TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Score8.9 out of 10

488 Reviews and Ratings

Learn More

What is Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux distribution mainly used in commercial data centers.


Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 488 ratings of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)'s features
View all features

Top Performing Features

  • Operating System Security

    The measures and features within the OS that protect data and resources from unauthorized access, threats, and vulnerabilities.

    Category average: 8.9

  • System Update Frequency

    How often the operating system receives patches or upgrades to improve functionality, fix bugs, and enhance security.

    Category average: 8

  • Software Application Management

    The handling of software applications by the OS, including their installation, execution, resource use, and termination.

    Category average: 8

Areas for Improvement

  • File Management

    The system's method of storing, organizing, retrieving, and securing data in files and directories on storage devices.

    Category average: 8

Reviews

What users are saying about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
View all reviews

RHEL Review.

Incentivized
Kamal Jaisi Thapa
System Administrator in Information Technology at Lumen Technology (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use RHEL for Virtualization and deploy VMs and configure applications and services in a reliable, secure, smooth, and quick way to ensure customer needs are met efficiently and on time. We use it as the base operating system for almost every service we provide, from Repo and Ansible to log aggregation and Security Scan tools. The scope and scalability is immense without getting too deep into the actual work. Overall, it is an amazing service, and I would always recommend the product to everyone.

Pros

  • Easy to configure.
  • Works well with cross platform.
  • Provides multiple options for developers.
  • Great resources and documentation, including an open source community for testing and training.

Cons

  • One thing that can be made a little more efficient is making resources, especially troubleshooting resources, more readily available without having to create a Red Hat account or credentials every time.

Return on Investment

  • RHEL has been great as far as return on Investment is concerned.
  • It has been greater because it provides stable, reliable, secure, easy-to-deploy, configure, and scalable products.
  • Easy to integrate with other products.

Usability

Other Software Used

Microsoft Windows

An Cyber Security Review

Incentivized
Julian Hupp
Cyber Security Systems Engineer in Information Technology at Lockheed Marting (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We utilize RHEL for all Linux based Systems, covering Splunk, Development Machines, Tenable, as well as utilizing it for podman container environments, and CI/CD systems. Depending on the network it is utilized from 25% to 75% of all systems on the networks. RHEL provides a stable compliant Linux operating system that allows us to have ease of maintenance and a solid platform for capabilities to develop on.

Pros

  • Podman integration provides a stable container platform with rootless capabilities, ensuring security of systems and neighboring containers
  • It provides a clean and reliable way to replicate Repos for Air-Gaped Networks. This ensures the ability for administrators to ensure security compliance.
  • Provides a solid standardized build platform that allows for multiple systems to seamlessly integrate.

Cons

  • SELinux is difficult to set-up and utilize properly
  • better tools for implementing commonly utilized configurations
  • Better Training for new admins to utilize systems.

Return on Investment

  • I don't have any direct impact I can quote

Usability

Alternatives Considered

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Go Red Hat Go

Incentivized
Kevin Mitchell
IT Architect in Information Technology at GA Tech (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is our primary support Linux distribution for campus.

Pros

  • Reliable updates
  • Support by 3rd party applications
  • Consistent configuration over Major releases

Cons

  • More options when building images
  • Price keeps going up faster than additional features/functions
  • More options for site licenses

Return on Investment

  • Allows us to standardize on a Linux distribution across multiple applications
  • Allows us to focus on system managed on a single Linux Distribution
  • Have access to support to work on those hard issues such as changes to to NFSv3 and firewalls

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, Red Hat Satellite, Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and Red Hat Virtualization (discontinued)

Other Software Used

Ubuntu Pro

Distributor Red Hat View

Incentivized
Raphael Militino does Reis
Sales Manager in Sales at PARS (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We combine Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with an IAM solution, we install a product called Horacius in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Pros

  • Interface
  • Performance
  • Security
  • Stability

Cons

  • Documentation to Install
  • Base for Doubts fast
  • Update process

Return on Investment

  • Lower investment
  • Fast to migrate for new version

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Other Software Used

Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, Red Hat Satellite

RHEL Review Exelon

Incentivized
Matt Sargent
Principal Systems Engineer in Engineering at Exelon (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use RHEL throughout our division, 1700+ servers within a secure utility industry environment. We standardized to RHEL from various platforms like AIX, HPUX and Solaris due to being industry standard unix style OS that had our primary application vendor support as well a number of other secondary platform vendors.

Pros

  • OS Tech Support is responsive to our needs
  • As an industry standard our vendors all comply with RHEL framework
  • Timely Package release schedule

Cons

  • Support Docs can be untimely at times
  • RHEL is separating from previous open source downstream providers that we rely on

Return on Investment

  • Since we switched to Red Hat Compatible Kernel supported by Oracle we have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars while still gaining the RedHat quality package support
  • Application vendor support is very streamlined

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Oracle Linux

Other Software Used

Nagios Core, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform