Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, also known by its acronymRHEL, is a commercial distribution of GNU/Linux developed byRed 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 the airlines, communication service providers, commercial banks, and healthcare companies on the Fortune Global 500 list.

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

SUSEis an independent open source company, following its acquisition in March 2019 by EQT Partners from Micro Focus. EQT, an investor focused on the development of the software industry, is SUSE's fifth owner 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 desktops for testing purposes. Major releases are released every 3 to 4 years, while minor releases (called "Service Packs") are released approximately every 12 months. SUSE Linux Enterprise products, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, undergo more intensive testing 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. Forthe six months ended April 30, 2018, SUSE generated revenue of $182.9 million, representing continued growth of approximately 17 percent over the same period last year.

Mainframe leadership. SUSEis the leader and incumbent in the implementation of Linux on IBM Z series mainframes.

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

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

Long lifecycle and support history. SLEShas a lifecycle and support offering similar to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

No-reboot patches.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 stream of no-reboot kernel patches for kernels up to one year old. NOTE: Red Hat offers an equivalent service.

Weaknesses of SUSE:

Declining market interest. SUSEdoes not have significant market coverage and is not viewed as a threat by most technology journalists.

Smaller company with an uncertain future. SUSEhas changed ownership every few years, and customers may be concerned about SUSE's ability to achieve 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 available for the others.

Lack of advanced management tools and predictive insights. SUSE offers a centralized 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 in SLES subscriptions.

Lack of leadership in the public cloud. SUSEoffers SLES images on major public cloud services, but surveys commissioned by Red Hat show that awareness and adoption of SLES in the public cloud are 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 versions is not guaranteed.SUSE changes its kernel base between minor versions, which makes its commitment to maintaining binary compatibility questionable. This could cause customer applications and hardware to behave differently than expected in updates.

SUSE typically offers a lifecycle of less than five years for each kernel version.

Strengths of RHEL:

Leading contributor to the Linux kernel. RedHat remains one of the leading contributors to the Linux kernel, submitting nearly 6,000 kernel changes, more than twice as many as SUSE.

Major contributor to OpenStack. RedHat is one of the leading corporate contributors to OpenStack.

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

Strong revenue growth.Red Hat'sbusinessis growing at a 17% CAGR through February 2019.

Complete portfolio. RedHat offers a complete 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 their needs grow over time, knowing that new components will work reliably.

Stable and well-established company. RedHat has a track record of more than 25 years in providing 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.

Market leadership in Linux.Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the flagship product of Red Hat, the leading open source software provider with over $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 across many industries, including financial services, telecommunications, retail, government and defense, and healthcare.

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

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

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

Integration with Red Hat Insights.Included with every Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, RedHat Insights provides unique predictive analytics for the operating system that helps customers secure their systems, comply with regulations, maximize performance, and reduce downtime across 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 management and high-performance virtualization tools, open source cloud, and Kubernetes-based container platforms with the confidence that they are all certified and supported for use together.

Performance
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has many world record benchmark results, including leadership inSPECjbb2015 for server-side Java® performance in composite critical jOPS and composite maximum 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 specific application issues 96% faster than using a manual approach and scripted workflows.

○ 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 organization is not constrained by the environment of other operating system manufacturers, then RHEL should be your next choice.
Administration is becoming increasingly 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 implement it 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.