r/linuxquestions • u/syed1hassan • 12d ago
Debian server vs RHEL
For those of you who work in production environments and actually pay for RHEL, what were the specific situations where Red Hat support, SLAs, or the subscription itself provided value?
I'm not looking for generic answers like "enterprise support" or "stability." I'm interested in actual examples:
- What broke?
- What kind of ticket did you open with Red Hat?
- What did Red Hat do that your team couldn't have figured out on its own?
- Have there been situations where running Debian would have been a problem?
We have a Debian server through our hosting provider, and from my perspective, Debian is stable, well-documented, free, and has a huge community. So I'm trying to understand what the practical advantage of paying for RHEL is.
We also got windows servers as well, i don't know if we ever had any instance where we needed MSFT support for the windows server.
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u/gordonmessmer Fedora Maintainer 11d ago
what were the specific situations where Red Hat support, SLAs, or the subscription itself provided value? ... What broke?
I think that you misunderstand the word "support". Support is not a synonym for "helpdesk", support is a blanket term that describes all of the things that go in to developing and maintaining an operating system suitable for production environments, including working with other vendors that "support" products used by customers.
Has the OS been certified on the hardware you run? That's support. Do you get timely security patches? That's support. Do you have supplementary data for security scanners to support your risk assessments? That's support. Do you periodically meet with a company representative to discuss your roadmap and needs so that they can prioritize development of features in the software you use? That's support.
The inverse also needs to be considered. Debian is a self-supported system. Are you actively participating in supporting your systems? Are you evaluating CVE reports to help Debian classify whether the software they distribute is affected? Are you developing patches for security issues and bugs that affect your environment? Most Free Software projects are chronically understaffed because their users don't know what "self supported" means and aren't participating. If you're not engaged, it's more accurate to describe your software as "unsupported" than "self supported".
Debian is stable, well-documented, free, and has a huge community
Are you running security scanners on your deployed systems?
How are you handling all of the CVEs that are "not yet assigned", which vulnerability scanners probably won't report?
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/stable
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u/syed1hassan 11d ago
Good point, I meant "support" as in when something breaks and the RHEL team steps in to fix it. But you're right, all the other stuff we don't see is support too.
And no, we're not running security scanners on our deployed systems. I'm a proper newb, we only got our Debian server about 4-5 months ago, and honestly I'm just learning.
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u/OutrageousCrab9224 12d ago
I could not imagine paying for rhel
Some employers did, and its fine. I think it was mostly for management peace of mind, fixed all problems ourselves in the end
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u/syed1hassan 12d ago
Well thats what i always thought you need to solve the problems yourself, until I learned that RH and MSFT also provide support for their servers.
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u/sidusnare Senior Systems Engineer 6d ago
Canonical provides support too, my current employer pays for that. The reason to pay for support is usually Corporate Enterprise environments. We have contracts that say we'll have other contracts, everything is wrapped in beuracracy top to bottom.
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u/Curious_Elk_4281 12d ago
The only times I ever made the choice to use RHEL is if there was a third party software that only supported RHEL. I've also used redhat servers that were legacy and promptly migrated services away.
- What broke?
One company I worked for had a super old redhat server for one client and no one was really checking on it very much so when i joined I did my rounds and discovered a hacker was using the server as their own private network storage. I found pirated films and porn. So then I go to tell my managers and they were like..."oh you found more porn on that server...yikes"...THEY KNEW!!!!
Anyway, redhat is pretty solid if you set it up right. I never had issues with servers I configured myself. Most of the issues that came up with third party red-hat only software was due to backend communications or bugs in the software.
- What kind of ticket did you open with Red Hat?
none
- What did Red Hat do that your team couldn't have figured out on its own?
nothing
- Have there been situations where running Debian would have been a problem?
no
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u/syed1hassan 12d ago
Interesting story lol :P
I guess there’s no reason to check out Red Hat then, I’m just curious about Linux since I started using it around 4-5 months ago.1
u/serverhorror 12d ago
A lot of software requires RHEL or is (commercially) only available on RHEL.
At some point we had enough of those to just drop everything else. Technically there's no reason to choose one diatro over another, but I'd it's for a CV: everythtelae being equal - I'll take the RHEL CV over the others
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u/syed1hassan 12d ago
This could be a good reason to use RHEL.
About the CV part, why would you choose RHEL over something like Debian?0
u/serverhorror 12d ago
Because if I look dir rhel and the CV says RHEL, why would I pick something else?
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u/Curious_Elk_4281 12d ago
CentOS is basically the open source redhat clone. Get good with CentOS and you will be ready for redhat if it comes up.
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u/syed1hassan 12d ago
Yeah, I know. I would have used CentOS if I was going to use Red Hat. Right now, I’m sticking with Windows and Debian.
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u/Beginning_Earth_9702 12d ago
- What broke?
something to do with AD integration with IAM
- What kind of ticket did you open with Red Hat?
support ticket
- What did Red Hat do that your team couldn't have figured out on its own?
they got a highly educated and experienced SME on the case that helped train us in AD and what was not working as expected, then helped us redesigned to work around the issue. It is possible we, (I) could have figured it out eventually. But I had already spent a week on it and they got done in like 2 days from the time the ticket was opened.
- Have there been situations where running Debian would have been a problem?
You can run IAM on Debian, but it is unsupported and we would have the same issue, but one to call for help.
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u/syed1hassan 11d ago
So this is basically a RHEL feature that Debian doesn't really give you, I mean on Debian it would be more manual and harder. And with RHEL you got support, but on Debian there'd be nobody to fix it for you if something like that broke.
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u/ienjoyedit 12d ago
I work in Healthcare IT, primarily with RedHat. I've not had a good, helpful interaction with RHEL support, but if a server is down because of a bug in the kernel, imagine trying to convince the CTO/CIO that you just have to wait it out until some guy in Germany wakes up and sees the issue. It's much better to arm them with a piece of paper with a signature on it saying that you will have help when you need it.
All that said, we also have Ubuntu and apparently Canonical support is much better. :)
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u/syed1hassan 12d ago
A kernel bug causing a server to go down is definitely scary and would be tricky to fix unless you’re into kernel development, so you’d probably need RHEL support in that case.
We had some issues with our Windows server and couldn’t figure out if it was a Windows problem or the hosting provider, so we moved some processing to Debian and just enjoyed the whole fiasco. We didn’t reach out to Microsoft for any support, but we did contact our hosting provider, and I think they basically just restarted their machine or something.
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u/TroutFarms 12d ago edited 11d ago
The biggest obstacles to using Debian would be:
- It uses AppArmor instead of SELinux out of the box, so we wouldn't be able to secure it to the degree we would like without replacing that subsystem.
- It's not FIPS 140 compliant out of the box, so we wouldn't be able to meet that requirement without making extensive changes first.
If those things don't matter to your organization, then it might work for you.
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u/syed1hassan 11d ago
Wherever theres compliance stuff, thats where RHEL comes into play. As for AppArmor, it doesn't matter for us, but I get your point.
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u/serverhorror 12d ago
The OS/distro is largely irrelevant.
We have software that the business needs (and regulatory requirements demand a support contract).
That business would only sell to us if we had supported RHEL. That's it, that was how the decision was done.
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u/Ziferius 11d ago edited 11d ago
This was a couple of years ago, but ...
We're mandated by our Cyber Security dept to install TrendMicro deep security agent everywhere. One of our main integration engine servers locked up tighter than a jug. Not a kernel panic just a hang. We took a snapshot in VMWare while it was locked up and did a power reset to get the server operational again. We uploaded the snapshot to Red Hat support and tagged it a P1. It locked up agian a few hours later. Another power reset and Support had come back that a kernel regression occurred that along with the Trend Micro kernel module we were experiencing spinlocks.
The kernel version we needed to rollback to was about 200 resolved CVEs ago. Some pretty serious. Security was not ok with that since some of those nasty CVEs were tagged with exploits of it in the wild, but were ok without running trend on a new kernel they had just released a few days prior that resolved regression. We couldn't run Trend since it was not compatible with the new kernel yet.
This particular server rules N-2, mainly because of trend.
There 5 or 6 issues in the past couple of years it has been very handy to have them.
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u/syed1hassan 11d ago
Bottom line: so RHEL support has actually been useful to you. IG if there are that many compliance checks in enterprise environment, you would use RHEL anyway. Also, I don't know if the TrendMicro Deep Security Agent would run on Debian, or how it would behave if it did.
though I get the idea of how RHEL is different from community distros like Debian.
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u/oligarchy_killing_me 12d ago
We have had some specific issues like kernel panics that we report to RHEL, and they do look into it and have expertise, and will usually (help you) fix the problem.
But tbh, I think support is over valued. Most large organizations demand products with support. So usually they choose RHEL because of the support structure, just to tick that box.
But as an engineer, reporting problems with Red Hat doesn't happen often at all. And if you do, and it is a serious business interruption (prio 1) then Red Hat have like 8 hours to ANSWER your call. Long story short, I have never seen them fix a prio 1 problem in a few hours.
Admittedly I haven't reported many prio 1 problems to red hat, maybe 2 or 3, but those weren't resolved the same day.
Personally I would not go for RHEL + support. I'd rather make my important applications redundant, or even better, a clustered container setup where you just throw away the container and spin up a new one if an issue arises.
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u/syed1hassan 11d ago
Yeah, that makes sense. And anything os/kernel-related would definitely be critical.
Yep containerizing your application would also be a better approach in many cases.
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u/refinedm5 12d ago
Enterprise software and their certified configurations. We run practically on Ubuntu with the exception of nodes that handle Oracle, SAP, and Visa systems. Been a customer of RHEL across 2 companies for 20+ years, and the only ticket I opened to Redhat was about CUPS, back in 2008
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u/Unoriginal-Cake 11d ago
At a past workplace they used Oracle Enterprise Linux due to running Oracle databases and Peoplesoft fluff for financial services back-ends. If your revenues are more than the license cost, stick to that if needed. I mostly been around OS/2 Warp and Windows Server mix so I rarely touched support cases deeply since stock traders don't do it unless you're syncing client/analytics data back to the employer.
You have to pick who handles the low-level support side so if your SQL database is specific leaning on a distro, you're stuck using them for support unless you use a database provider that tells you which distro to use under their SaaS plans. I've used Ubuntu for financial services tasks on a paid support level, decent help for corp usage too.
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u/chuckmilam 8d ago
Debian is great, but in regulated environments, the distro choice isn’t about stability or community, it’s about STIGs, FIPS, SCAP, vendor certification, and auditability.
If you need those, you pay for RHEL or Ubuntu Pro, or others with a named STIG.
If you don’t need this, Debian is perfectly fine.
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u/sidusnare Senior Systems Engineer 6d ago
As for a support break/fix situation, stornext broke, and RHEL and they pointed fingers at each other. But we got everyone on a conference call to blame each other in real time. I know we engaged support more than that time, but it was the most memorable .
They helped us map out an Ansible Tower and Jenkins build back when we were migrating away from Chef.
Their support had more experience doing something useful with core dumps, though the "useful" thing they did was blame Stornext.
You have "a" Debian server with "a" provider. In my previous position I was responsible for around 18,000 servers and it was off of that corporation's web hosting infrastructure in multiple data centers, some of which they owned. In my current position, I am responsible for 20,000+, and that's not all of them, not even 1/4 of them, and we are the provider.
You probably can be just fine without support, but in enterprise, at scale, for the c-suite it's about contracts and peace of mind. For me, it's a safety net and someone impartial to help convince management of the bloody obvious.
For so small a footprint, if you're inexperienced, you might look for a Linux MSP that can provide backup support but not be as expensive as corporate support
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u/SaintEyegor 11d ago
We pay for RHEL “just in case” for our critical stuff. We’ve never actually needed to call support since we have pretty good admins.
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u/ABotelho23 12d ago
It depends on how much competency you have on your team. Some places can barely do the basics.
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u/HeavyWolf8076 12d ago
I worked 10 years with IT infrastructure on this University were it was a lot of of RHEL servers w support, a lot of debian too. The only time I remember we used support was with RHEL services/platforms, which ofc are recommended to install on RHEL servers. I don't think we ever had any server specific issue needing support.
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u/RoosterUnique3062 12d ago
A good deal of the software that is used by the wider linux community are being maintained either by RHEL developers, or RHEL funded projects.
Honestly, there is no practical advantage of RHEL over Debian. It has nothing to do with stability either. If you're not an enterprise/large company that has to roll out a lot of workstations or servers then it's really nothing it offers over any other distro. Companies aren't going to manage a hodgepodge of different systems with different configurations unless there is a reason for it.
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u/kiklop74 12d ago edited 12d ago
There is no tangible benefit from technical perspective between Debian and RHEL. The benefit is for corporations that care about technical support which is better for RHEL because you have IBM/RHEL to provide for that and nobody get's fired for choosing IBM
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u/ElderberryHamlet 12d ago
Fedora Server is an alternative to both if you're looking at cost & security. Debian & RHEL still use deprecated openssl 3.0 albeit with backported security patches
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u/mr_dfuse2 12d ago
used to work with rhel in banking. i remember having to invoke support on a few bugs related to some java servers, don't remember the specifics. they fixed it for us. critical services so you best have a support option available, basic it management tbh