Selecting the operating system for the server is an important decision that enterprises have to make. Another essential aspect of IT infrastructure is the operating system, which can significantly affect performance, security, cost, and the extent of innovation.

Linux became the first choice for enterprise servers in the last decade and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is considered the best one. It is quite clear that there are numerous compelling factors that organizations opt for a Red Hat server over other choices such as Windows Server or Ubuntu Server.

The main concept of this blog post will be to focus on the twelve key benefits of choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux as an optimal server operating system for business applications.

1. World-Class Enterprise Support Services

Red Hat server has technical support through the Red Hat Customer Portal where it provides its technical support services to its customers throughout the world for all their products and services and this is done round the clock. Enterprises obtain telephonic and web-based service support to sort out problems and ensure their integral applications are functioning.

Since its founding, Red Hat has more than twenty years of experience in offering solid business support for open-source products. I got to know that they hire support engineers who are experts in fixing difficult issues with Linux servers in the enterprise environment.

2. Leading Linux Innovations

Redhat Enterprise Linux itself is a compilation of many innovative open-source technologies specifically designed for the enterprise environment. These are improved security capabilities supported by SELinux, better performance and scalability, new approaches to the use of containers and Docker & Kubernetes, and many others.

RHEL always provides such capabilities ready for enterprises, much before the other server operating systems do. It thus helps enterprises scale from the various contributions made by Red Hat to various open-source projects.

3. Cutting-Edge Security Features

Redhat Enterprise Linux enables the most important security technologies that can safeguard your infrastructure from modern threats such as malware, intrusions, or data breaches.

For example – SELinux is a powerful module that allows only certain processes access files and other processes, to minimize the impact of a hacked application. Other capabilities include sVirt for secure virtual machine isolation and Capsule8, which employs machine learning to identify threats during runtime.

4. Certified Infrastructure Stack

The Redhat Enterprise Linux operating system is tightly integrated with leading hardware and software suppliers, providing certified systems for a wide range of applications. This certification testing establishes that stability, reliability, and performance are consistent across thousands of configurations.

Therefore, enterprises can implement the RHEL with the assurance that the operating system will seamlessly run with the servers, virtualization, cloud service providers, databases, applications, and so on.

5. Cross-Platform Flexibility

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is also aimed at delivering reliability and stability in operation across the cloud and on-premise infrastructure. This makes it easy to work across your own data center, external public cloud providers, and the growing edge space.

The same RHEL environment and application stack is deployable on VMs, containers, and bare metal servers both on-premise and on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

6. Lower TCO

By opting for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you are therefore able to reduce your TCO which is a function of the cost of licenses, hardware, support, training, and operational costs over the life of the product.

IDC indicates that the cost savings of RHEL amount to 42 percent higher compared to using a proprietary, closed-source server OS. Using open-source economics can prevent being locked into a certain vendor and having to pay a large fee in the future for a license.

7. Rich Application Ecosystem

Red Hat manages the largest independent software vendor ecosystem with over 1400 vendors who have certified over half of the available 5400 applications to work on RHEL and its relative CentOS Stream.

Organizations have a wide variety of ISV options to host third-party applications for various processes involving databases, analytics, app platforms, and management tools. Leading ISVs such as SAP, Oracle, IBM, and Nvidia, amongst others, have their software verified for the most current RHEL.

8. Architectural Consistency

Enterprise Linux therefore offers consistent and less-volatile platform features which while still evolving, are not revolutionized as often to disrupt compatibility or certifications. This means you can leverage on the new features and updates based on your schedule and not when a new interface update poses a risk to your architecture.

The long-term stability of RHEL’s foundational components makes for steady operation of ISV workloads over years without the need to requalify each time as is required with constantly evolving platforms.

9. Continuous Security Updates

Edge server offers maintenance releases with security vulnerabilities and bug fixes for each major RHEL release with a support cycle of over a decade. You can forget about having to implement complex updates quite often or even undergo an OS upgrade simply to fix a security issue.

Simplified patching makes it possible to have a protected RHEL environment by rolling out smaller incremental changes in the form of errata using a centralized platform like Satellite.

10. Simplified Compliance & Audits

Red Hat Linux has Common Criteria EAL 4 + certification with compliance on CIS benchmarks, HIPAA, FISMA, PCI-DSS, and other benchmarks.

This was made possible by implementing validated security controls in its audit compliance, and configuration baselines, and running only open-source codes. You do not have to integrate and prove tailored compensating controls on-demand with closed proprietary platforms.

11. DevOps-Ready Platform

Red Hat Enterprise Linux can therefore be described as an effective OS for the modern app development and deployment methodologies or paradigms encompassed under DevSecOps.

Integrated features related to containers (with Podman/Buildah), Kubernetes (via Red Hat OpenShift), infrastructure-as-code (using Ansible), and other solutions provide for a faster application delivery lifecycle with security concerns addressed.

12. Strategic Technology Investment Protection

Selecting Red Hat offers long-term investment security since it promotes business-open, flexible hybrid cloud solutions that do not bind an organization to any one hardware or software supplier. Regardless of whether you subsequently move from the current on-prem servers or the public cloud provider you use, the Red Hat server also guarantees application portability.

In Summary

It is for these 12 reasons as explained above that Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers definite technical, operational, and economical advantages and is the correct long-term foundation for enterprise workloads investment. Through continuous leading innovations combined with widespread certifications and long-term consistency, RHEL can be utilized and maximized by enterprises as an integral foundation for their current and future digital transformation plans.