CIS Hardened Image Level 2 on Amazon Linux 2

My main use case for Amazon Linux  is that it serves as a replacement and a free version for a Red Hat-based OS for Amazon users. I use it in environments where a RHEL-based environment is required because a number of applications are pre-installed on Amazon Linux .

My main use case for Amazon Linux involves using these Linux machines as load generators. With Amazon Linux, you are not required to install a number of applications which are helpful for other applications. We have a CR controller and generators setup, where the generators are virtual machines on Amazon on an auto-scaling basis. For this, we use Amazon Linux as a base.

The best features Amazon Linux offers include that it is designed for Amazon users. The first one is that it is freeware. Red Hat has a subscription model. Another one is that a number of applications are pre-installed on Amazon Linux, which are helpful. It is easy to use Amazon services, and it integrates easily with Amazon services.

For example, the Amazon services I find it integrates best with are those requiring connection to Session Manager on any Ubuntu  or RHEL  machine, where you have to install it first, but on Amazon Linux, it is pre-installed.

In terms of features, it is freeware for Amazon. It is more similar to CentOS  and OEL, Oracle Linux , but it is a lighter version for RHEL .

Amazon Linux has impacted my organization positively because in any organization, the first priority is cost. For Amazon Linux, it is not required to have any subscription, unlike a RHEL-based OS. If you are going for RHEL, it is a subscription model, and we have to purchase a subscription as per our requirements. We use it as a load generation tool, so we require a number of generators, sometimes more than 100. For 100 generators, the subscription costs too much. Amazon Linux is freeware, so it is very helpful for us.

I do not think Amazon Linux can be improved. It already has a lightweight freeware and is easily integrated with all the AWS  services. I am not finding any room for improvement.

Specifically on Amazon Linux, I do not think there are any needed improvements.

I have been using Amazon Linux for around five plus years.

I did not purchase Amazon Linux through the AWS Marketplace .

If anyone is using the AWS  platform and they require a RHEL-based OS, they must use Amazon Linux. It easily integrates with any services in AWS, and it is pre-installed with a few required tools, so it is very helpful.

I have no additional thoughts about Amazon Linux before we wrap up.

I found this interview fine, and I do not think there is anything I should change for the future.

I give this product a review rating of 8.

Amazon Linux  is used to host websites and back-end systems. Running a website on Amazon Web Services  EC2  instance with Amazon Linux  has proven effective. Amazon Linux is designed for cloud apps on EC2  and provides a secure, stable, and high-performance environment. It is used to run applications on cloud services, to host websites and back-end systems.

The best features Amazon Linux offers include tight integration with AWS  tools such as CLI and Cloud-init. It provides a free OS with a pay-only-for-infrastructure option. The integration with AWS tools like CLI and Cloud-init is quite easy to use.

Amazon Linux has helped the organization reduce cost. Security compliances have improved. Better performance and scalability have been noticed.

Amazon Linux currently has limited software packages and a dependency on the AWS ecosystem, which are areas for improvement.

There are a couple of areas where Amazon Linux can improve. For example, slower updates for some modern tools and less direct support sometimes, usually for documentation-heavy items, are concerns.

Amazon Linux has been used for three months.

Amazon Linux is stable.

Amazon Linux's scalability is good.

Customer support for Amazon Linux comes under AWS support plans. Free users rely mostly on documentation and community resources, but AWS provides strong security patching and maintenance.

Before getting into Amazon Linux, a couple of other options were evaluated, including Oracle Linux , Google Container-Optimized OS, and Azure  Linux.

Money and time have definitely been saved.

Amazon Linux itself is free, so there are no license costs. Only Amazon Web Services EC2 infrastructure costs were incurred, and they offer a pay-as-you-go model based on per-second or per-hour usage. It can be very cost-effective compared to paid operating systems like RHEL . Costs can increase with storage, bandwidth, and scaling. Overall, it is flexible and cost-efficient, but monitoring is necessary.

Amazon Linux should only be used if AWS is the primary platform, as it is the best fit for that environment. Costs should be monitored using AWS billing tools. Amazon Linux is good and best for cloud-based teams, and it can be kept simple at the start with optimization as scaling occurs.

Amazon Linux is a smart and cost-efficient choice if AWS is the main platform. It is best for startups and enterprises who are already on AWS. It should be avoided if full independence from cloud vendors is desired.

The overall review rating for this product is 8 out of 10.

My main use case for Amazon Linux  is setting up Linux servers, monitoring servers, Kubernetes  servers, testing, and setting up customer servers. I have used Amazon Linux  for setting up customer monitoring solutions, such as Prometheus, Grafana , and ELK stack. I also used it for setting up a Kubernetes  cluster.

Amazon Linux offers excellent support, which is better than other Linux distributions. The platform provides stable versions, quality packages, and reliable commands. The stability is a key attribute I appreciate about Amazon Linux.

What stands out to me is the regular updates, patches, and package support that Amazon Linux provides.

Amazon Linux has positively impacted my organization significantly. We were using Windows, but after switching to Amazon Linux, it is cost-optimized and very secure.

I do not measure cost optimization or security improvements in a formal way, but we compare our current Windows server costs with the projected costs if we switched to Amazon Linux. Windows is not very secure to use, whereas Amazon Linux is very secure.

Amazon Linux can be improved by providing more session time. When connecting using EC2  Connect, the session time is limited. If you are away from the window for more than five or ten minutes, you must restart your entire session. This is an area that could be enhanced.

Although Amazon Linux is stable, there is room for improvement.

I have been using Amazon Linux for more than four years through both my professional experience and learning experience.

I rate Amazon Linux eight out of ten because it provides everything we need, but it still requires improvements in stability.

Amazon Linux has good scalability.

Amazon Linux provides good customer support.

I rate the customer support for Amazon Linux as an eight out of ten.

I was using Windows servers before transitioning to Amazon Linux.

I purchased Amazon Linux through the AWS Marketplace .

I had a good experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing.

I had a good experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing.

We were confident we wanted to use Amazon Linux and did not evaluate other options.

Amazon Linux is better than other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu  and other standard Linux options. I recommend using Amazon Linux because it is managed by Amazon and has excellent support and stability. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

In my day-to-day work, the main use cases for Amazon Linux  involve a wide variety of tasks with a common theme of optimization for Amazon Cloud. Since recently updating my project, I have been using it for automation to monitor CPU utilizations and hosting backend services including REST APIs and web applications on EC2  instances, running production microservices that integrate with services including Amazon ECS  and AWS Lambda , and as the defaulting operating system for EC2  instances in a SaaS platform. Additionally, I use Amazon Linux  as base images for Dockerfile, node groups for Amazon EKS  Kubernetes  clusters, and powering CI/CD pipelines acting as Jenkins  agents or building servers, using it with infrastructure as code to spin up consistent environments for development, staging, and production.

The most valuable use case involving my work is the scripting that runs automatically via cron, which is a time-based scheduler on Amazon Linux EC2 instances. The script accomplishes mainly two groups: resource dashboarding and proactive monitoring. In resource dashboarding, I utilize the command line interface, specifically AWS  CLI, to list all running resources including EC2 instances, S3  buckets, Lambda functions, and configurations to implement in the daily dashboard sent to management. Additionally, I check logs and help prevent unexpected storage issues, and these are the activities I have been using in my daily work.

In my organization, Amazon Linux is deployed using a multi-cloud hybrid approach, supporting all four environments we have mentioned. Public cloud is the most common deployment, where I use Amazon Linux directly on Amazon EC2 to scale from small web servers to massive machine learning clusters. I also deploy it on private premises for added security.

I primarily use AWS  for my Amazon Linux deployments.

In my experience, the best features Amazon Linux offers are the resource dashboarding and proactive monitoring systems that I have been utilizing in day-to-day work. Most cases are centered around using a Linux base image for containerizing applications, particularly in production on ECS or by deploying on ECS, and I am deploying my servers in EKS. Currently, I also manage automation scripting and container-based images to find EC2 instances and what servers are running in the background as part of my day-to-day activities using Amazon Linux.

Since using Amazon Linux, I have noticed a positive impact on my organization as it has become an industry standard for AWS native development. The benefits include much better resource isolation and more accurate monitoring for memory, CPU, and input-output. It makes running Docker  or Kubernetes  yield more predictable container performance with fewer out-of-memory kills that are hard to diagnose. Using Amazon Linux smooths the application running on Docker  and Kubernetes, making it very efficient for deploying applications on cloud platforms including Amazon, Azure , and GCP.

I see definite areas where Amazon Linux could improve because it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. The single biggest pain point for long-time users is the lack of direct in-place upgrades from Amazon Linux to AL2, as moving to a new version requires launching new instances and manually migrating applications instead of simply running a command similar to some DNF system update. A migration tool that could handle the heavy lifting and configurations would save thousands of engineering hours. I have noticed that since 2023 does not support EPEL directly, AWS has introduced supplementary packages for Amazon Linux, which has been an adjustment.

I chose eight out of ten because, while there are many positives, some issues arise at the end of the line for Amazon Linux. I have faced some challenges when deploying clusters in AWS, particularly with some recent updates that have changed since version twenty-three, leading me to believe there is room for improvement.

Amazon Linux is stable and more flexible, allowing easy scalability at no cost. It is designed by the same engineers who created the underlying hardware, EC2, as well as the orchestration services, ECS and EKS, effectively removing many traditional bottlenecks associated with scaling large fleets.

In terms of container scalability, I find it to have deterministic reliability, no broken scale-outs, and it boosts speed and safety in container orchestrations with dynamic scaling. It provides resource control and consistency, contributing to Amazon Linux's reputation for stability.

The customer support for Amazon Linux is good, as they quickly guide me through issues whenever I contact them, resolving problems within a short time.

Before switching to Amazon Linux two thousand twenty-three, I typically used Amazon Linux two, Ubuntu , CentOS , and Red Hat. The end of life for those older distributions was a primary reason for switching, as security updates for Amazon Linux are ending in June two thousand twenty-six. Amazon Linux two thousand twenty-three provides modern features such as cgroup v2 and systemd-timers that older versions lack, and while Ubuntu  is good for development, it is not tuned for AWS hardware out of the box. Amazon Linux two thousand twenty-three offers better performance under Graviton  chips and significantly faster operations.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Amazon Linux is very straightforward and completely free. I simply select it from the quick start tab when launching an EC2 instance with no additional cost or complex licensing terms to manage. The operating system is free, and I only pay for infrastructure, such as approximately zero cost for a T3 small instance, where the EC2 instances charge about zero point zero two one per hour.

I see that return on investment is usually measured in efficiency gains rather than in a simple monetary form. Since the operating system itself is free and by using Amazon Linux two thousand twenty-three, many organizations have been qualifying this transaction through a mix of cloud-based operations.

Since switching to Amazon Linux, I have seen improvements clearly shown in infrastructure metrics. Some wins commonly seen after switching, particularly when moving from general-purpose distributions such as Ubuntu, include approximately twenty to forty percent better price-performance ratio. The outcomes combine massive savings of over one million in under a year by migrating workloads to Graviton-based instances running Amazon Linux, as AL two thousand twenty-three is optimized for ARM at the compiler level, allowing applications to run more effectively and function on smaller instances. I have also noted faster deployments, including a forty to sixty percent reduction in AMI size, significantly faster boot times, and a boost in faster auto-scaling to reduce cold start latencies, with zero downtime regarding patching for critical vulnerabilities.

I evaluated several options, including Ubuntu and CentOS . As previously mentioned, Ubuntu is great for development but not optimized for AWS, and CentOS's move to a streamed model is less stable for production. Many organizations moved to Amazon Linux for a more flexible long-term support cycle.

The biggest advantage I find in using Amazon Linux is the ability to determine updates throughout the version repositories. In older versions, I ran a yum update, but now I can pin different packages based on commands I run. This advantage allows me to test updates in a staging environment and be one hundred percent certain that the exact same packages will be applied in production, eliminating issues where something worked on one machine or worked yesterday. It is also beneficial as it boosts faster boot times, supports Amazon Graviton  ARM processors, and optimizes the operating system for those processors. Moreover, it efficiently uses fewer resources including CPU and RAM, allowing my applications to run on smaller, cheaper instance types with secure by default configurations.

I recommend Amazon Linux for its free use, stable performance, faster control, and scalability, making it suitable for everyone.

To clarify, I did not purchase Amazon Linux through the AWS Marketplace  because it is directly provided by AWS at no additional cost, so a purchase or subscription is not required. Unlike many other enterprise Linux distributions, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux  that require a paid subscription, Amazon Linux is offered by AWS as a free operating system for use on EC2 instances. There is no need to visit the marketplace to buy it.

Overall, I would rate Amazon Linux at an eight out of ten.