine. Trying to get all of that to rail nine and stay current. The LEAP process from seven to eight is a little bit less than desired. I've talked to some people that from once you get on eight from eight to nine to nine to 10 is a breeze. So I'm looking forward to that.

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• The support window for service packs after a new SP is released is too short.
• Community engagement is low.
• There are times when supported packages fall too far behind and create compatibility issues with applications. The Open Build Service usually provides a way around this, though.

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We find RHEL to be a superior OS with stable operations and long life. It is also easier to use and fix then most other OS's.

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It is a very typical server software, so you will have just the console. But it is still very easy to use, you can do anything from there and you have te built in manuals to review any information. For the other hand, if you need a graphical environment is not an issue, you can install any environment you what, Gnome, xfce, etc.

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The Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distro is the simplest enterprise version of Red Hat that is enterprise supported and when you deploy as many VMs as we do, it is vital to have that enterprise support. On top of the enterprise support, having access to a commercially supported backbone for updates and upgrades is a huge plus.

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We've been using this OS for about 8 years in a productive environment. During this time, we have never run into any problems that stopped or impacted our production environment. We have been able to solve any problem we ran into using either common sense, suse documentation or suse support.

Product support and regular patches.

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As with any OS enhanced testing will need to be done prior to application integration.

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Again, written documentation is excellent, even on the older versions. The support community is the best. It is comprehensive and I would say that it global because it transcends national boundaries. Also, you find all types of people using CentOS to do all sorts of things so you are bound to find someone to talk to if there are problems.

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Red Hat support has really come a long way in the last 10 years, The general support is great, and the specialized product support teams are extremely knowledgeable about their specific products. Response time is good and you never need to escalate.

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Support personnel are helpful and fairly fast to bring resolution to non-emergency issues. Patches are created and posted in a timely fashion. We so far have not had any major problems that needed support

Third party training was fast but mostly unnecessary as we were already Unix trained and Linux familiar

Don't be afraid of it, its easy to install and configure for the tasks needed.

Incentivized

CentOS is based on RHEL, so it really came down to the costs when making the selection between our options. RHEL offered more support and features, but nothing that we specifically needed. CentOS is fully customizable, something Windows Server was also lacking in many ways. The stability and speed was unmatched in comparison to Windows, and we were not utilizing any Windows-specific software to require us to use the Microsoft alternative. My years of experience have also made it a breeze to set up and configure new CentOS instances, leading me to stay where I'm comfortable.

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So we in our company have used Ubuntu as well. Sometimes we have to use that because a certain application installer requires that we use that operating system, but we really don't prefer it just because it doesn't come with the same Add-on features that make Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) really great, like Red Hat Insights or Red Hat satellite, things like that. They come package with it. So that would be the main one. I've also used things like FreeBSD, but I think that's just too old at this point to care.

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We went straight to SLES when we initially started migrating oracle to hana since at that time, HANA came on a pre-installed server that had to be purchased from an official vendor, and SLES was the only allowed OS. We stuck with SLES after we became certified to do our own installations because so far, SLES was a good fit for us.

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Operational ease of use backed by support

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We have successfully deployed on physical servers, VMs and in cloud all over the globe from templates of our own design

• CentOS's support of RPM packages makes it very easy to replicate RHEL servers for development or testing in cheap / free environments
• CentOS's minimalistic desktop environment requires additional tweaking / packages if you want to have a usable desktop environment with the niceties of other modern distributions. As a result, if developers want to use CentOS, they'll need to spend more time customizing it than other distros.
• CentOS's easy customization from the command line lends itself well to our virtualization infrastructure where setup can be easily scripted to modify CentOS's configuration files.

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• RHEL provides a good base OS and additional tool sets for various deployments.
• We are able to use Satellite to manage hundreds of OS's behind our corporate firewall. No other OS provides the level that RHEL does.
• It is a known good quantity. Their support for the OS is amazing.

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• Compared to others, use is more stable and scalable; easy to manage.
• The administration tools are very useful in helping the staff performance.
• SLES proved to be a very extendable product, supporting all of our infrastructure.
• The major reason I chose to use the product was the extensive enterprise peripheral support.

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