Best Practices for Deploying RHEL 8 on Microsoft Azure

ProComputers

11 Dec 2025 — 4 min read

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (RHEL 8) has become one of the most reliable and secure Linux distributions for enterprise cloud deployments. Its long-term support, predictable updates, and robust security framework make it ideal for hosting business-critical applications in modern hybrid and multi-cloud environments. When combined with Microsoft Azure, RHEL 8 delivers excellent performance, advanced security features, and seamless integration with Azure’s extensive ecosystem of compute, networking, and automation services.

This article provides practical best practices for deploying RHEL 8 on Azure, ensuring you build scalable, reproducible, and highly secure cloud infrastructure. It also highlights the availability of ProComputers RHEL 8 based images in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, offering a simple and reliable starting point for production deployments.

Start With Trusted Azure Marketplace Images

Before configuring your RHEL 8 environment, the foundation begins with the image you choose. Microsoft Azure offers several RHEL 8 images directly in the Azure Marketplace, including official Red Hat images and optimized enterprise-ready alternatives. Among these are the ProComputers RHEL-based images, designed to provide consistently maintained, cloud-optimized, and deployment-ready Linux environments for Azure virtual machines.

ProComputers images include:

Azure-optimized kernels
cloud-init for automated provisioning
Azure Linux Agent (waagent) preinstalled
Clean, minimal templates suitable for enterprise workloads
Variants tailored for different regional or compliance requirements

By starting with trusted Marketplace images, organizations ensure compatibility, predictable behavior, and long-term stability.

Architect for Cloud-Native Infrastructure

Deploying RHEL 8 in the cloud should be fundamentally different from deploying Linux on traditional servers. Azure is designed for elasticity, automation, and resiliency—and your RHEL 8 strategy should follow the same principles.

Key best practices include:

Deploy virtual machines in Availability Zones for high availability
Use Azure Load Balancer or Application Gateway for traffic distribution
Keep compute stateless when possible and store data in managed services
Use Managed Identities for secure, password-less authentication
Treat VMs as replaceable rather than long-lived servers

This cloud-native mindset reduces operational complexity and improves resilience.

Automate Deployment and Configuration

Azure offers multiple automation tools that integrate naturally with RHEL 8. Automation ensures consistency, reduces human error, and enables scalable infrastructure growth.

Recommended tools include:

cloud-init for first-boot configuration
Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates or Bicep for Infrastructure as Code
Terraform for multi-cloud deployment pipelines
Azure CLI for scripting and orchestration
Ansible for configuration management and repeatable server provisioning

Automation becomes even more powerful when combined with custom RHEL 8 images built from ProComputers Marketplace images, allowing enterprises to create standardized, hardened golden images for repeated use.

Security Best Practices for RHEL 8 on Azure

RHEL 8 is known for its strong security features, and Azure adds an additional layer of enterprise-grade protection. Combining them properly ensures compliance with stringent industry regulations.

Important recommendations:

Use SSH key authentication instead of passwords
Apply SELinux in Enforcing mode
Restrict access with Network Security Groups (NSGs)
Encrypt all virtual disks using Azure Disk Encryption
Use Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and Defender for Cloud for continuous security insights
Enforce least-privilege using Azure RBAC and Managed Identities

ProComputers images are minimal and clean by default, giving you a secure baseline for applying your own hardening policies.

Performance and Cost Optimization

Azure provides a wide selection of VM families suitable for different RHEL 8 workloads. Choosing the correct size improves performance while minimizing cost.

Common VM recommendations:

D-series for general RHEL 8 workloads
E-series for memory-intensive applications
F-series for compute-driven tasks
L-series for storage-heavy applications
B-series for small or burstable workloads
Azure Spot VMs for inexpensive batch or non-critical tasks

RHEL 8 supports tuned profiles and system optimization tools that allow fine tuning for CPU, memory, I/O, or virtualized workloads—helping you extract maximum performance from Azure hardware.

RHEL 8 DevOps, Containers, and Azure Services

RHEL 8 is an excellent platform for containerized workloads thanks to tools like Podman, Buildah, and Skopeo. These integrate well with services such as:

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Azure Container Registry (ACR)
Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions for CI/CD
Azure Automation for patching and maintenance

This makes RHEL 8 a versatile base image for DevOps pipelines, microservices, and secure container deployments.

Final Thoughts

Deploying RHEL 8 on Microsoft Azure gives organizations a powerful combination of enterprise-grade Linux reliability and cloud-scale performance. By leveraging trusted ProComputers images in the Azure Marketplace, adopting cloud-native architecture principles, automating deployments, and following strong security practices, teams can build highly efficient, stable, and future-ready cloud environments.

RHEL 8 continues to be an ideal choice for enterprises moving to Azure or expanding their hybrid cloud footprint, offering consistency, automation, and the robustness needed for modern workloads.