CentOS: The Reliable and Secure Server
April 06, 2019
CentOS: The Reliable and Secure Server
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with CentOS
CentOS is currently being used as the primary OS for our Zabbix Server and our Web Server that hosts a couple of our websites. CentOS is a very stable build of Linux based off of Red Hat but it is free so you get a lot of the power and features of Red Hat Enterprise but you do not need to pay for any licenses. We are using it because we wanted to run our web server on a very minimalistic and quick operating system that we knew would we not really run into any issues with. I can say for as long as I have been dealing with the server side of things I have never had any problems with our web server or our Zabbix server.
- CentOS is very secure and stable. It is on par with RHEL and receives a lot of the same corporate level security updates making it a great choice for all users.
- Another strength of CentOS would be its longer release cycle and longer support cycle. RHEL packages have been through a lot of testing before going to the repositories. This helps makes sure that all bugs are found and "hopefully" fixed prior to being released. Both RHEL and CentOS releases are usually supported for about 10 years.
- Then I think really the other thing is just speed as I mentioned above. CentOS runs very basic software and will run much faster than other similar Linux distributions.
- I also really like CentOS Web Panel for our web server. I don't know if that was built in or if it was something we added on, but it is a free application that allows us to manage our hosted sites very easily and see how everything is doing. We can just open up a web browser and browse out to CWP and see all the stats of our websites.
- The hugest drawback, but also the best feature of CentOS is the lack of updates. It is awesome because you know what you have installed on your server is going to just work, but it works because the release is usually older and has been tested to work. With that being said you don't get the latest and possibly greatest versions of the software. So you could be missing out on some great new features.
- Nothing else really I feel is a con. It is a really good Linux server option.
- CentOS has just been a positive impact on our company. We have a fast, secure and reliable web server that has the same standards as the Enterprise version of Red Hat.
- The biggest positive for me personally working as a System Admin is that I don't have to do anything with this server on a daily basis. It does what it is supposed to do for us every single day. Once a month, I run "yum update" and see if there are any updates and install as needed.
I am currently looking into Ubuntu Web Server. I believe I have 18.04 installed on my test lab. I have been trying to compare speeds and reliability to our CentOS Server. The hard part for me is finding a decent web panel to use. CentOS Web Panel is really nice and I have not really come across anything I like as much as it so far.