Boost Red Hat Enterprise Linux efficiency with Red Hat Insights

Overview

IT managers face a triad of pressures in managing their IT environments. Foremost is delivering operational efficiency that depends on factors such as security, performance, availability, and stability. Yet, these managers must deliver this efficiency while balancing available IT resources and skills as well as their costs. They must also help move the organization from reactive “fire-fighting” mode to one that focuses on delivering innovations that drive business advantages. These seem like competing pressures, but the right foundation and management solutions, based on Red Hat^® enterprise open source technology,  can help.

Linux^® is a key platform for running existing applications and new cloud innovations, so it must be manageable. Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps IT professionals scale and run workloads across bare-metal, virtual, and cloud environments. Subscriptions for Red Hat Enterprise Linux include capabilities that deliver Red Hat expertise as a cloud service to better manage deployments. 

Red Hat Insights is the proactive management capability in every active Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription. It provides a single, consistent solution for managing Red Hat Enterprise Linux implementations across hybrid environments. Based on extensive Red Hat knowledge, Insights routinely analyzes for security/vulnerability, compliance, performance, availability, and stability threats, and it determines which Red Hat advisories apply to your implementations. Its rules can also analyze Red Hat Enterprise Linux running specific workloads such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions and Microsoft SQL Server. Additional capabilities monitor for internal policy alignment and compare systems to baselines and other systems to help reduce complexity.

When you have all of this information about your environment, the next step is to take action. Red Hat Smart Management and other Red Hat Management products help resolve identified threats at scale using playbooks. This makes Red Hat a smarter, more efficient way to deliver IT value from Linux.

Improve operational confidence with step-by-step guidance

One key objective is to keep your applications running smoothly, because downtime can be costly to your business in terms of lost revenue and lower productivity. Outages and other problems are usually the result of a combination of detailed factors that are difficult to spot, especially in combination. Modern tools that add analytics so that administrators know when and where to focus attention can help reduce downtime.

For example, an issue may result from a specific configuration setting, combined with a specific operating system version that is running a specific workload. When one administrator is responsible for a large estate, there is simply not enough time to know every detail. This is where Insights pinpoints potential issues and their impact on your environment, as well as providing step-by-step guidance on how to resolve them. With this advanced information, your team is in a better position to resolve risks early. When you multiply this single scenario across a large management estate, the operational efficiency benefits from Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Insights become clear.

An additional way to improve operational efficiency is by simplifying the number of different operating environments across on-premise and cloud implementations. Insights includes services that help teams consistently understand where patches should be applied and when systems have drifted from expected configurations such as baseline images. These capabilities help reduce complexity and simplify troubleshooting by having fewer configurations with better reliability.

Improve security and compliance visibility

Gaining visibility into potential security and compliance risks is paramount. Insights helps get ahead of security issues, assessing and prioritizing security checks using Red Hat knowledge about its products and industry scores to identify which environments are most at risk. In addition, Insights assesses your infrastructure for compliance based on OpenSCAP policies so that your team can see and respond to compliance risks. These services complement the extensive security that is built in to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, giving you a range of capabilities to keep you ahead of security threats and aligned to compliance mandates and internal policies. And so, this comprehensive solution improves visibility into your current security and compliance posture.

Optimize enterprise-wide Linux skills and resources

Skilled Linux resources are in demand due to continued Linux growth. This has created a challenge to find and hire the best Linux resources. Many organizations are also being required to “do more with less” by using resources with lower skill levels or by implementing lower cost outsourcing programs. This leaves you with extensive estates to manage and not enough deep Linux skills.

Insights can help you bridge this gap with its ability to pinpoint potential risks and provide the  guidance needed to resolve these risks. Remediation guidance describes how to fix the issue manually, and for most issues it also includes a remediation playbook that can run via Red Hat Ansible^® Automation Platform or Red Hat Satellite. This helps your staff deepen their skills as they work, and it can make a smaller team more effective at keeping environments running smoothly. 

Support a focus on innovation

IT innovation drives business and especially digital transformation. As new applications prepare for production, operational teams have to ensure they are stable, secure, and tested on the target on-premise or cloud platforms. 

Operational teams that are continually reacting to unexpected issues and problems do not have the time or focus they need to complete these crucial transitional steps from development to production. Because Insights works proactively to help avoid outages and downtime, your teams can move from a culture of reactivity to one of thoughtful innovation where they have the time to finalize critical new applications.

Table 1. Benefits of Red Hat Insights

Get started with a smart platform choice

With Insights deployed, you can be more confident and efficient in operations—resulting in improved business value. The installation process for Insights is simple. Your administrator registers a client, reviews issues on a cloud-based visual dashboard, and remediates identified issues using the provided guidance. Your team can get started quickly at redhat.com/insights.

Red Hat can also provide a full suite of additional management solutions that help you manage and automate across the IT life cycle. All of this helps to make Red Hat a smart platform choice for productive and efficient operations.

Learn more about Red Hat Insights at redhat.com/insights.