RHEL vs SUSE

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux also known by its acronym RHEL is a commercial GNU/Linux distribution developed by Red Hat. Red Hat is the world's leading provider of open source enterprise solutions, using a community-driven approach to deliver high-performance Linux, cloud, container and Kubernetes technologies. Red Hat solutions are used by 100% of airlines, communications service providers, commercial banks and Fortune Global 500 healthcare companies. 

RHEL is the commercial version based on Fedora, which in turn is based on the earlier Red Hat Linux. RHEL usually releases versions every 18 to 24 months. Each of these versions has a series of value-added services on which it bases its business (support, training, consulting, certification, etc.). Each version released is currently supported for at least 10 years from the date of release.

RHEL and SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) support many of the same architectures, such as ARM64, x86-32, x86-64 and Power Architecture, and both are suitable for servers, mainframes and workstations.

RHEL has been named the best enterprise operating system by many publications, including PC Magazine and InfoWorld. It also won Techworld's Best Operating System award in 2013. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is widely used in all types of enterprises.

SUSE

SUSE is an independent open source company, following its acquisition in March 2019 by EQT Partners from Micro Focus. EQT, an investor focused on software industry development, is the fifth owner of SUSE in 18 years.

SUSE offers a number of products and services that compete directly with Red Hat, among them:

• SUSE Enterprise Linux Server (SLES)a direct competitor to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
  
• SLES for SAP Applications, a direct competitor to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions.
• SLES with Extended Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (SLES-ES)a support offering for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other Linux distributions.

Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) is a Linux-based operating system developed by SUSE. It is designed for servers, mainframes and workstations, but can also be installed on desktop computers for testing. Major versions are released at an interval of 3 to 4 years, while minor versions (called "Service Packs") are released approximately every 12 months. SUSE Linux Enterprise products, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, are tested more intensively than the openSUSE community product, with the intention that only mature and stable versions of the included components make it into the released enterprise product.

SUSE Strengths:

Strong revenue growth. For the six months ended 30 April 2018, SUSE delivered revenue of $182.9 million, representing continued growth of approximately 17 percent over the same period last year.

Mainframe Leadership. SUSE is the leader and incumbent in deploying Linux on IBM Z-series mainframes.

Vendor support. SUSE fosters a broad ecosystem of independent software and hardware vendors (ISVs and IHVs), with relationships with IBM and HPE.

True open source product. SLES is derived from the OpenSUSE project, a Linux community program similar to Fedora.org.

Long life cycle and support history. SLES has a similar lifecycle and support offering to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Patching without rebooting. SUSE offers SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching, formerly known as Kgraft, as an additional subscription (a current SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Priority subscription is required). This service provides a reboot-free kernel patch stream for kernels up to one year old. NOTE: Red Hat offers an equivalent service at par.

Weaknesses of SUSE:

Diminishing market interest. SUSE is not widely covered in the market and is not seen as a threat by most technology journalists.

Smaller company with an uncertain future. SUSE has changed ownership every few years, and customers may be concerned about SUSE's ability to meet the milestones in its multi-year roadmap.

In addition, SUSE has a global workforce of only 1,750 employees, making it difficult to effectively support a broad product portfolio. SUSE's small size means that each additional product in its portfolio means fewer support and engineering resources are available for others.

Lack of advanced predictive insight and management tools. SUSE offers a centralised tool for basic management operations, but this tool does not provide the advanced predictive analytics or prescriptive remediation capabilities of Red Hat Insights (included with all Red Hat Enterprise Linux products), Red Hat Insights (included with all Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions) or Red Hat Satellite (available through Red Hat Smart Management). Not included with SLES subscriptions and not included with SLES subscriptions.

Lack of leadership in the public cloud. SUSE offers SLES images on all major public cloud services, but surveys commissioned by Red Hat show that awareness and adoption of SLES in the public cloud is minimal. Only 7% of respondents use SLES in a public cloud environment.

As organisations move an increasing number of workloads to the cloud, the growth of SLES risks stagnating.

Binary compatibility between releases is not guaranteed. SUSE changes the basis of its kernel between minor releases, which makes its commitment to maintain binary compatibility questionable. This could cause customer applications and hardware to perform differently than intended in upgrades.

SUSE typically offers a life cycle of less than five years for each kernel release.

Strengths of RHEL:

Leading Linux kernel contributor. Red Hat remains a major contributor to the Linux kernel, submitting nearly 6,000 kernel changes, more than twice as many as SUSE.

Major contributor to OpenStack. Red Hat is a major corporate contributor to OpenStack.

RHEL prioritises stability above all else, which is probably one of the reasons why 90 percent of Fortune Global 500 companies rely on it.

Strong revenue growth. Red Hat's business is growing at 17% CAGR through February 2019.

Complete portfolio. Red Hat offers a full stack of infrastructure software, from operating platforms and middleware to software-defined storage and advanced management. Red Hat products are integrated and interoperable, so customers can deploy what they need today and expand as needed over time, knowing that new components will work reliably.

Stable, established company. Red Hat has a track record of more than 25 years in delivering enterprise Linux, with a global workforce of more than 13,300 employees.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the leading paid-for Linux distribution, with 65% of the paid-for Linux market as of 2017.

Linux market leadership. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the flagship product of Red Hat, the leading open source software vendor of open source software with more than $3.36 billion in annual sales.

It leads the paid Linux market with almost 3 million subscriptions sold annually and a 65% market share. It is also the preferred commercial Linux distribution for public cloud deployments, used by 29% of organisations surveyed, compared to SLES at only 7%.

Proven, scalable and security-focused product. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is successfully deployed in mission-critical environments in many industries, including financial services, telecommunications, retail, government and defence, and healthcare.

Wide range of certified hardware platforms and architectures. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is certified for use with over 3,000 hardware configurations, including x86 and RISC/UNIX servers, mainframes, workstations and storage devices.

Wide selection of applications. More than 4,000 applications from hundreds of independent software vendors (ISVs) are certified for use on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, demonstrating its status as the premier platform for commercial software developers.

Live Patch Service. All Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions can now access live kernel patches for critical and important common vulnerabilities and common exposures (CVEs) at no additional cost through the Red Hat Content Delivery Network.

Integration with Red Hat Insights. Red Hat Insights, included with all Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions, provides unique predictive operating system analytics that help customers protect their systems, comply with regulations, maximise performance, and reduce downtime in on-premises, open hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud environments.
It collects anonymous information about registered Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems to quickly identify and remediate security, compliance, availability, and performance risks.

Certified and supported for use with the Red Hat portfolio.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the foundation of Red Hat's integrated software stack. You can extend your environment with advanced, high-performance virtualisation and management tools, open source cloud, and Kubernetes-based container platforms with the confidence that all are certified and supported for use together.

Performance
Red Hat Enterprise Linux boasts many world-record benchmark results, including leadership in SPECjbb 2015 in server-side Java® performance in critical composite jOPS and maximum composite jOPS.

The top supercomputers, including Summit and Sierra, the top two on the TOP500 list, run Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Troubleshooting is proactive, automated and helps ensure that customer environments are running optimally to avoid problems and unplanned downtime, while increasing operational efficiency. 

In fact, Red Hat Insights can help customers detect application-specific problems 96% faster than using a manual approach and scriptedworkflows.

○ Accelerates the identification of security vulnerabilities by 91%.

○ Accelerates the detection of configuration deviations by 90%.

○ Accelerates identification of unpatched systems by 89%.

○ Accelerates policy creation by 70%.

If your organisation is not constrained by the environment of other operating system vendors, then RHEL should be your next choice.
Administration is becoming more and more advanced, making it comparable to the "point and click" that most administrators use. Scripting has always been the method of Linux system administration and even Microsoft is starting to catch on with its PowerShell features.

The solution has features that simplify adoption for non-Linux users. There is an interface that can be activated on RHEL systems, and also on other Linux systems, so you get a graphical user interface instead of just an interface. It is easier for an administrator who is used to working only on Windows.

Most of the system configuration is Namespace, so it is easy to access and easy to configure, and most of it still uses text documents. Not everything is a menu-type entry. It has a very standard file system layout, so it is easy to navigate.

The feature that our customers tend to like the most is that they can easily integrate it with their existing infrastructure. They found that it is much easier to deploy RHEL in their environment compared to another distribution.