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

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux distribution mainly used in commercial data centers.N/A
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
The SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is distribution of the Linux operating system originally developed in Germany.N/A
Pricing
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Considered Both Products
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has wider vendor support for enterprise applications. Also, [ Red Hat Enterprise Linux] (RHEL) provides a better life cycle management than SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Ubuntu Linux. In addition, by using [ Red Hat Enterprise Linux] (RHEL) we are …
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Direct competitor on an os level. RHEL just has a better feel and usability. I feel more comfortable with it. Both work. But RHEL is my preference
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Suse is too complicated once they trapped you into using the UI for configuration.
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
RHEL because of more wide adoption, stability, general knowledge on the platform and less nonsensical approach to various platform functionalities
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
the most is support.
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Easier to use and more stable, industry wide support.
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
I feel that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is more user friendly than SLES. There are slight differences and I think Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has the edge over SLES.
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat support team gave better support as well as better vendor support.
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Our AWS cloud in environment use as Amazon Linux and it’s very easy and free with Amazon. RHEL is subscription charge is highbased on charges as compared to Amazon Linux and other operating system like suse
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
None of them provide the consistency and forward looking support that Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is better suited to every environment.
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
We selected RHEL because it is a supported platform from our ISVs, because of the Enterprise-level support, and because of the long history of Open Source involved and community contributions.
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat is much more compatible and guaranteed stable. We selected Red Hat because of this, but mostly because third-party Linux products are just going to work with Red Hat, with no need to spend time trying to make them go. Also, it's management tools are now quite good and …
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
CENTOS is the unsupported version of RHEL. There is Ubuntu, which in the current years has become very stable, but the thing is it's been funded by tech giants (I am not going to name them here) and that is the reason they tend to collect a lot of information from the linux …
Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Each of the different flavors of Linux have their positives and negatives but ultimately for the projects that I chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux was due for the need of online and phone support just in case something came up and we could not solve it on our own. This happens …
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Chose SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
For our environment, SLES provides a more cost-efficient, standards-based Linux with Enterprise support available than their competitors. They also provide the best compatibility between their enterprise Linux and community distributions.
Chose SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
It is very similar, but SLES wins on the manageability front, with good built-in tools, the ability to upgrade major versions, and the ability to run on the latest Power 9 systems. It is our platform of choice for SAP; there is great collaboration between SAP and SUSE, and it …
Chose SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
We consulted our service provider on their recommendation and made some research ourselves. It was a hands down win for Suse Linux on both fronts so we readily chose Suse Linux for our operating system of choice.
Red Hat and CentOS would almost be of the same distro package, …
Chose SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
We have been using RHEL in most of our other projects. We chose Suse Linux for their pricing model and ease of patching. There is no other major pros and cons of RHEL over Suse Linux and vice versa.
Best Alternatives
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Small Businesses
Ubuntu
Ubuntu
Score 8.8 out of 10
Ubuntu
Ubuntu
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Ubuntu
Ubuntu
Score 8.8 out of 10
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Ubuntu
Ubuntu
Score 8.8 out of 10
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(222 ratings)
10.0
(17 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(3 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.1
(114 ratings)
9.2
(5 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(9 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.3
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Likelihood to Recommend
Red Hat
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is well suited for cloud environments, fast deployments and to run non-intensive apps/tools (with low memory and low cpu consumption).Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) might not be suited for really huge databases and intensive CPU processing.
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SUSE
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.
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Pros
Red Hat
  • 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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SUSE
  • 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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Cons
Red Hat
  • 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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SUSE
  • 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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Likelihood to Renew
Red Hat
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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SUSE
No answers on this topic
Usability
Red Hat
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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SUSE
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Red Hat
Product support and regular patches.
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SUSE
No answers on this topic
Performance
Red Hat
As with any OS enhanced testing will need to be done prior to application integration.
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SUSE
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Red Hat
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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SUSE
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
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Online Training
Red Hat
No answers on this topic
SUSE
Third party training was fast but mostly unnecessary as we were already Unix trained and Linux familiar
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Implementation Rating
Red Hat
Don't be afraid of it, its easy to install and configure for the tasks needed.
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SUSE
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Red Hat
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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SUSE
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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Scalability
Red Hat
Operational ease of use backed by support
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SUSE
We have successfully deployed on physical servers, VMs and in cloud all over the globe from templates of our own design
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Return on Investment
Red Hat
  • 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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SUSE
  • 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.
Read full review
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