Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. Windows Server

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

312 Reviews and Ratings

Windows Server

839 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)	Score9.3 out of 10	N/A	Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux distribution mainly used in commercial data centers.	N/A
Windows Server	Score8.2 out of 10	N/A	N/A	N/A

Pricing

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Windows Server

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Pricing Offerings
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)	Windows Server
Free Trial
No	No
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

No setup fee

No setup fee

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Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)	Windows Server
Considered Both Products	Red Hat Verified User Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) While many enterprise applications offer Windows Server support, I never really seriously considered it for our application, as Windows simply Blue Screens too often for serving a business critical application. Instead, I took a look at Red Hat's upstream distro, CentOS. Had … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Windows Server's are perfect competition for RHEL as many people use Windows Servers for deploying their applications. Windows provides good GUI but it lacks in many aspects in which RHEL is a win-win. As earlier mentioned, the performance of RHEL is unbeatable cannot be … Incentivized Helpful? Ravinder Gupta Senior Oracle Database Administrator in Information Technology at CGI (Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees) Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) We used Windows Server. It has not been very painful but when I compare it with RHEL the patching process was lengthy. We also ran into occasional performance issues that were not very straight forward to diagnose. Incentivized Helpful? John Moss IV Systems Engineer in Engineering at CDW (Computer Hardware, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) We are in our infancy of exploring Ubuntu as an option. Red Hat is more robust but Ubuntu may offer cost savings, Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) RHEL is the most reliable and what our organization prefers Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) It’s flexible and lightweight with a solid security face Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Red Hat Enterprise Linux stands above Windows and Ubuntu, in my opinion, because of streamlined features, excellent support, and plethora of available documentation and user created tools. Incentivized Helpful? Chris Saenz Lead System Engineer in Information Technology at Azusa Pacific University (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) RHEL is very different than Windows, but in terms of just a simple operating system, RHEL is much more lightweight than Windows and in many cases runs more efficiently than Windows. Given the choice between the two, some application are preferable on RHEL, like Apache or … Incentivized Helpful? Marc Shaffer CEO in Corporate at US DataVault, Inc (Computer & Network Security, 11-50 employees) Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Beats them all for reliability, security, ease of use and setup, as well as patching. It has fewer support problems and is easily serviced. Support is easy to find and quite helpful. Windows crashed all the time and Azure was at times spotty. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Secure Robust Redundancy feature Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Each of the different flavors of Linux have their positives and negatives but ultimately for the projects that I chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux was due for the need of online and phone support just in case something came up and we could not solve it on our own. This happens … Incentivized Helpful? Ryan Payne Oracle Solution Architect in Information Technology at Avista (Utilities, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Linux has improved features and utilities over Unix. Scalability and ease of configuration management an improvement over Windows. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) We chose RHEL over other Linux distributions because of its enterprise support, stability, and security features. Compared to alternatives like Ubuntu or CentOS, RHEL offers more extended lifecycle support. Incentivized Helpful?	Microsoft Zakarieya Abderoef Solutions Architect in Information Technology at Baraka Technology Group (Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees) Chose Windows Server Windows Server is more cost-effective and skills are easier to find to support the products. The deployment and management of the product can be automated with Microsoft SCCM. In my opinion, Linux seems to be more secured but takes more time and effort to learn than Windows … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server These are just very different products. They can all have the same functionality but the specific product knowledge with Linux is much higher. This slows down troubleshooting and can leave you with limited options for high end support. There are absolutely good use cases for … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server For our more experienced users and for simple web apps we will go the RHEL route but with Windows Server such an industry standard the the ease of use of the GUI it just makes more sense for most applications that use it. It also generally has a lot more interoperability … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server I have some basic experience using various builds of Linux and have always found myself coming back to Windows. Perhaps after years of working with Microsoft products they all have a similar feel and configuration options. Microsoft products are my typical first choice where … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server We have various servers or appliances that run on various flavors of Linux that do their jobs well, but we configure and manage them very lightly at the OS level. Most of the admin on these devices is sone inside the applications themselves. We don't shy away from new … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server For our purposes it came down to picking between Windows and Linux and at the end of the day we picked both. We use Windows for 80% of our server needs to run our Web, File, Print, DHCP, Internal DNS, Active Directory, SQL, Web and other windows based servers. We use linux … Incentivized Helpful? Chris Saenz Lead System Engineer in Information Technology at Azusa Pacific University (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Windows Server Windows runs some applications better and is easier for junior admins and non-technical users to administer and get started with. It obviously does not run everything better, so other operating systems are preferable in some situations. Compared to OSs like RHEL, they both have … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server Windows Server is the only one that has an upfront cost for licensing before hardware is considered. Windows Server is generally better suited for multi-faceted approaches; however, for just backups, TrueNAS and Synology are cheaper and just as good. For standalone services … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server Windows Server is the most Enterprise/Business server around, easy to deploy and configure and to co-exist with other servers. Most if not every other server technology is usually very good for a very specific purpose but fail in the coexistence and integration when compared … Incentivized Helpful? Joseph Rounds Owner/Software Engineer in Information Technology at Lighthouse Consulting (Computer Software, 1-10 employees) Chose Windows Server A lot more industry-standard application support. Ease of use. Security patched happen more often. Incentivized Helpful? Kaitlyn Delacruz CEO (Chief Executive Officer) in Corporate at Yokai Sakura Limited (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees) Chose Windows Server When using a Linux system such as CentOS in a server situation to get certain features like Windows Server, it can take a lot of jerry-rigging and configuration to get the same results that can be set up with Windows Server in a lower amount of time. Incentivized Helpful? Jonathan Pauley Sales Engineer in Sales at Advanced Technical Solutions, LLC (Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees) Chose Windows Server Windows Server has much broader support for the majority of business applications available today. Linux only has very specific application support. Windows Server is also much easier to get support for as it is not an open-source server platform and the developer provides … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Windows Server Choosing a server technology actually means what platform will the software product that your company uses, require. Say that: Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
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	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
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User Ratings
	Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)	Windows Server
Likelihood to Recommend	9.3 (109 ratings)	8.2 (63 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	9.0 (1 ratings)	9.1 (6 ratings)
Usability	9.0 (1 ratings)	8.2 (7 ratings)
Availability	- (0 ratings)	7.3 (1 ratings)
Performance	- (0 ratings)	5.5 (1 ratings)
Support Rating	8.5 (7 ratings)	6.4 (19 ratings)
Implementation Rating	9.0 (1 ratings)	9.1 (4 ratings)
Configurability	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model	- (0 ratings)	4.5 (1 ratings)
Ease of integration	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (1 ratings)
Product Scalability	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (1 ratings)
Professional Services	- (0 ratings)	6.4 (1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	- (0 ratings)	7.3 (1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	- (0 ratings)	8.2 (1 ratings)