Building Reliable Infrastructure with RHEL 8 on AWS EC2

ProComputers

10 Dec 2025 — 4 min read

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (RHEL 8) remains one of the most widely adopted enterprise operating systems in modern cloud environments. Its stability, security focus, and long lifecycle make it a preferred platform for running production workloads across industries. When deployed on Amazon Web Services (AWS) using EC2, RHEL 8 delivers a powerful combination of enterprise-grade Linux and the world’s most mature public cloud infrastructure.

This technical article explores how RHEL 8 operates on AWS EC2, what makes it a strong choice for cloud workloads, and the key best practices organizations follow when deploying and managing RHEL 8 in production.

Why RHEL 8 Is Ideal for AWS EC2

RHEL 8 was designed with hybrid and cloud-native environments in mind. Unlike traditional Linux releases built primarily for on-premises servers, RHEL 8 includes modern tooling, security enhancements, and performance optimizations that align directly with public cloud architectures.

Some of the main advantages of running RHEL 8 on AWS EC2 include:

Long-term enterprise support and predictable update cycles
Native integration with cloud-init and AWS drivers
Advanced security with SELinux, SCAP, and compliance profiles
Strong performance on both x86 and ARM-based instances
Certified compatibility with thousands of enterprise applications

For organizations moving from legacy Linux versions or traditional virtualization to AWS, RHEL 8 provides a smooth and reliable transition path.

RHEL 8 AMIs Available in the AWS Marketplace

One of the simplest ways to deploy RHEL 8 on EC2 is by using official RHEL 8 AMIs available in the AWS Marketplace. These images are maintained directly by Red Hat and include all AWS-optimized components required for proper cloud operation.

Key features of these Marketplace images include:

Preinstalled AWS drivers and networking agents
Optimized kernels for EC2 virtualization
cloud-init support for automated provisioning
Pay-as-you-go licensing integrated into AWS billing
Regular security updates and critical patches

Using Marketplace AMIs ensures compatibility, licensing compliance, and full access to Red Hat’s support ecosystem when required.

Deployment Models for RHEL 8 on EC2

RHEL 8 can be deployed on AWS using multiple infrastructure models depending on workload requirements and operational strategy.

1. Single Instance Deployments

Used for development, testing, or lightweight production workloads. These instances are typically launched directly from Marketplace AMIs and configured using cloud-init or AWS Systems Manager.

2. Auto Scaling Groups

For high-availability production environments, RHEL 8 instances are deployed inside Auto Scaling Groups behind Elastic Load Balancers. This allows automatic scaling, self-healing, and traffic distribution.

3. Golden Image Pipelines

Many enterprises build custom RHEL 8 AMIs using Packer, starting from the official Marketplace image. These golden images include:

Security hardening
Custom repositories
Monitoring agents
Preinstalled runtime dependencies

This approach ensures full configuration consistency across environments.

Security Architecture for RHEL 8 on AWS

Security is one of the strongest arguments for using RHEL 8 in AWS environments. Red Hat provides hardened defaults, and AWS adds multiple layers of infrastructure-level security.

Best practices include:

SSH key-based authentication only
Strict IAM role permissions for EC2 instances
Encrypted EBS volumes using AWS KMS
SELinux enforcing mode enabled
Regular vulnerability scanning via OpenSCAP or similar tools
Centralized logging via CloudWatch Logs

This multi-layer security model allows RHEL 8 to meet strict compliance requirements such as ISO, PCI-DSS, and SOC frameworks.

Performance and Instance Optimization

AWS offers a wide range of EC2 instance types that perform exceptionally well with RHEL 8:

t-series for burstable workloads
m-series for balanced compute needs
c-series for compute-heavy workloads
r-series for memory-intensive applications
Graviton ARM-based instances for highly cost-efficient Linux performance

RHEL 8 includes support for tuned profiles, NUMA optimization, and virtualization-aware scheduling, allowing it to fully exploit AWS hardware capabilities.

RHEL 8 for Containers and DevOps on AWS

RHEL 8 plays a central role in containerized environments and DevOps workflows on AWS. With Podman, Buildah, and Skopeo replacing Docker in many secure environments, RHEL 8 supports modern, daemonless container operations.

Common use cases include:

Running Kubernetes nodes in Amazon EKS
Building CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins and GitLab runners
Infrastructure automation with Ansible
Immutable server deployments with golden AMIs

This makes RHEL 8 a strong platform not only for legacy workloads but also for cloud-native application development.

Enterprise Use Cases

RHEL 8 on AWS EC2 supports a wide variety of production workloads:

Web platforms using NGINX or Apache
Enterprise databases such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL
ERP and middleware platforms
Big data processing and analytics
Machine learning and high-performance computing

Its reliability, consistent behavior, and predictable patching cycles make it especially well-suited for business-critical applications.

Final Thoughts

RHEL 8 on AWS EC2 remains one of the most trusted enterprise Linux platforms in the public cloud. With official Marketplace AMIs, strong security controls, flexible deployment models, and excellent performance across multiple instance families, it provides a stable foundation for both traditional enterprise workloads and modern cloud-native architectures.

Whether used for application hosting, DevOps automation, container orchestration, or data processing, RHEL 8 continues to deliver the dependability and scalability organizations expect from a true enterprise Linux platform in AWS.