Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Main Article: Operating Systems

Red Hat Enterprise Linux - GNULinux Red Hat distribution/companies. This distribution is positioned for corporate use. New versions are released with a frequency of about 3 years.

The main feature of the distribution is the presence of commercial support. Many software and hardware manufacturers have included RHEL among the GNU/Linux distributions they support.

Other features of the distribution:

1. No support for MP3 and DivX (for licensing reasons)
2. Pay for binary service packs (source code available)

2024: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4

On May 2, 2024, it became known that Red Hat published the release of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 distribution. Ready-made installation images are available to registered Red Hat Customer Portal users (you can also use CentOS Stream 9 iso images and free RHEL builds for developers to evaluate functionality). The release is for x86_64, s390x (IBM System z), ppc64le and Aarch64 (ARM64) architectures.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4

As reported, the RHEL 9 branch is developing with a more open development process and uses the CentOS Stream 9 package base as the basis. CentOS Stream is positioned as an upstream project for RHEL, allowing third parties to control the preparation of packages for RHEL, propose their changes and influence decisions made. In accordance with the 10-year support cycle for the RHEL 9 distribution will be accompanied until 2032.

The RHEL 9.4 rpm package sources are not placed in the public git.centos.org repository and are provided to the company's customers only through a private section of the user agreement (EULA) site that prohibits redistribution, data which prevents these packages from being used to create derivative distributions. The source code remains available in the CentOS Stream repository, but it is not fully synchronized with RHEL and it does not always have the most recent package versions matching those from RHEL. Rocky, and Linux Oracle SUSE reproduce the source code of RHEL rpm release packages as part of the project. OpenELA

Key changes in RHEL 9.4:

• The Intel SGX (Software Guard Extensions) isolated enclave technology is fully supported. SGX versions 1 and 2 are supported, allowing the use of FLC (Flexible Launch Control) and EDMM (Enclave Dynamic Memory Management) mechanisms to change access rights to individual enclave memory pages, dynamically add/remove memory pages to the enclave, and expand the enclave.
• The IDXD (Data Streaming Accelerator) driver has been converted to stable to use transmission accelerators data built into. CPU Intel Previously SGX , IDXD was classified as experimental capabilities (Technology Preview).
• The implementation of the eBPF subsystem is synchronized with the Linux 6.6 kernel (the previous release used the eBPF implementation from the Linux 6.3 kernel).
• Added to the GRUB loader and shim layer is the ability to use DEP (Data Execution Prevention), NX (No Execute) and XD (Execute Disable) memory protection mechanisms to prevent instructions from being executed in certain memory areas at the stage before the system starts booting.
• It includes updated versions of compilers and tools for developers: GCC Toolset 13, LLVM Toolset 17.0.6, Rust Toolset 1.75.1 and Go Toolset 1.21.7.
• Added separate packages (Application Streams) with versions of Python 3.12, Ruby 3.3, PHP 8.2, nginx 1.24, MariaDB 10.11, PostgreSQL 16.
• Updated Git 2.43.0, Git LFS 3.4.1, Valgrind 3.22, SystemTap 5.0, elfutils 0.190, cmake 3.26. Added maven-openjdk21 and libzip-tools packages.
• Updated security-related packages: GnuTLS 3.8.3, nettle 3.9.1, p11-kit 0.25.3, libkcapi 1.4.0, stunnel 5.71, audit 3.1.2, SSG (SCAP Security Guide) 0.1.72, openCryptoki 3.22.0, ipa 4.11.
• Updated server and system packages: chrony 4.5, linuxptp 4.2, Rsyslog 8.2310, iptables 1.8.10, nftables 1.0.9, firewalld 1.3, stratis-cli 3.6.0, boom 1.6.0, 389-ds-base 2.4.5, samba 4.19.4, Podman 4.9.
• SELinux (libsepol, libselinux, libsemanage, policycoreutils, checkpolicy, mcstrans) working in user space has been updated to version 3.6, in which support for the "deny" rules and the keywords "notself" and "other" have been added to the CIL (Common Intermediate Language) language file. The executable getpolicyload was added to display the number of reloads of SELinux rules. The services nvme-stas, rust-afterburn, rust-coreos-installer and bootc, which were previously executed in unconfined_service_t mode, have been transferred under SELinux protection. Added SELinux rules for. SAP HANA The chronic-restricted service has been added, protected using SELinux. Added grafana-selinux package to run grafana with SELinux protection.
• The Keylime logger and verifier used to authenticate and continuously monitor the integrity of external systems can now be run inside containers isolated from the foreground.
• In the Rsyslog logging system, it is possible to change the encryption settings for TLS/SSL and add additional options to reset privileges.
• OpenSSL provides the ability to place files with TLS settings in a separate directory/etc/pki/tls/openssl.d, which allows you to override the parameters of additional cryptographic modules without changing the main OpenSSL configuration file.
• SSSD (System Security Services Daemon) provides the ability to enable and configure free authentications using sensors that biometric data support the FIDO2 specification, such as devices. YubiKey
• An experimental "podman build farm" command has been added to create container images for several architectures at once. Podman has added full support for a SQLite-based backend and provides the ability to use containers.conf modules to selectively load settings. Multi-line HereDoc statements are allowed in Containerfile. Declared obsolete CNI (Container Network Interface) stack. Using the "podman machine" command, the ability to splash USB devices into QEMU virtual machines is implemented.
• IdM (Identity Management) provides the ability to enable mandatory two-factor authentication LDAP clients using one-time passwords (OTP). Stabilized API IdM, which was previously presented as experimental. The 389 Directory Server adds support for the HAProxy protocol, which allows you to correctly determine IP the -addresses of clients connecting through the proxy.
• The RHEL image collector provides the ability to specify arbitrary mount points and create various partitioning modes (auto-lvm, lvm, raw).
• The implementation of the synce4l protocol has been updated to version 1.0.0, which provides support for SyncE frequency synchronization (Synchronous Ethernet) technology, supported in some network cards and network switches, and allows you to optimize the efficiency of data exchange in RAN applications (Radio Access Network) due to more accurate time synchronization. Added support for the DPLL (Digital Phase Locked Loop) interface provided by the kernel.
• The ability to check the fields of the internal headers of packets transmitted through tunnels has been transferred to the nftables subsystem. The nft utility has added the ability to use the "nft reset" command to reset the states of nftables rules, such as packet counters and quota values. Firewalld stopped deleting rules added through iptables if firewalld uses the nftables backend and there are no rules created with the --direct option.
• In the ss utility included in the iproute2 package, the option "--bound-inactive" has been added to display inactive TCP network sockets that are attached to the IP address and network port (bind call performed), but are not connected (connect call) or are not put into standby connection mode (listen call).
• NetworkManager has added the ability to change the number of channels (queues of packets bound to interrupt handlers) for network interfaces and configure the SwitchDev mode, which allows you to delegate operations on redirecting personnel and processing network packets to specialized hardware chips. Added support for MACsec network interfaces. For wireless connections, it is possible to assign a separate permanent MAC address (stable-ssid mode).
• Nmstate provides the creation of a YAML file to return to the previous state of the settings. To control priorities in aggregate network interfaces (bond), the priority property is added. Added additional attributes for VLANs: registration-protocol, mvrp, reorder-headers, and loose-binding. You can configure VLAN tags on network devices that support SR-IOV (Single Root I/O Virtualization).
• The kernel module was returned with the implementation of the TCP Illinois congestion control algorithm, which, on average, allows for greater bandwidth and more equitable resource allocation.
• The capabilities of the rteval, rtla and cyclicdeadline utilities have been expanded. rteval has added the ability to use the prefixes "+" and "-" to attach and detach CPU cores from the list of monitored cores (measurement-cpulist). The rtla utility has been updated to a state corresponding to the Linux 6.6 kernel. Added the option "rtla -C" to attach additional cgroup to streams. The cyclicdeadline utility has added the ability to visualize delays in the form of a histogram.
• Added the ability to set the maximum size of the DS with a dynamic increase in the size of the DS by the stratisd service, which avoids performance subsidence after an uncontrolled increase in the size of XFS.
• The lvconvert utility has added support for converting standard logical volumes (LVs) to a variant that allows dynamic allocation of space storage in (thin provisioning).
• Multipathd adds support for FPIN-Li (Fabric Performance Impact Notification) event processing to optimize access to NVMe drives. The max_retries and auto_resize settings have been added to the default settings section of multipath.conf. For Device-mapper-multipath, tinctures have been added to use the HPE Alletra 9000 NVMeFC array and support for ANA (Asymmetric Namespace Access) mode in NVMeoFC.
• The ability to boot from NVMe/FC (Non-volatile Memory Express (NVMe) over Fibre Channel) adapters has been transferred to the stable category.
• Web console optimizes storage management and resizing of partitions. Added support for generating shell scripts and Ansible scripts to configure kdump. The Virtual Machines section provides the ability to add public keys SSH and connect already formatted block devices. VNC is used to connect to virtual machines instead of the SPICE protocol.
• Added additional system roles to run, manage, and configure folicyd and Microsoft SQL Server 2022. Added snapshot role to create and manage LVM snapshots. The sshd role has added the ability to authenticate by certificates.
• Stabilized support virtualizations on ARM64 systems using. hypervisor KVM
• Added support for migrating virtual machines in Multi-FD (multiple file descriptors) mode, in which several parallel connections are established when migrating a virtual machine, which allows you to optimize data transfer with a high-speed network connection (20 Gbps and higher).
• Optimized live migration performance in Postcopy mode, in which the virtual environment starts almost immediately, and all missing data is loaded when accessing unpopulated memory pages.
• The toolbx utility has been added, which allows you to launch an additional isolated environment, which can be arbitrarily equipped using the usual DNF batch manager and used to install experimental packages without affecting the main system.
• Added support for Linux kernel command line parameters: accept_memory, ia32_emulation, arm64.nomops, cgroup_favordynmods, early_page_ext, fw_devlink.sync_state, kunit.enable, mtrr = debug, rcupdate.rcu_cpu_stall_cputime, rcupdate.rcu_exp_stall_task_details, spec_rstack_overflow and workqueue.unbound_cpus.
• Added sysctl parameters: io_uring_group and numa_balancing_promote_rate_limit_MBps.
• The default io_uring mechanism is not allowed for all processes (sysctl io_uring_disabled=2).
• Extended support for equipment. Added drivers to support Intel QuickAssist Technology, Intel TPMI, Intel Uncore Frequency, AMD HSMP, AMD XCP, AMD Platform Management and Mellanox PMC. Added octeon_ep driver for Marvell Octeon PCIe Endpoint Network Interface Controller.
• Continued to provide experimental (Technology Preview) support:
• * VPN WireGuard,
  • kTLS (TLS at kernel level),
  • asynchronous I/O interface io_uring,
  • DAX (Direct Access) for ext4 and XFS,
  • AMD SEV and SEV-ES in KVM hypervisor,
  • of the systemd-resolved service,
  • Sigstore mechanism for verification of containers by digital signatures,
  • hardware acceleration of IPsec through the removal of packet encapsulation operations to the network card side,
  • ACME Certificate Management Protocol used in Let's Encrypt,

• * SRv6 (Segment Routing over IPv6,
  • GIMP Graphics Editor Package 2.99.8,
  • MPTCP settings (Multipath TCP) via NetworkManager,
  • DNSSEC in, IdM
  • virtio-mem,
  • Soft-iWARP (Internet Wide-area RDMA Protocol),
  • GNOME for ARM64 and IBM Z^[1]

2023: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2

On May 11, 2023, it became known that Red Hat published the release of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 distribution. Ready-made installation images are available to registered Red Hat Customer Portal users (you can also use CentOS Stream 9 iso images and free RHEL builds for developers to evaluate functionality). The release is for x86_64, s390x (IBM System z), ppc64le and Aarch64 (ARM64) architectures. The sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rpm packages are located in the CentOS Git repository . At the same time, an update of the previous branch RHEL 8.8 is presented.

As reported, the RHEL 9 branch is developing with a more open development process and uses the CentOS Stream 9 package base as the basis. CentOS Stream is positioned as an upstream project for RHEL, allowing third parties to control the preparation of packages for RHEL, propose their changes and influence decisions made. In accordance with the 10-year support cycle for the RHEL 9 distribution will be accompanied until 2032.

Key changes in RHEL 9.2:

• server OpenSSL Обновлены и системные пакеты: glibc 2.34, binutils 2.35.2, nginx 1.22, 3.0.7, PCP 6.0.1, Grafana 9.0.9, SELinux 3.5, OpenSCAP 1.3.7, chrony 4.3, frr 8.3.1, vsftpd 3.0.5, powertop 2.15, tuned 2.20.0, Libreswan 4.9, libssh 0.10.4, opencryptoki 3.19.0, NetworkManager 1.42.2, firewalld 1.2, conntrack-tools 1.4.7, xdp-tools 1.3.1, iproute 6.1.0, nvme-cli 2.2.1, libnvme 1.2, samba 4.17.5.
• The composition includes updated versions of compilers and tools for developers: GCC 11.3.1 (the GCC Toolset 12 is available separately), Python 3.11, LLVM Toolset 15.0.7, Rust Toolset 1.66, Go Toolset 1.19.6, PostgreSQL 15, Git 2.39.1, GDB 10.2, Valgrind 3.19, System 18.0 Dyne.4.14 mod_security, Dyna.14
• The dnf batch manager implements the offline-upgrade command to apply updates to the system offline. The essence of the offline update is that first the packages are loaded with the command "dnf offline-upgrade download," after which the command "dnf offline-upgrade reboot" is executed to reboot the system into a minimal environment and install existing updates in it, without interfering with workflows. After the installation of updates is complete, the system reboots into a normal working environment. When downloading packages for offline updates, you can apply filters such as "--advisory," "--security," "--bugfix."
• The synce4l package has been added to use SyncE (Synchronous Ethernet) frequency synchronization technology, supported in some network cards and network switches, and which allows you to optimize the efficiency of data exchange in RAN (Radio Access Network) applications due to more accurate time synchronization.
• The Clevis tool, which is used to automatically encrypt and decrypt data in disk partitions, offers the option "-e," which allows you to use an external token instead of entering a password for cryptsetup.
• SELinux policies have been added to protect mptcpd and udftools services. The SELinux policy has been added to reset Rsyslog privileges at startup (only the minimum necessary privileges are now used to run Rsyslog).
• The NSS cryptographic library has discontinued support for RSA keys less than 1023 bits in size (for both digital signatures and encryption).
• An updated version of NetworkManager (1.42) was involved, which introduced support for load balancing through combined Ethernet-interfaces, loopback interface management, IEEE 802.1X for authenticated access to switch ports, ECMP (equal-cost multi-path), 802.1ad (VLAN stacking, nested headers and substitution of several VLAN tags into one Ethernet frame). Among the RHEL-specific changes in NetworkManager, it is noted: simplification of configuration management DNS when connecting to several networks with different DNS -, servers updated option vlan.protocol (allows you to select 802.1Q or 802.1ad), the ability to configure VLAN for network interfaces with unmanaged status, support for MPTCP configuration (Multipath TCP).
• In the nmstate package, which provides the nmstatectl library and utility for managing network settings through the declarative API (the network state is described in the form of a predefined scheme), it became possible to specify local IPv6 addresses as DNS servers (for example, "fe80:: deef: 1% enp1s0"), and also added support for MPTCP flags.
• The min-mtu and max-mtu parameters are implemented for all network interfaces to determine the available range of MTU values.
• Firewalld has added support for the failsafe startup mode, which allows, in case of problems with the specified rules, to roll back to the default configuration, without leaving the host unprotected. Added services with support for Kodi JSON-RPC, EventServer, netdata, IPFS protocols.
• In the kernel, when resetting to the log information about the detected SYN flood, information about the IP address that received the connection is provided in order to optimize the determination of the flood target on systems with handlers bound to different IP addresses.
• Changes implemented in Linux kernels 5.17, 5.18, 5.19 and 6.0 have been transferred to the eBPF (Berkeley Packet Filter) subsystem. For example, for BPF programs, all features using the BTF Type Format (BPF Type Format) mechanism are now available, providing information for type verification in the BPF pseudo code. Among other things, support has been added for the CO-RE (Compound Once - Run Everywhere) toolkit, which allows you to collect eBPF code only once and use a special universal bootloader that adapts the downloadable program to the current kernel and BTF types, which solves the problem with the portability of compiled eBPF programs that could previously be used only in the version of the kernel for which they were assembled.
• The capabilities of the tuna, rteval and slat utilities have been expanded. For example, an updated command line interface has been added to tuna to change the attributes of applications and kernel threads, work with interrupts and tasks. rteval provides a summary of program downloads, threads and CPUs used to execute these threads. Additional options for measuring delays have been added to oslo.
• NFSv4.1 NFS client can establish multiple connections to one server to optimize data transfer. For NFS, the nfsrahead utility is included, which allows you to change the parameter of the same name for mount points, which affects the performance of reads.
• SSSD (System Security Services Daemon) has added support for bringing home directory names to the lower case of characters (by using the substitution "% h" in the override_homedir attribute specified in/etc/sssd/sssd.conf). In addition, users are allowed to change the password stored in LDAP (enabled by setting the shadow value for the ldap_pwd_policy attribute in/etc/sssd/sssd.conf). Support for the automatic removal of expired certificates has been added (for example, for ACME Let's Encrypt certificates, you can specify "ipa-acme-manage pruning --enable --cron" 0 0 1 * * ").
• The File Access Policy Daemon framework (File Access Policy Daemon), which allows you to determine which programs can be run by a specific user and which cannot, has added the/etc/folicyd/rpm-filter.conf configuration file to configure a list of database files for the RPM batch manager that folicyd processes. For example, a configuration file can be used to exclude individual applications installed through the RPM batch manager from access policies.
• Extended capabilities of the tool for preparing system images, which introduced support for configuring the content (Blueprint) of the/etc section during image generation. The customizations.files and customizations.directories settings are proposed, allowing you to create your own files (or change existing) and directories in/etc. Added support for vhd imaging used in Microsoft Azure for the ARM64 architecture.
• The RHEL for Edge edition in Simplified Installer provides the ability to use Ignition tools (alternative to Cloud-Init). In addition, it is allowed to form simplified images without FDO (FIDO Device Onboard) settings.
• The web console uses a unified toolkit for creating blueprint modifications and system images. Added support for automatically unlocking encrypted (LUKS) root partitions using NBDE (Network-Bound Disk Encryption). It is possible to apply cryptographic policies DEFAULT:SHA1, LEGACY: AD-SUPPORT and FIPS: OSPP.
• Added support for automatic forwarding to guest systems of cryptographic devices that are connected during operation (missing at the time of the guest system startup).
• A passt package has been added with the implementation of network backends for virtual machines (passt) and containers (pasta) operating in user space.
• A system role has been added for the podman toolkit, which allows you to manage Podman settings, containers and systemd services that launch Podman containers. Enhanced system roles for Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Active Directory.
• Podman added support for generating audit events and implemented the ability to use the Sigstore format to store digital signatures along with container images.
• Updated container-tools for managing isolated containers, including packages such as Podman, Buildah, Skopeo, crun and runc.
• A toolbox utility has been added that allows you to launch an additional isolated environment, which can be equipped arbitrarily using the usual DNF batch manager. It is enough for the developer to execute the "toolbox create" command, after which at any time you can enter the formed environment with the "toolbox enter" command and install any packages using the dnf utility.
• GNOME provides the ability to disable the change of virtual desktops through moving up or down with three fingers on the touchpad.
• For systems with GPU Aspeed, support for Wayland is enabled and the driver performance issues for GPU Aspeed have been resolved.
• It is possible to customize the context menu displayed when you press the right button mice on the desktop. The user can now add items to the menu to run arbitrary commands.
• The GTK 2 toolkit and its associated adwaita-gtk2-theme, gnome-common, gtk2, gtk2-immodules and hexchat packages have been declared obsolete. The previous version also declared X.org Server obsolete (by default, RHEL 9 offers a Wayland-based GNOME session), which they plan to remove in the next significant RHEL 10 branch, but retain the ability to launch X11 applications from the Wayland session using the XWayland DDX server.
• A large portion of drivers for network devices storage systems and graphics chips has been added. NVIDIA Intel HP Например, добавлены драйверы для ACPI Video, VirtIO GPIO, GPIO Simulator, Tegra HTE (Hardware Timestamping Engine), Virtio i2c, AMD PMC, NVIDIA sn2201, VXLAN, Marvell OcteonTX2, Marvell RVU, NVIDIA Tegra MGBE, DisplayPort AUX, NVIDIA Tegra (tegra-drm), GVT-g для KVM (kvmgt), iLO/iLO2 (hpilo).
• For the ARM64 architecture in the Linux kernel, it is possible to use 64KB memory pages.
• Added experimental support for discrete Intel Arc graphics cards (DG2/Alchemist). To enable hardware acceleration on such video cards, specify the PCI card identifier through the kernel parameter "i915.force_probe=pci-id" when loading.
• Continued to provide experimental (Technology Preview) support:
  • KTLS (kernel-level TLS implementation),

• * VPN WireGuard,
• * Intel SGX (Software Guard Extensions),
  • Intel IDXD (Data Streaming Accelerator),
  • DAX (Direct Access) for ext4 and XFS,
  • AMD SEV and SEV-ES in KVM hypervisor,
  • of the systemd-resolved service,
  • Stratis Storage Manager,
  • Sigstore mechanism for verification of containers by digital signatures,
  • GIMP Graphics Editor Package 2.99.8,
  • MPTCP settings (Multipath TCP) via NetworkManager,
  • DNSSEC в IdM,
  • сервера ACME (Automated Certificate Management Environment),
  • virtio-mem,
  • KVM hypervisor for ARM64,
  • installation on NVMe over Fibre Channel,
  • Socket API for TuneD,
  • Soft-iWARP (Internet Wide-area RDMA Protocol),
  • GNOME for ARM64 and IBM Z^[2].

2022: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.1

On November 18, 2022, it became known that Red Hat published the release of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.1 distribution. Ready-made installation images are available to registered Red Hat Customer Portal users (you can also use CentOS Stream 9 iso images to evaluate functionality). The release is for x86_64, s390x (IBM System z), ppc64le and Aarch64 (ARM64) architectures. The sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rpm packages are located in the CentOS Git repository.

As reported, the RHEL 9 branch is developing with a more open development process and uses the CentOS Stream 9 package base as the basis. CentOS Stream is positioned as an upstream project for RHEL, allowing third parties to control the preparation of packages for RHEL, propose their changes and influence decisions made. In accordance with the 10-year support cycle for the RHEL 9 distribution will be accompanied until 2032.

Key changes:

• Updated server system packages: firewalld 1.1.1, chrony 4.2, unbound 1.16.2, frr 8.2.2, Apache httpd 2.4.53, opencryptoki 3.18.0, powerpc-utils 1.3.10, libvpd 2.2.9, lsvpd 1.7.14, ppc64-diag 2.7, PCP 5.3.7, Grafana 7.5.13, samba 4.16.1.
• Updated versions of compilers and tools for developers are included: GCC 11.2.1, GCC Toolset 12, LLVM Toolset 14.0.6, binutils 2.35.2, PHP 8.1, Ruby 3.1, Node.js 18, Rust Toolset 1.62, Go Toolset 1.18.2, javaopenjdk .NET Maven 3.8, -17- (java-11-openjdk, 10D3deng.0 continue to ship).
• Changes implemented in Linux kernels 5.15 and 5.16 have been transferred to the eBPF (Berkeley Packet Filter) subsystem. For example, for BPF programs, the ability to query and process timer events is implemented, the ability to receive and set socket options for setsockopt, support for calling functions of kernel modules, a probability data storage structure (BPF map) bloom filter is proposed, and the ability to bind tags to function parameters has been added.
• The patch set for real-time systems used in the kernel-rt kernel has been updated to the state corresponding to the 5.15-rt kernel.
• The implementation of the MPTCP protocol (MultiPath TCP), used to organize the operation of a TCP connection with the delivery of packets simultaneously over several routes through different network interfaces, has been updated. The changes were migrated from the Linux 5.19 kernel (for example, support for rolling back MPTCP connections to regular TCP was added and an API was proposed to control MPTCP flows from the user space).
• On 64-bit systems, processors ARM AMD Intel it is possible to change the operation of Real-Time mode during kernel operation by writing the name of the mode in "/ file sys/kernel/debug/sched/preempt "or during boot through the kernel parameter" preempt = "(none, voluntary and full modes are supported).
• The GRUB loader settings have been changed to hide the default boot menu, showing the menu if a previous boot failed. You can hold down the Shift key or press the Esc or F8 keys periodically to display the menu during loading. To turn off hiding, you can use the command "grub2-editenv - unset. menu_auto_hide"
• The PTP (Precision Time Protocol) driver has added support for creating virtual hardware clocks (PHC, PTP Hardware Clocks).
• Added modulesync command, which loads RPM packages from modules and creates a repository in the working directory with the metadata necessary to install modular packages
• Tuned, a service for tracking the state of the system and optimizing profiles to achieve optimal performance taking into account the current load, provides the ability to use the tuned-profiles-realtime package to isolate CPU cores and provide application threads with all available resources.
• NetworkManager implements the translation of connection profiles from the ifcfg settings format (/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg- *) to the format based on the keyfile file. You can use the nmcli connection migrate command to migrate profiles.
• The SELinux toolkit has been updated to release 3.4, which optimizes the relabel performance by parallelizing operations, the -m option (--checksum) has been added to the semodule utility to obtain SHA256 hash modules, mcstrans has been transferred to the PCRE2 library. Added utilities for working with access policies: sepol_check_access, sepol_compute_av, sepol_compute_member, sepol_compute_relabel, sepol_validate_transition. SELinux policies have been added to protect ksm, nm-priv-helper, rhcd, stalld, systemd-network-generator, targetclid and wg-quick services.
• It is possible to use the Clevis client (clevis-luks-systemd) to automatically unlock disk partitions encrypted using LUKS and mounted at a late stage of boot, without the need to use the "systemctl enable clevis-luks-askpass.path" command.
• The tools for preparing system images have been expanded, which includes support for loading images into the GCP (Google Cloud Platform), placing the image directly into the container registry, setting the size of the/boot partition and adjusting the parameters (Blueprint) during image generation (for example, adding packages and creating users).
• A keylime utility has been added to authenticate (authenticate and continuously monitor integrity) an external system using Trusted Platform Module (TPM) technology, for example, to verify the authenticity of Edge and IoT devices located in an uncontrolled place where unauthorized access is possible.
• The RHEL for Edge edition provides the ability to use the fdo-admin utility to configure FDO (FIDO Device Onboard) services and create certificates and keys for them.
• SSSD (System Security Services Daemon) has added support for caching SID requests (for example, GID/UID checks) in RAM, which made it possible to optimize the operation of copying a large number of files through the Samba server. Support for integration with Windows Server 2022 is provided.
• In OpenSSH, the default minimum RSA key size is limited to 2048 bits, and in NSS libraries, support for RSA keys less than 1023 bits is discontinued. To configure your own restrictions, the RequiredRSASize parameter has been added to OpenSSH. Added support for the key exchange method of sntrup761x25519-sha512@openssh.com resistant to hacking on quantum computers.
• The ReaR (Relax-and-Recover) toolkit adds the ability to execute arbitrary commands before and after recovery.
• The driver for Intel E800 Ethernet adapters supports the iWARP and RoCE protocols.
• The httpd-core package has been added, to which the basic set of Apache httpd components has been moved, sufficient to start the HTTP server and associated with a minimum number of dependencies. Additional modules, such as mod_systemd and mod_brotli, have been added to the httpd package, and documentation is included.
• The xmlstarlet package has been added, including utilities for parsing, converting, validating, extracting data and editing XML files, similar to grep, sed, awk, diff, patch and join, but not for text files, but for XML.
• Enhanced capabilities of system roles, for example, support for configuring routing rules and using the nmstate API was added to the network role, support for filtering by regular expressions was added to the logging role (startmsg.regex, endmsg.regex), the storage role has added support for partitions for which storage space is dynamically allocated ("thin provisioning"), the sshd role added the ability to manage via/ etc/ssh/sshd_config, the export of Postfix performance statistics was added to the metrics role, the firewall role implemented the ability to overwrite the previous configuration and provided support for adding, updating and deleting services depending on the state.
• Updated tools for managing isolated containers, including packages such as Podman, Buildah, Skopeo, crun and runc. Added GitLab Runner support in runtime Podman containers. To configure the network subsystem of containers, the netavark utility and the Aardvark DNS server are provided.
• Mdevctl has added support for the ap-check command to configure forwarding to virtual machines to access crypto selectors.
• Added a preliminary (Technology Preview) ability to authenticate users using external providers (IdP, identity provider) that support the extension of the OAuth 2.0 "Device Authorization Grant" protocol to provide OAuth access tokens to devices without using a browser.
• For the Wayland-based GNOME session, Firefox builds using Wayland are provided. X11-based assemblies executed in a Wayland environment using the XWayland component are placed in a separate firefox-x11 package.
• The Wayland-based session is activated by default for systems with the Matrox GPU (previously Wayland was not used with the Matrox GPU due to limitations and performance issues now resolved).
• Supports GPUs integrated into 12th generation Intel Core processors, including Intel Core i3 12100T - i9 12900KS, Intel Pentium Gold G7400 and G7400T, Intel Celeron G6900 and G6900T Intel Core i5-12450HX - i9-12950HX and Intel Core i3-1220P - i7-1280P. Added support for AMD Radeon RX 6 (345) 00 and AMD Ryzen 5/7/9 6 (689) 00 GPUs.
• To control the inclusion of protection against vulnerabilities, the MMIO (Memory Mapped Input Output) mechanism implements the kernel boot parameter "mmio_stale_data", which can take the values ​ ​" full "(enabling buffer cleaning when switching to user space and VM)," full, nosmt "(as" full "+ SMT/Hyper-Threads is additionally disabled) and" off "(protection is disabled).
• To control the inclusion of protection against the Retbleed vulnerability, the boot parameter of the "retbleed" kernel is implemented, through which you can disable protection ("off") or select the vulnerability blocking algorithm (auto, nosmt, ibpb, unret).
• In the loading parameter of a kernel acpi_sleep the support of options for management of transition to sleep mode is realized: s3_bios, s3_mode, s3_beep, s4_hwsig, s4_nohwsig, old_ordering, nonvs, sci_force_enable and nobl.
• Added a portion of drivers for network devices, storage systems and graphics chips.

2021

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 beta

==

• RHEL system role for Microsoft SQL Server - Enables IT and database administrators to install, configure, and configure SQL Server automatically faster.
• RHEL system role for VPN - Reduces the time it takes to configure VPN tunnels and reduces the risk of misconfiguring or using unsuitable settings. Host and mesh VPN configurations are also supported.
• RHEL system role for Postfix - this role, which has already been in the tech preview stage for some time, and is now fully supported in RHEL 8.5, allows administrators not to manually configure Postfix, but to automate the process of installing, configuring and starting the server, as well as set settings taking into account the peculiarity of using Postfix in their environment.
• RHEL system role for timesync - Network Time Security (NTS) is added to this role.
• RHEL system role for Storage - This role adds support for VDO LVM volumes and the ability to set the volume size as a percentage of the total pool capacity.

Web console

The RHEL web console, built on the basis of the Cockpit software project, offers a number of useful features in RHEL 8.5 beta:

• Advanced Performance Metrics - An improved metrics page in the RHEL web console helps identify potential causes of CPU, memory, disk, and network usage surges. In addition, metrics are now easier to export to the Grafana server.
• Updating the Linux kernel in real time - this can now be done directly in the RHEL console, which is much easier than from the command line.

RHEL 8.5 beta offers support for OpenJDK 17, and other developer updates related to programming languages, and additional security features for personal access tokens, and NTS (network time security) for NTP. The launch of Linux containers has also been optimized.

RHEL 8.5 beta now does not require enrollment for the RHEL Beta Program.

Red Hat accounts now give access to an unlimited number of Red Hat Beta Access subscriptions, the end date of which coincides with the latest end date for Red Hat software subscriptions.

Certification of Digital Q.Omnichannel, Digital Q.Risk & Compliance, Digital Q.Sensor and Digital Q.ProductCatalog to run on Red Hat OpenShift running RHEL

Diasoft announced on August 31, 2021 that it had received Red Hat Container Certification for its products. Read more here.

Nutanix HCI Compatibility

and on Red Hat Nutanix August 2, 2021, they announced a strategic partnership to offer a comprehensive solution for building, scaling and managing cloudy applications both locally and in. hybrid clouds The collaboration will enable to integrate technology and enable compatibility and management Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise on Linux a platform Nutanix that includes Nutanix AOS and AHV. More. here

Release of free versions of the distribution kit

On January 20, 2021, Red Hat announced the release of free versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, designed for use in small companies.

Free access to the distribution was opened before, but it was allowed to be used by one developer on one physical computer, in a local cloud environment or on a virtual machine. Now free assemblies can be used in industrial operation, although with some restrictions - in environments that include up to 16 systems that will use this OS. In addition, users will not be able to count on technical support - this option is offered only when making a commercial subscription.

Customers who want to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on more than 16 machines will have to buy a license. Or they can use alternative products like Oracle Linux, AlmaLinux and RockyLinux.

Free access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for industrial operation of the OS is provided through the Red Hat Developer program and includes installation in public cloud services such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.

It is noted that the changes will not be limited to this and in the future additional programs will be proposed that cover the need for traditional CentOS. Free builds are completely identical to those offered on a paid subscription, are not limited to a trial period and are not cut in functionality, including access to updates is not limited. The need to establish an account to access the program remains, but you can now connect to the Red Hat portal through the link to the accounts of GitHub, Twitter, Facebook and other sites. The new conditions will take effect no later than February 1.^[3]

2020

Enabling Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 in enterprise data centers and public cloud environments

Red Hat, an open source solution provider, has unveiled an updated version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to facilitate the reach of edge computing within the hybrid cloud model. This became known on November 17, 2020. RHEL features help keep your system stable and workloads independent on smaller edge servers.

Small physical size, remote location and various kinds of network connection restrictions - these features of edge devices pose a big problem for traditional full-featured operating systems, but not for RHEL. Thanks to improvements, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 can be used both in corporate data centers and public cloud environments, as well as on remote edge systems with severe dimensional limitations, guaranteeing the level of support, stability and security necessary to deploy enterprise systems at the edge of the network.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers the following improvements in peripheral computing support:

• Fast OS imaging for edge systems with Image Builder simplifies the creation of configurations optimized for the architectural features of peripheral nodes while allowing for greater customization for specific deployments.
• Updating remote devices with mirroring ensures that updates will take effect only after the device is rebooted or next turned on, helping to reduce downtime and the need for manual intervention by IT professionals.
• OTA updates "over the air" reduce the amount of data transmitted over the network when the system is updated, guarantee the delivery of all changed code fragments, and are ideal for sites with low speed or network connection stability.
• Smart rollbacks based on OSTree functionality, designed to test the health of workloads for conflicts or code problems, allow you to automatically roll back the image to the last operational update, preventing unnecessary downtime at the edge of the network.

Thus, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a single enterprise Linux platform that covers the full range of enterprise needs, from local servers to the public cloud, from centralized data centers to the most remote peripherals. This open innovation standardization forms the foundation for building an open hybrid cloud, allowing the customer to focus on applications and services instead of wasting time and effort on IT integration and interoperability issues.

{{quote 'author = said Stefanie Chiras, vice president and general manager of Red Hat' Red Hat firmly believes that without an open hybrid cloud, the concept of boundary computing as we know it simply has no chance. The enterprise-level Linux distribution and the comprehensive Kubernetes platform are the basis of the hybrid cloud, respectively, these technologies are vital for the further growth of edge computing. And the new capabilities of Red Hat Enterprise Linux hit this point, giving organizations the opportunity to apply open and standard-based innovations at all levels and locations of their IT system, from physical and virtual servers in the corporate data center to public cloud platforms and systems located at the very edge of the corporate network. }}

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 beta

On July 29, 2020, the company Red Hat opened a common access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 beta. Modern global dynamics further strengthen the role IT infrastructures of networks and, as a result, generate new challenges for - IT organizations. Some of these companies only need to maintain the status quo amid the growth of online audiences, others need new solutions and expansion in response to market development, and others need both. Therefore, when it comes to IT infrastructure, stability and operational efficiency are important, combined with new developments.

During the development of RHEL 8.3 beta, Red Hat concentrated on giving impetus to development developments, while maintaining the level of operational stability familiar to RHEL customers. In particular, the presented version of RHEL contains updated versions of stable and fully supported development tools, additional system roles (Ansible System Roles) and security profiles (Security profiles) to strengthen IT security and compliance.

According to the developer, the so-called Application Streams appeared in RHEL 8. This means that the software components used for application development are updated along with the basic OS packages responsible for platform stability. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 beta continues to provide a predictable lifecycle approach by providing access to the latest, stable open source tools and utilities that developers need to build modern applications. The introduced and updated Application Streams in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 beta include:

• Git 2.26;
• NGINX 1.18;
• Node.js v14;
• Perl 5.30;
• PHP 7.4;
• Ruby 2.7;

Red Hat noted that corporate IT systems often have hundreds and thousands of servers, each of which requires almost daily maintenance and management within the life cycle, and the irregular execution of these operations is fraught with unplanned downtime and the emergence of security vulnerabilities. To solve such problems in large production environments, RHEL offers the so-called System Roles - Ansible Playbooks scripts already configured and included in the OS, which help simplify automation and ensure consistency of configurations when solving typical administration tasks - from reserving resources in storage systems to configuring systems in accordance with a single standard of event logging and performance data.

RHEL 8.3 beta has additional roles, in particular System Role for System Logging, System Role for Role for Metrics and several others. Each of these roles provides repeatable configurations that run on all supported versions of RHEL, simplifying the maintenance and preparation of RHEL systems in large environments and further ensuring that all systems are properly configured and protected, Red Hat claims.

For most Chief information officers and decision makers in this area, security and compliance have always been critical, especially when digital technology has become the backbone of corporate remote work strategies. As one of the key foundations of IT systems, security and compliance depend on the level of the operating system. RHEL 8.3 beta supports the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmark and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) profiles. These industry regulations are designed in the form of SCAP security profiles, with which an administrator can implement configurations that meet the stringent security requirements of the commercial or healthcare sector. RHEL 8.3 beta also received the role of System Role for Network-Bound Disk Encryption (NBDE), which provides consistency and repeatability in configuring disk encryption and logging.

In addition to the above additions and changes, RHEL 8.3 beta also offers:

• System Roles for 802.1x Networking and Certificate Management - additional standardization when configuring corporate networks and updating security certificates.
• Updated performance tools and debuggers - synchronize RHEL functionality with the latest developments of the corresponding open source communities.

As of July 2020, RHEL 8.3 beta is already available to Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers on the portal Red Hat Customer Portal, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Subscription holders can download it for free on the site developers.redhat.com.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2

On April 24, 2020, Red Hat introduced Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 (RHEL), the next version of the enterprise-class Linux platform and the foundational product of the company's hybrid cloud solution line. Red Hat is confident that in order to solve the current IT industry problems caused by the global crisis, the operating system should not "just work," but help stabilize operations, while maintaining performance sufficient to support innovative solutions.

According to the developer, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 is designed to work in hybrid cloud computing and has effective tools for solving the above tasks - in addition to ensuring reliability, stability and readiness for launch. The updated version of the platform allows organizations to gain additional capabilities as part of their current RHEL subscriptions with the following update:

• Red Hat Insights Smart Monitoring and Management System
• Advanced Container Toolbox
• Advanced user experience for both platform beginners and Linux experts.

As noted in Red Hat, in the context of the worldwide fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, more and more IT organizations are working remotely or as a reduced team. IT professionals particularly need tools to monitor, manage, and analyze the core components of software stacks, regardless of the size, scale, complexity, and physical location of hybrid or multi-cloud computing resources. Thanks to Red Hat Insights, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system allows you to set up a system for intelligent detection, diagnostics and elimination of potential problems before they begin to negatively affect the operation of production systems.

Red Hat Insights Proactive Maintenance and Security Risk Management is available as part of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription starting with version 6.4. In the presented version of RHEL, this service received a number of additional functions and features, such as:

• Enhanced IT security, compliance, and operational efficiency capabilities help reduce manual operations and increase performance when managing large, complex environments while improving security and compliance across all environments.
• Policy and Patch Services help you define and monitor your organization's internal security policies and independently set the applicability of software updates and security patches to specific instances of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
• The drift service helps IT specialists control the drift of system configurations to reduce complexity and speed up troubleshooting.

According to the developer, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 has received a number of monitoring and performance updates:

• The advanced Control Groups (cgroups) v2 resource management mechanism effectively limits RAM consumption by reserving and setting floors/limits to prevent excessive memory consumption by system processes, preventing failures and performance degradation.
• Advanced capabilities to optimize performance-sensitive workloads with NUMA and sub-NUMA policies.
• Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) 5.0.2 with agents for Microsoft SQL Server 2019 provides collection and analysis of an advanced set of metrics SQL Server for more fine-tuning and. DBMS OS
• The Red Hat subscription watch SaaS tools simplifies the control and management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform subscriptions in hybrid clouds.

Containerization of workloads paves the way for digital transformation and a cloud future, with enterprise tools for building such applications both supporting the latest innovation and ensuring a stable life cycle. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 includes an updated package of Red Hat container tools with a 24-month support period. In addition, containerized varieties of Skopeo and Buildah (in the Tech Preview version) are available in RHEL 8.2 to provide additional level and security, allowing assembly of containers inside containers, according to Red Hat.

In order to improve the security of container loads, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 introduces the Udica tool, which, according to the developer, greatly simplifies the creation of customizable container-oriented security policies SELinux. Udica can be selectively applied to workloads and reduces the risk of processes going outside its container, leading to problems for other containers or the host itself.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 also received the following updates at the Red Hat Universal Base Image level:

• OpenJDK and.NET 3.0 - provide developers with more options when creating cloud applications ready for Red Hat certification.
• Simplified access to the source code associated with a particular image with just one command - makes it easier for Red Hat partners to fulfill the open source licensing conditions.

According to the developer, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 pays special attention to reducing the entry threshold for new and existing users. For greater convenience and ease of use, as well as to improve the quality of user experience when working with the OS, the following was implemented:

• Registering a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription directly when installing the OS facilitates the commissioning of new systems.
• The optional activation of Red Hat Insights during installation makes it easier to connect this service to the new RHEL system.
• The continuous improvement and control of the life cycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with testing updates on top of previous OS versions within Red Hat Insights helps to update. The Convert2RHEL tool migrates workloads from unsupported RHEL clones such as CentOS to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

As of April 2020, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 will soon be publicly available on the portal Red Hat Customer Portal.

"IT organizations are faced with the need to do more work using technology from the company's regular software stack. They should ensure the stability of operations and the availability of services, often working remotely or with a limited composition, without abandoning previously defined technological strategies. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 addresses these and many other challenges by offering proactive intelligent monitoring and ready-to-use container tools. They enable IT professionals to effectively address critical challenges while maintaining a willingness to return to building a cloud future when the opportunity arises. " noted Stephanie Chiras, Vice President of Red Hat and Head of Red Hat Enterprise Linux

"Building servers that are optimally configured, fully operational, and protected from day one is a priority for our IT organization. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Red Hat Insights service provide us with this opportunity, allowing us to deploy servers that can be used immediately and fully meet our requirements, " noted Steve Short, Head of UNIX Platforms, Kingfisher PLC

Access from the SberCloud cloud

On April 10, 2020, Sberbank announced that SberCloud and Red Hat had signed a partnership agreement.

SberCloud has become cloudy provider who provides access to Red Hat Enterprise (Linux RHEL) from the cloud with vendor support.

As part of the cooperation, SberCloud customers in Russia can use a trusted, stable and secure enterprise-class computing environment that is verified for most of the workloads required by a modern organization.

Expanding the range of offers cloud services is one of the key areas of development of our company, and partnership with a vendor such as Red Hat is an important step along the way. All SberCloud customers will now be able to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux, one of the most trusted enterprise Linux platforms in our cloud. RHEL is used worldwide for critical applications on global exchanges, financial institutions, leading telecommunication companies and other fields. economies An important feature of RHEL for us is the ability to use it in, and public private environments hybrid cloud , as well as the availability of advanced monitoring tools, which IT infrastructures makes it easier for companies and organizations to migrate to SberCloud cloud and manage complex hybrid and multi-block infrastructure. said Evgeny Kolbin, CEO of SberCloud

{{quote 'author = Timur Kulchitsky noted, regional manager of Red Hat Russia in and CIS' We are glad to start cooperation with SberCloud, a cloud market player in Russia. As part of the partnership, the audience of the service gets access operating system to the fully functional enterprise class RHEL, in which you can run any type of load: both traditional corporate, such databases Oracle SAP as applications, and applications using modern flagship development environments and frameworks - for example, for tasks, machine learning working big data with, etc. This partnership brings benefits to both SberCloud and Red Hat customers, making access to RHEL easier and more convenient than ever, }}

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.2 Beta

On January 22, 2020, Red Hat announced the release of the beta version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.2.

According to the company, in addition to standard regular update features such as patches and updated software, RHEL 8.2 offers user experience improvements, as well as advanced performance monitoring and management capabilities, support for additional programming languages ​ ​ and development tools.

To simplify the procedure for registering RHEL subscriptions for users, in RHEL 8.2 Beta this operation is included in the installation procedure so as not to launch a distribution update using YUM immediately after installing the OS to confirm a registered RHEL subscription. In addition, the proactive analytics service Red Hat Insights, can now be activated directly during installation and used from the very first minutes of using the updated OS.

RHEL 8.2 Beta also offers a number of updated capabilities to help system operators and administrators IT better control the lifecycle of RHEL servers. RHEL 8.2 Beta allows IT professionals to pre-test the replacement of RHEL version 6 or 7 with version 8, which is especially important given the end of the second phase of RHEL 6 support in November 2020.

RHEL 8.2 Beta enhances platform performance monitoring and management with Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) 5.02 with data collection agents for Microsoft SQL Server 2019, a company spokesperson said. In addition, RHEL 8.2 Beta provides closer integration with the Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) on all supported architectures.

RHEL 8 introduced a mechanism for separating programming languages, runtimes components and other development tools from the basic OS software packages. This mechanism is called Application Streams and helps to increase the stability of the operating system when implementing innovation at the application level. In addition, RHEL 8.2 Beta expands the capabilities of Application Streams by supporting updated development tools, including: GCC Toolset 9.1, Python 3.8, Maven 3.6.

2019

RHEL 8 for SAP Solutions as SAP HANA 2.0 Launch Platform

On September 10, 2019, Red Hat introduced Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for SAP Solutions, a smart operating system that simultaneously provides hybrid cloud coverage and support for critical SAP workloads. During the launch of RHEL 8, SAP opened production support for SAP RHEL 8 for SAP Solutions as a platform for running SAP HANA 2.0 (SPS 04 and higher) on Intel x86 architecture (64-bit). The IBM Power9 version for September 2019 is being tested accordingly.

According to the company, RHEL 8 for SAP Solutions offers a number of updated capabilities to improve the performance of modern workloads, including SAP HANA. In particular, full support for Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory (pMEM) in File System DAX (FS-DAX) mode, offering high memory density, low latency and non-volatile. data storage Permanent memory provides advantages when working with those in-memory DBMS requiring preloading data into memory before maintenance. traffic applications Combining persistent memory DRAM with increases overall system memory density, allowing faster processing of hot data with fewer resources.

With persistent memory, hot data is located closer to, to the processor providing low latency access and minimizing data requests from the higher latency storage subsystem. This allows for faster warm-up databases and lower total cost of ownership for other operational tasks, such as restarting the system.

Based on the recommendations of Red Hat and SAP, the Red Hat Insights service is updated with rules to promptly warn IT professionals about incorrect or suboptimal settings and other system risks, such as security vulnerabilities. In large enterprise SAP systems, the Red Hat Insights service serves as an amplifying factor for IT departments, actively identifying known vulnerabilities and proposing measures to eliminate them. In addition, Red Hat Insights complements SAP Early Watch, providing a comprehensive assessment of the health of SAP operating systems and application stack.

The Real-Time Security Patch Installation Engine, available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 for SAP Solutions, will not only identify potential risks and issues with Red Hat Insights, but also address them in accelerated mode with minimal or zero production downtime. As of September 2019, this mechanism is already available to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 customers for SAP Solutions as part of Extended Update Support (EUS).

RHEL 8 for SAP Solutions uses GCC tools based on Release 8.2, which are also used in SAP HANA to further optimize performance and enhance the security of code for analytical workloads such as SAP HANA.

Free Developer Access

At the end of August 2019, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system became free for developers. To download the distribution with zero payment, you need to be a member of the Red Hat Developer program (developers.redhat.com).

It is possible to download versions starting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2, including the most relevant at the end of August 2019 (8.1 Beta). Assemblies are allowed to be used only in the development process, not for commercial projects.

Red Hat emphasizes that subscriptions for developers are completely free - no additional costs for any software or content. Including access to updates is not limited.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux images available for download in Red Hat Developer are no different from those distributed for money.

No, this is not a trial period. No, this is not a preliminary version. No, we have not disabled any features that are available in a paid subscription. We just want you to use the OS and be successful, so we will not do any surprises or strange workarounds, the manufacturer said in a statement.

Red Hat Developer membership also provides access to documentation and the Red Hat Customer Portal. The idea is simple - the development of the application should go on the same platform on which it will be launched in the future in order to minimize incompatibility, emphasized in Red Hat.

On the Red Hat Enterprise Linux download page, developers are offered full (DVD iso, 4 GB) and abbreviated (Boot iso, ~ 600 MB) boot images for releases. The source code of all packages can be downloaded from the Git repository of the  CentOS project as before.

To register in the developer program, you need to specify the name, surname, place of work, email and address of residence.^[4]

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 Enhanced Flexibility and Security for Cloud Environments

On August 7, 2019, Red Hat introduced a universal version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.7, the latest version of RHEL 7, released as part of the full support phase of this platform. In line with the global trend of transforming enterprise IT systems using hybrid and multi-cloud environments, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 provides operations professionals with more control and consistency over cloud infrastructures, while offering enterprise application developers a set of modern and supported container tools.

With Release 7.7, RHEL 7 is transitioning from Full Support Phase 1 to Maintenance Phase I during its 10-year lifecycle. At this stage, Red Hat focuses on ensuring the stability of IT infrastructures in an industrial environment and improving the reliability of the operating system. Subsequent smaller releases of RHEL 7 will focus solely on maintaining and improving stability rather than offering new features, Red Hat emphasized.

As of August 2019, RHEL subscribers retain the ability to migrate between versions of the platform, depending on the level of support and functionality required. To facilitate this process, Red Hat offers a range of tools, including upgrading RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 in-place upgrade.

As noted in Red Hat, organizations are increasingly using hybrid clouds, so IT operators have to deal with a complex and constantly changing technology stack, in which traditional applications and cloud services, as well as physical, virtual and cloud IT resources, are closely intertwined. RHEL 7.7 offers a number of additional capabilities to ensure workload control and consistency in such environments, including:

• Red Hat Insights is a Red Hat expert service that helps the customer proactively identify, analyze, and resolve a wide range of potential security and software issues before an outage or other problem occurs.
• Full support for image assembly is the Red Hat Enterprise Linux utility, which simplifies the assembly of container images for public cloud infrastructures, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
• Improved network performance in Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenStack Platform by migrating a number of network function virtualization (NFV) tasks to the physical network adapter layer.

Modern applications for working in a hybrid cloud are often based on Linux containers. Building such applications requires appropriate tools, such as container daemons, but can introduce additional risks and complexities to the development process. Therefore, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 includes full support for distributed Red Hat container tools (buildah, podman and skopeo) on Red Hat Enterprise Linux workstations deployed with Red Hat Universal Base Image, which allows development teams to create, run and manage container applications in a hybrid cloud, operating fewer tools that also take up less space, according to Red Hat.

According to the developer, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 has learned to install fixes for the Linux kernel in real time, without rebooting the system, which allows you to quickly deploy critical and important security fixes with minimal interruptions.

As of August 2019, RHEL 7.7 is available to Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscribers on portal the Red Hat Customer Portal.

"As hybrid clouds become the primary production environment for critical workloads, the stability and consistency of all of these environments is critical. With the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7, we offer important features and tools such as the container assembly utility and the Red Hat Insights service to help the customer get the most out of their investment in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. " noted Stephanie Chiras, Vice President of Red Hat and Head of Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

On May 7, 2019, Red Hat announced the overall availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, its operating system designed for a wide variety of use cases in an enterprise IT infrastructure. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 can be used to run multiple workloads in any environment and offers enterprise Linux uniformity to meet the individual technology demands of growing enterprises.

According to the developer's statement, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is an operating system that was specifically designed for the hybrid cloud era and was created to support a wide variety of workloads and operations, from enterprise data centers to multi-cloud public environments. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 operating system was created not only to support the work of the corporate IT infrastructure in the cloud, but also to help enterprises implement new technological strategies involving the use of a variety of approaches and technologies, from Linux containers and hybrid cloud to DevOps and artificial intelligence.

Along with the increasing value of hybrid clouds and multi-cloud environments, operating systems should also evolve. According to IDC research, about 70% of customers use multi-cloud environments, and about 64% of applications in a typical IT portfolio are based on the cloud - either public or private. Red Hat sees the operating system as the cornerstone for these IT-Innovations.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8: Intelligent Linux for Hybrid Cloud

As data centers grow in scale and workloads become more complex, the skills needed to deploy and maintain Linux-based commercial production systems are becoming more relevant. With the announcement of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, all the necessary knowledge and experience is included by default in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription as part of the Red Hat Insights offer, with which customers can access Linux expertise as a service, Red Hat emphasized.

Red Hat Insights helps you proactively identify and resolve IT issues, from security threats to stability issues. It leverages intelligent analytics based on extensive knowledge of open technology and helps administrators avoid problems and unplanned downtime in production environments.

Managing systems spread across different local and cloud infrastructures is a major challenge for IT departments. Red Hat Smart Management, a tiered add-on over Red Hat Enterprise Linux, helps IT teams realize the benefits of hybrid cloud computing by minimizing their inherent management complexities. Combining Red Hat Satellite for local system management and cloud management services for distributed implementations of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Smart Management offers rich management, updating, provisioning and provisioning capabilities for implementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a hybrid cloud, Red Hat claims.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8: Fast Adoption of Modern Applications

To meet the growing demands of the business, IT is turning to new workloads, from artificial intelligence (AI) - based projects to the Internet of Things (IoT), in an effort to secure competitive advantage in saturated markets. Linux operating systems offer innovative capabilities to support these differentiated services, but only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, according to the developer, provides all these innovations along with a complete source code base, broad security updates, technical support, and an extensive ecosystem of tested and proven related technologies.

According to the developer, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system has always been known as a stable and secure basis for creating applications. However, it used to be difficult for enterprises to get the most modern languages ​ ​ and frameworks that developers needed without threatening stability. The update structure of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 introduced Application Streams, which allow you to regularly update dynamically developing programming languages, platforms and development tools without affecting the main resources of the system. All this allows you to accelerate innovation for developers and ensure production stability in a single enterprise-class operating system.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8: A World of Opportunity for All

Linux remains the most popular operating system for enterprise application developers, according to the developer's statement. With the launch of these applications into commercial operation, the primary requirements are to ensure stability, enhanced security and testing/certification of applications for working with existing equipment and environments. Thus, the burden of responsibility is transferred from developers to teams performing operational support (operations team). All this, as well as the trend when Linux is considered as the main platform for application development, makes the skills in the field of administration and management of Linux systems extremely important in the context of modern data centers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 was created in order to reduce the threshold for entering Linux, making it more accessible to system administrators working with Windows, for novice Linux users, as well as for those who are just trying themselves as a system administrator and have no fear of the command line.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 allows you to abstract from the many difficulties associated with the diverse nature of system administration tasks that are hidden behind the Red Hat Enterprise Linux web console. The console provides a consistent and intuitive graphical interface for managing the entire Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system, from monitoring individual virtual machines to monitoring overall system performance. To further simplify the work, Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports the ability to update in place (without complete reinstallation - in-place upgrades), offering users a more rational, efficient and timely way to update their instances with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and move to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, emphasized in Red Hat.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 also includes support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Roles, which automates many of the more complex tasks associated with managing and configuring Linux in a production environment. Based on Red Hat Ansible Automation, System Roles are pre-configured Ansible modules that provide ready-made automated workflows for the most common complex system administrator tasks. Such automation makes it easier for system administrators to familiarize themselves with Linux protocols and helps to eliminate the human factor as the cause of common configuration problems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Creating a World of Capabilities with High Security

According to Red Hat, the development of IT-Innovations is inextricably linked to open source software development, and Linux often serves as a catalyst to help achieve progress in enterprise technologies, from Linux containers and Kubernetes development to the serverless concept and artificial intelligence technologies. Building on a robust and secure open source supply chain, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 helps IT organizations drive business-ready innovation by deploying only the right workloads. All this contributes to the early implementation of technologies, and at the same time helps to minimize possible risks.

To improve security, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 supports the OpenSSL 1.1.1 and TLS 1.3 cryptographic standards. This provides access to a number of the strongest cryptographic protection standards that can be implemented system-wide by a single command, avoiding the need to configure policies or configurations for individual applications, Red Hat claims.

Since native cloud applications and services often contribute to the development of digital transformation, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 implements full support for Red Hat container tools. Built on open standards, these tools include technologies to build, run, and share container-based applications. All this helps to simplify container development and eliminates the need for cumbersome and less secure background processes (demons) for container maintenance.

For any data center, any cloud, and any application

According to the developer, the launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 contributes to the development of a powerful partner ecosystem, including thousands of certified applications, images with Linux containers, hardware configurations and cloud providers. Building on Red Hat's collaboration with other IT leaders and extensive testing, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 adds value to individual hardware configurations and workloads, including ARM and POWER architectures, as well as real-time applications and SAP solutions.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 forms the basis for Red Hat's entire hybrid cloud portfolio, including Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 and Red Hat OpenStack Platform 15. According to Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS is being prepared for release, a minimalistic operating system also based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and designed to deploy Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform container application platforms.

However, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is widely supported as a guest operating system in the Red Hat hybrid cloud infrastructure, including Red Hat OpenShift 4, Red Hat OpenStack Platform 15, and Red Hat Virtualization 4.3.

The launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 coincided with the announcement of the general availability of the Red Hat Universal Base Image, a user image (userspace image) based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and designed to create Red Hat certified Linux containers. Applications based on a generic image can be run anywhere. At the same time, users receive the benefits of the life cycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and support for Red Hat when running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, the developer noted.

2018

Red Hat Enterprise Linux became available in Windows 10 as a WLinux Enterprise distribution

In December 2018, the WLinux Enterprise distribution went on sale, which is a version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux optimized for Windows 10. WLinux Enterprise is available from the Microsoft Store and is offered at a discount price of $5. After the end of the promotion, the cost will be $100. Read more here.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6

On November 1, 2018, the company Red Hat announced the release of a public version OS of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6, the basis for building hybrid cloud solutions based on innovations with. open source Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6, according to the developer, is designed to help the organization keep pace with the development cloudy of technologies while maintaining a high level of manageability when working in various IT environments.

According to Gartner, the focus on using cloud technologies in enterprises has shifted towards hybrid and multi-cloud environments, and by 2020, 75% organizations will switch to one of these two models. According to Red Hat, this trend indicates that the presence of a single technological basis for unifying the operation of workloads in all environments, from bare hardware to virtual machines in the public cloud, has become one of the key requirements for building corporate IT systems as they increasingly cover all major cloud computing models .

According to the developer, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 provides such a basis, allowing you to deploy applications in optimal computing environments for each specific situation using the same. operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 offers a number of changes that make it easier to solve a wide range of tasks by increasing safety and controlling compliance, improving manageability, expanding automation, and applying - Linux containers.

Safety and Compliance Control

Information security remains a key concern of corporate IT services and is not easier in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. To facilitate its solution, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 offers Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 hardware modules as part of Network Bound Disk Encryption, which provides two layers of protection when using hybrid clouds and improves the physical security of data on disks. NBDE provides security in all network environments, and TPM, working in an enterprise data center, implements an additional layer of protection by binding disks to specific physical machines.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 also facilitates management firewalls with improvements to nftables that make it easier to configure and work with countermeasures. to invasions In addition, this version defaults to updated algorithms RSA with elliptic curves, which makes it easier to process information according to the requirements and standards of FIPS and other regulatory bodies, including, NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology emphasized in Red Hat.

Management and Automation

Since Linux becomes the default choice in many data centers, it should become easier and more accessible for those who are just starting a career as a system administrator or have dealt only with other operating systems such as Windows. And Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 offers a range of tools aimed at solving this problem, in particular the improved Red Hat Enterprise Linux Web Console, which simplifies visual monitoring of system health and health, simplified search for updates, automatic SSO configuration and improved firewall management interface, noted in Red Hat.

According to the developer, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 100% supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Roles, a collection of Ansible modules designed to formalize and automate server management tasks, and remotely. Each module is a ready-to-use automated IT process that solves one or another typical management task. Automation eliminates the human factor as a source of errors in the process of daily operation and frees up IT specialists to solve truly important tasks.

Container innovation

Red Hat noted that the company is closely monitoring the strengthening role of cloud computing in the processes of digital transformation of enterprises. Following in line with this trend, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 offers container tools that are initially built with an eye to enterprise-level security and include tools such as Buildah, Skopeo, CRI-O, Podman, which rely on open source projects and open standards such as the Open Container Initiative (OCI) container format.

Complementing Buildah and Skopeo, and relying on the same things as CRI-O, the Podman tool available from version 7.6 allows you to run containers and groups of containers (pods) from the already familiar command line interface without using a daemon (docker). This removes unnecessary difficulties in creating containers and allows developers to quickly and easily assemble containers on their machines, as part of continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) systems and even high-performance HPC servers or big data systems, according to Red Hat.

As of November 2018, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 is already available to customers with a valid software subscription.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5

Red Hat on April 11, 2018 announced the release of the enterprise-class Linux platform Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 7.5. As the basis for building hybrid cloud solutions, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 offers optimized security and compliance controls, tools to reduce storage costs, an improved user interface, and additional integration with Microsoft Windows-based IT infrastructures, including those deployed in the Microsoft Azure cloud.

Hybrid Cloud Security

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 offers advanced software security controls that not only help reduce risk, but also easily integrate into IT operational management processes.

The main feature of security tools is automation based on the integration of OpenSCAP and Red Hat Ansible Automation. In particular, this allows you to create Ansible automation scenarios based on the results of OpenSCAP security checks, and then, following them, more quickly and consistently fix identified problems in hybrid environments. In addition, the optimized enciphering Network-Bound Disk Encryption mechanism, which supports automatic volume decryption, improves data security when working in various environments, Red Hat explained.

Data performance

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 includes a VDO (Virtual Data Optimizer) data optimization mechanism, which, according to Red Hat internal tests, can reduce data storage costs in local and cloud environments by up to 83%. VDO reduces data redundancy and improves storage utilization by deduplicating and compressing information before writing to disk.

Simplified management

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 helps IT professionals and developers master Linux faster, simplifying complex system management tasks with an optimized Cockpit administration console. The console is made in the form of a simple and understandable web interface and includes tools for configuring the network, configuring storage systems and performing other complex tasks.

The introduced version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers additional integration capabilities with Microsoft Windows, including improved management and interoperability with Windows Server-based environments. In addition, version 7.5 allows secure communication with Microsoft Azure and has improved performance when working with complex Microsoft Active Directory configurations. All this helps to smoothly combine the flexibility and scalability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 with existing Windows environments, the company noted.

Industrial-grade Linux containers

The updated Red Hat Enterprise Linux system offers increased container security, the ability to proactively configure security and compliance control during assembly, and granular security and access control at the host level.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 received full support for Buildah, an open source utility that allows developers to create and modify Linux container images without a full container runtime or a daemon running in the background. Buildah helps IT teams build and deploy containerized applications in accelerated mode and without running a full-featured container engine, which reduces the perimeter of attacks and eliminates the need to run a container environment on systems that are not designed for this.

Support for different architectures

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 is simultaneously released for all supported platforms, including x86, IBM Power, IBM z Systems, and 64-bit ARM. This release also provides support for single-host KVM virtualization, the Open Container Initiative (OCI) runtime, and base images for IBM z Systems.

Availability

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 is already available on the Red Hat Customer Portal to all customers with a valid Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription.

2017

Linux platform for SAP applications released

On September 28, 2017, Red Hat announced the launch of an enterprise Linux platform for SAP applications - Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions, as a single, reliable, standardized platform for big data analytics and project management systems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions is based on the flexible, scalable, open source operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 in collaboration with SAP. The product offers a number of opportunities to realize the potential of SAP technologies in the field of data analysis and management.

As part of Red Hat Insights, a proactive monitoring and analytics service for evaluating and optimizing the SAP environment using Ansible automation technology.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions is a single consolidated platform that includes SAP versions of Red Hat: Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Applications and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA, extensions and services:

• High Availability Add-On enhancements ensure availability of critical SAP applications
• Smart Management Add-On enables efficient management and updating of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions environment
• Update Services for SAP Solutions provides Extended Update Support (EUS) for 4 years, porting critical security updates and priority software patches to intermediate versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions
• Red Hat Insights proactively monitors the customer's SAP systems and optimizes the operating environment, taking into account the peculiarities of big data client systems and transactions

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions is available for download on the Red Hat Customer Portal.

Red Hat and Microsoft will make it easier to work with containers in enterprise environments

On August 24, Microsoft and Red Hat presented plans to further expand their alliance in order to facilitate the introduction of container technologies in the corporate sector. In particular, the companies plan to implement support for Windows Server containers on the Red Hat OpenShift platform, support for Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated on the Microsoft Azure platform, as well as support for SQL Server on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift platforms. As conceived by the partners, this will simplify the work with containers and help accelerate the digital transformation of enterprises using hybrid cloud environments. All these solutions will be provided with joint support from Microsoft and Red Hat. You can read more about this here.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4

On August 2, 2017, Red Hat announced the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 includes a number of enhanced and enhanced features to strengthen the protection of production environments for critical workloads, both traditional and cloud. Audit tools make it easier to filter audit system events, further detail critical events, and interpret large amounts of records.

The USB Guard feature provides additional control over the connection of USB devices at the level of individual users to prevent leaks and penetration of malware.

Enhanced security containers features with full SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux) support with OverlayFS file system are designed to protect the underlying file system and use docker namespaces together, distinguishing access rights in detail

NVMe Over Fabric support increases flexibility and reduces overhead when using high-performance NVMe data center-based storage devices with Ethernet or Infiniband connectivity.

Improved performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux when deployed in public cloud environments, including accelerated OS boot to quickly launch mission-critical applications and support for Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) technology on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for network capabilities.

Based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4, a version of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host OS was created. It offers advanced capabilities for the application of container technologies in enterprise environments. Enhanced security without sacrificing performance with SELinux and OverlayFS support, and 100% graph driver support for overlay2 storage.

Support for package layering technology rpm-island allows you to add packages to the host OS, such as monitoring agents and device drivers.

Announced support (like Technology Preview) LiveFS allows you to install security updates and layered packages without rebooting.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 complements the capabilities of the Red Hat Satellite centralized management system and Ansible Tower IT automation technology. It offers the Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Roles mechanism (as Technology Preview). Roles provide a standard management interface for all major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, allowing you to create single, universal Ansible scripts to automate technical processes at once in all used environments based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The OS supports IBM Power, IBM System z platforms and 64-bit ARM platforms (in the Development Preview version). In addition, RHEL for the IBM Power Little Endian architecture received support for High Availability and Resilient Storage Add-Ons, as well as runtime environments and support for the Open Container Initiative (OCI) image format.

In the future, corporate IT infrastructures will not use one thing - only physical servers or only cloud services. On the contrary, digital transformation will most likely lead to the fact that organizations will simultaneously apply all four types of computing environments. And the new version of our enterprise Linux platform supports all of these environments, offering advanced security, enhanced performance, and innovative IT automation capabilities to help you overcome all the challenges on your way to heterogeneous data centers. Jim Totton, Vice President, Red Hat and CEO, Platforms

Enterprise Linux 6.9

On March 22, 2017, Red Hat announced the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 6.9. It is safer, more stable and more reliable. Added functionality for critical applications, the company's press service said.

Hardware support in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.9 simplifies the migration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 industrial environments to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 platform. TLS 1.2 specification is supported for additional protection of network communications, expanded support for PCI-DSS standards for organizing secure online transactions is offered. ^[5].

For more than six years, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 has been a recognized synonym for a stable, reliable and secure platform for running critical workloads, ranging from IT solutions in the financial sector to systems that ensure national security. With the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.9, we continue to provide customers with a solid foundation for building industrial environments that now offers more stability and security, as well as an updated basic OS image that makes it easier to implement new scenarios for running critical applications. Jim Totton, Vice President, Red Hat and CEO, Platforms

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.9 supports cloud-based applications that convert RHEL 6 loads to container-based deployment applications on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host, and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.9 is available on the Red Hat Customer Portal to Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscribers.

Vulnerabilities found in Linux cores based on RHEL 6 and RHEL 7

Virtuozzo, a virtual infrastructure software provider, reported a Linux kernel security vulnerability in January and offers ReadyKernel updates.

A vulnerability in the Linux kernel (Bug 1284450 - CVE-2015-8539) potentially allows you to completely disable the server, both from the application on the host and directly from the container. The problem lies in the Linux key management system, which can give the attacker additional privileges or even allow the entire machine to be disabled.

Virtuozzo 7 users can get the update through the ReadyKernel service. Virtuozzo ReadyKernel allows users to immediately apply security updates without restarting systems. ReadyKernel uses kpatch technology, which allows you to apply the patch without stopping running processes.

2016

RHEL 7.1 Receives Common Criteria Safety Certification

On November 3, 2016, Red Hat announced that the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 operating system had received a security certificate according to the general criteria - Common Criteria EAL 4 + for unmodified operating systems according to the OSPP (Operating System Protection Profile) class.

On November 3, 2016, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is the first IT operating system in history to receive Common Criteria certification for the Linux Container Framework Support profile.

Red Hat's Common Criteria certification ensures that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 meets EAL 4 + security requirements and can be used by public and private customers in environments with appropriate IT security requirements.

In addition to Linux Container Framework Support, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 has been certified for security profiles:

• Advanced Management (MLS mode only)
• Labeled Security (MLS mode only)
• Protection against software errors during execution, including ASLR (address space allocation randomization) functionality, buffer overflow protection, and other technologies
• Batch filtering

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 has been certified by the Federal Office of Management information security Germany (BSI) as a Common Criteria (ISO/IEC 15408) safety, performance and reliability test at EAL4 +. Certification was carried out by atsec, accredited by the government USA and the management of BSI as a computer security testing center.

Security is a subject of constant concern for state institutions, financial institutions and representatives of many other sectors of the economy. The EAL 4 + Common Criteria certification for HPE ProLiant servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux will help our customers meet stringent government security standards. Scott Farrand, Vice President, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Head of Platform Software

With the Common Criteria certificate, the Red Hat operating system ensures enterprise-level security for large-scale environments based on open source software and IBM Power and Z System servers. Now, by relying on open source software that allows you to operate more flexibly in cloud environments, customers can not doubt the security of the Red Hat operating system. Jim Wasko, IBM Vice President and Head of Open Systems

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8

Red Hat, an open source solution provider, released a public version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 in May 2016. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 allows you to exploit both traditional workloads and fundamentally new solutions such as cloud applications and Linux containers.

In general, according to the developers, the platform version 6.8 offers a number of new and optimized features aimed at improving the security of the platform and its manageability.

New in security, authentication, and interoperability

Thus, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 now includes libreswan, which implements a standardized and widely supported VPN protocol and replaces openswan as a standard VPN solution for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 for end nodes, which allows the customer to use the latest developments in VPN security.

Redesigned Identity Management (SSSD) client subsystem code offers improved performance and new features to simplify management. The Cached authentication lookup client engine optimizes account information exchange with Active Directory servers, and adcli support simplifies the management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 systems when interacting with an Active Directory domain. In addition, SSSD now supports user authentication using smart cards both when logging in and when performing subsequent operations, for example, sudo commands, the company noted.

Management and Monitoring

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 now includes the Relax-and-Recover system archiving tool, which allows administrators to create local ISO backups for centralized archiving and remote replication for disaster recovery. The optimized yum toolkit simplifies work by "smart" package placement when adding/removing platform functions, the company noted.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 also provides greater control over storage subsystem usage and performance by offering a dmstats program that displays I/O statistics for user-configurable storage areas using a device mapping driver.

Other Improvements and Innovations

Scalable File System Extension Module for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 now supports XFS up to 300 TB.

As part of the release of the public version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8, an updated basic image of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 was also released, designed to convert traditional workloads into container applications for deployment on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host platforms.

According to Red Hat, with the release of this release, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 platform is moving to the Production Phase 2 stage. At this stage of the life cycle, ensuring platform stability and the release of security patches are the top priorities.

2015

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2

On November 19, 2015, Red Hat announced the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2^[6].

The RHEL 7.x branch will be maintained until June 2024. RHEL 7.2 installation images are available for download to registered Red Hat Network (RHN) users, package sources can be downloaded from the CentOS project Git repository.

At the same time, the preliminary release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.2 for devices based on the 64-bit ARM architecture (AArch64/ARMv8) and the assembly of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host 7.2 for running isolated containers have been published.

Main additions

• The desktop environment was updated to GNOME 3.14 (previously used by GNOME 3.8), which marked a departure from the previously used practice of supplying one version of the user environment throughout the RHEL distribution support cycle. To control the installation of programs, the GNOME Software interface is integrated into the distribution kit;
• Virtualization
  • Experimental nested virtualization support - the KVM guest system can now be used as a host system to run nested guest systems;
  • Experimental support for namespaces of user identifiers (User namespace) and freezing/restoring the state of processes (criu);
  • Experimental support for emulation of the USB 3.0 host adapter (xHCI) for virtualization environments;
  • qemu-kvm provides support for tracking virtual machine shutdown events, which simplifies debugging problems during the shutdown of guest systems;
  • In guest systems, it is possible to use ⁠Intel MPX (Intel Memory Protection Extensions) extensions, for example, to implement hardware control over the pointer going beyond the buffer;
  • A dump-guest-memory.py script has been added to extract the guest system memory dump from the core QEMU-KVM file created during a kernel failure;
  • Full support for the virt-v2v utility, designed to convert images of virtual machines (Xen, VMware vCenter) created for other hypervisors to run under KVM;
  • Experimental support for the virt-p2v utility to convert a separately running system (for example, CD-ROM, ISO and PXE loaded on a physical machine) into a KVM virtual machine format;
  • Updated the Atomic Host environment, designed to run isolated containers prepared and managed using Docker and Kubernetes tools (as an option you can use Cockpit), and delivered in the form of a monolithic, fully updated image. The release of Atomic Host 7.2 includes an update to the OSTree repository and new versions of docker 1.8.2, flannel 0.5, cockpit 0.77, stored 2.2.0, kubernetes 1.0.3, atomic 1.6-6, etc. Container images for running rsyslog, sadc and cockpit-ws have been updated. Added new containers for Etcd, Kubernetes-controller, Kubernetes-apiserver and Kubernetes-scheduler.
  • The beta release of the Red Hat Container Development Kit 2 is presented, which includes a collection of images, utilities and documentation that make it easier to create applications focused on working inside isolated containers, implemented on the basis of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host 7.2 or OpenShift Enterprise 3 products;

• Safety
  • The ability to remotely control data protection (encryption) on local disks using standard network identification mechanisms;
  • SSSD has added support for caching authentication results, matching different UID/GIDs with one user, disabling SSH key login for blocked clients, and the ability to use smart cards. Updated packages associated with the identification subsystem, such as nss and nss-util 3.18, openldap 2.4.40;
  • A new SCAP module is integrated into the installer, which allows you to meet the requirements of the selected security profile during installation;
  • DNSSEC support for DNS zones and the ability to combine different identification groups have been added to the centralized Identity Management (IdM) tools, which allows users to use the same login parameters to access different resources;
  • Support for Password Vault, centralized password storage and other private user information;
  • Support for verification by checksum of commands or scripts running through the sudo utility. The checksum is created at the first start of the program, and at subsequent starts it is checked whether the executable file is replaced.

• Data storage
  • The Storage Management API (libStorageMgmt) has been improved to provide a manufacturer-independent mechanism for monitoring disk health and managing RAID configuration;
  • New tools have been added for diagnosing and accumulating statistics on the operation of I/O devices;
  • Experimental support for the lvmlockd daemon to coordinate access to shared storage;
  • The LIO framework with the SCSI target implementation has been updated to the Linux 4.0 kernel state, which made it possible to implement the XCOPY, WRITE SAME and ATS commands, as well as add support for DIF integrity control;
  • Support for dump files larger than 16 TB. The makedumpfile utility has added support for a new sadump format, which can address more than 16 TB of physical memory;
  • XFS file system implementation upgraded to Linux kernel state 4.1;
  • The CIFS file system has been updated to version 3.17, which includes support for new SMB2 and SMB3 features;
  • NFS has added support for the fallocate call to pre-allocate disk space, as well as SEEK_HOLE options and SEEK_DATA in the fseek () function to allocate empty areas. Added support for the flexible file layout function in the NFSv4;
  • Device Mapper (DM) updated to Linux 4.2 kernel state, added support for the blk-mq mechanism (Multi-Queue Block I/O Queueing Mechanism);

• Network capabilities
  • TCP/IP stack updated to Linux kernel state 3.18;
  • The DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) framework is included to create high-performance network applications that directly process packets bypassing the kernel network stack. A special driver has been added to the system that allows you to organize the execution of both traditional network applications and DPDK applications directly working with network equipment.
  • There is support for the TCP DCTCP (Data Center TCP) congestion control algorithm, which uses the ECN extension to adapt the algorithm to the specifics of using large data centers in networks, in which large continuous data chunks requiring maximum throughput can be transmitted, as well as small control flows requiring minimal delays. DCTCP allows not only to assess the presence of traffic congestion, but also to assess the degree of network congestion;
  • Drivers for creating network tunnels have been updated to Linux 4.0 kernel state;
  • Added conntrack-tools to help track network connections;
  • NetworkManager has been updated to version 1.0.6, the tools for integrating NetworkManager with external applications have been expanded, support for interactive password requests has been added, MTU values for bonded interfaces can be set, support for virtual interfaces and Wake On Lan has been added.

• System changes
  • Improved the allocation of processor resources for tasks that require dedicated processor time. A certain processor core can be directed to use only for the execution of a certain service or application. To increase the allocation of computing resources, vmstat handlers launched as needed are implemented, which help organize more efficient allocation and balancing of resources;
  • The Relax-and-Recover archiving system has been added, which allows you to create backups of the operating system in the form of ISO images;
  • Performance Co-Pilot introduces a new web interface to help you analyze and manage system and network performance;

The RHEL pre-release for architecture has been released ARM64

On June 22, 2015, Red Hat published a preliminary release of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 distribution for 64-bit ARM (AArch64/ARMv8) systems^[7].

The build is available for testing by Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program members. In parallel, with the participation of the community, a similar assembly of CentOS for ARM64 was prepared. The release is based on the Linux 3.19 kernel.

The project to create an ARM version of RHEL started four and a half years ago and developed with the participation of the community porting Fedora to ARM systems.

RHEL Atomic Host debuted

On March 11, 2015, Red Hat introduced a platform for the free Atomic project, focused on running applications in isolated containers.

RHEL Atomic Host contains only the kernel and the basic infrastructure for working with containers (systemd, Docker, etc.)^[8]. All packages required for applications are contained directly in containers, which makes it easy to transfer them from one server to another, as well as update/replace them without rebooting the system.

Graphic representation of the Atomic project, 2014

To manage container clusters, RHEL Atomic Host uses Google's free Kubernetes framework.

The release of RHEL Atomic Host reflects a general trend towards the formation of container-oriented distributions (for example, HuevOS and RancherOS).

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 distribution is ready

On March 11, 2015, it became known about the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1.

The OS was transferred to the public beta testing stage in December 2014 and includes a number of new security features. In particular, a new certification center is used as the central mechanism of the account management system. Support implemented two-factor authentications^[9]

Innovations

• Experimental support for Btrfs and OverlayFS file systems;
• Experimental support for kpatch technology, which allows you to apply patches to the kernel on the fly with the elimination of vulnerabilities and some types of errors, without rebooting and stopping the system. On-the-fly updates are only supported for AMD64-based systems;
• The distribution includes user tools and a Ceph RBD (RADOS Block Devices) kernel module for organizing access to block storage devices based on the Ceph file system. The partition created on top of such a block device can be formatted using any standard file system, including XFS and EXT4;
• Support for Parallel NFS mode (pNFS), defined in the NFS v4.1 standard and allowing parallel access to a series of distributed NFS storage across different hosts;
• Full support for LVM Cache technology is provided, which allows you to create logical LVM partitions in which a small fast SSD is used as a cache for large but slow hard drives;
• Container virtualization has been expanded in terms of preparing, testing and deploying containers in local, cloud and hybrid systems. Docker tools have been updated to release 1.4.1, images have been prepared for creating containers on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform;
• Added real-time task execution capabilities aimed at executing processes that require precise and deterministic processing times. The ability is implemented through an additional set of packages and kernel improvements installed on top of the standard installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux;
• OpenLMI, an infrastructure for simplifying remote management of Linux systems, has added storage management tools and the ability to configure dynamic storage allocation ("thin provisioning") based on LVM (Logical Volume Manager);
• For environments in which Red Hat Enterprise Linux and coexist, Microsoft Windows integration of the CIFS file system with SSSD (System Security Services Daemon) is provided, which allows you to organize native access to print services and Microsoft Windows file storage without using Winbind;
• Additional identity management (IdM, Identity Management) tools have been added, based on the provision of one-time passwords through LDAP and Kerberos protocols using both hardware (Yubico) and software tokens (FreeOTP);
• A new CA (Certificate Authority) tool that allows you to use identity management tools to change the certificate of the certification center and change the trust chain;
• New performance management tools have been added, such as PAPI (Performance Application Programming Interface) support, OProfile enhancements, and performance profile support with customizations optimized for specific tasks. The Linux kernel has a new locking mechanism that increases efficiency on large systems with a significant number of NUMA nodes;
• Added support for new IBM Power Systems based on the 64-bit POWER8 architecture running in little endian mode;
• An additional screen has been added to the Anaconda installer to configure the Kdump mechanism used to save a kernel dump in the event of a failure. The design of the interface for partitioning the disk has been changed. The network settings have added the ability to set the parameters of the network bridge (new Bridge menu). Instead of displaying installation logs on several consoles, these logs are now multiplexed in one console (Ctrl + F1) using tmux panels. The number of commands of the automated installation mode (Kickstart) has been expanded;
• Added libStorageMgmt API and related command timeline utilities to unify management of various types of disk arrays;
• Support for HA-DAS adapters LSI Syncro CS has megaraid_sas added to the driver;
• Added a program interface (liblvm and lvm2app.h) to manage various aspects of LVM operation;
• Experimental support for new DIF/DIX additions to the SCSI standard, increasing the block size from 512 to 520 bytes, of which 8 additional bytes are used to store integrity control data;
• An experimental module "dm-era" has been added, designed to maintain a list of blocks changed in a user-defined period of time (you can track changed blocks for backup systems or partially reset the cache to restore the state after rollback to snapshot);
• An experimental virtuo-blk-data-plane module is available for virtualization systems, which allows you to increase performance by taking disk I/O into a separate stream;
• QEMU has added experimental support for PCI Bridge, which allows you to configure more than 32 PCI devices for the virtual environment;
• Support for emulation of USB 3.0 (xHCI) host adapters has been added for KVM-based guest systems;
• Increased performance of the network driver for the Hyper-V virtualization system;
• Libguestfs presents new virt-builder utilities (building virtual machine images), virt-customize (configuring virtual machine images, installing packages, editing configurations, running scripts), virt-diff (showing differences in the file system of two virtual machines), virt-log (viewing guest system log files) and virt-v2v (converting the guest system from another hypervisor to work in KVM);
• Inclusion in the java-1.8.0-openjdk package as an option for testing OpenJDK8 available in parallel with java-1.7.0-openjdk;
• Experimental support for the Trusted Network Connect (TNC) framework;
• Inclusion in the BPF-based traffic classification system (Berkeley Packet Filter);
• The inclusion of libnetfilter_queue in the library, with the help of which the packet filter can send packets for processing to applications operating in the user space, providing interaction with the nfnetlink_queue module through the nfnetlink interface;
• NetworkManager added support for the lacp_rate network interface aggregation option, simplified the process of renaming devices;
• Support for VTI (virtual tunnel interfaces) using namespaces for the network stack, which allows you to divide the packing and unpacking operations of packets in VTI between different namespaces;
• OpenSSH updated to version 6.6.1p1, GnuTLS to version 3.3.8, strongSwan to version 5.2.0, Libreswan to version 3.12.

2014

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA

June 3, 2014 it became known about the release by Red Hat of the Enterprise Linux system, suitable, according to the vendor, for use in conjunction with the SAP HANA system.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA is available for local or cloud use, providing an additional choice for deploying scalable big data applications. Companies are also touting military-grade security technologies for their platform, like Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux), to prevent data breaches.

The updated system will be available in SAP certified hardware solutions. Partners offer to use existing SAP licenses in the cloud and add Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA to services on the SAP Marketplace.

"Red Hat is committed to providing the enterprise world with open source options to help meet IT needs of any nature, including the use of big data," said Steve Lucas, president of the SAP AG solutions platform. "By complementing Red Hat's open hybrid cloud technologies with a powerful portfolio of SAP data platforms, we, along with our extensive, experienced partner networks, can deliver high-performance enterprise-class solutions that help solve true business challenges

."

2013

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.0

On December 11, 2013, Red Hat announced the release of the first public beta version of the server operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0.

• The Linux 3.10 kernel is based. Among the innovations are isolated containers for applications. You can assign the amount of system resources available to each container using the libvirt tool.

• For the first time, RHEL defaults to XFS, a high-performance logging file system optimized for extensive datasets and "hard" parallel tasks.

• The KVM hypervisor now recognizes a NUMA architecture that has data in the working memory of large systems as close as possible to the processor processing it. Thanks to this, KVM virtual machines will work with performance close to physical systems, Red Hat hopes.

• RHEL 7 introduced a unified command line interface that, in addition to standard Unix commands, allows the execution of commands from the Red Hat Storage Manager and Network Manager utilities. Built into RHEL 7, the Samba 4.1 package allows you to combine MicrosoftActive Directory domains with LDAP directories, and it is also possible to automatically add a Linux user to an Active Directory domain.

• It supports OpenLMI, an open source system that allows you to manage different Linux distributions from a single interface.

Operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.5 received certification from FSTEC of Russia

In December 2014, the Russian representative office of Red Hat and Certified Information Systems announced the completion of certification by the Federal Service for Technical and Export Control (FSTEC of Russia) of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.5 operating system. In accordance with the certificate, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.5 operating system is an operating system with built-in means of protection against unauthorized access to information that does not contain information constituting a state secret, complies with the requirements of the guidance document "Computing equipment. Protection against unauthorized access to information. Indicators of protection against unauthorized access to information (State Technical Commission of Russia, 1992) - in class 5 of security.

The operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.5 is the first software product from the Red Hat line to receive a certificate of conformity to the FSTEC of Russia. Certified versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.5 can be used in state security class 3 and 4 information systems, as well as in personal data level 3 and 4 information systems with class 3 threat type. This preserves all the advantages of Red Hat software: high performance, reliability and security, scalability, providing a compatible environment for applications, responsiveness in a physical and virtual environment.

"Certification of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.5 operating system according to the security requirements of the FSTEC of Russia is a very important step for us in the development of business in the Russian market. Ensuring the information security of government bodies at all levels is one of the most important tasks at the moment. Certification in the FSTEC system of Russia allows you to use Red Hat software in state information systems for processing personal data and protecting confidential information in accordance with the requirements of the legislation of the Russian Federation, "says Bugrin Sergey, head of the Red Hat representative office in Russia.

"Certification of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.5 operating system has long been expected by information technology specialists, both from customers and from system integrators. The use of certified software allows government organizations and business structures not only to ensure and maintain the security of information systems at a given level, but also to avoid the use of expensive superimposed information protection tools, "adds Osipov Yuri, Development Director of Certified Information Systems LLC.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.5

On November 21, 2013, Red Hat introduced a new version of its flagship operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5.

• This version is aimed at those who create large, complex IT projects, manage them. This is especially true for enterprises that need to use an open hybrid cloud. According to the developer, RHEL 6.5 provides everything you need to do - from security and networking requirements to virtualization capabilities. For example, it is possible to dynamically connect and disable virtual processors for active guests.

• Improved memory usage for guest-intensive RHEL applications. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) integrates with GlusterFS, providing direct access to a distributed storage platform. Application deployment is supported in containers created using Docker (formerly dotCloud).

• The new release provides quick setup tools to run SAP applications as recommended by this company.

• RHEL 6.5 supports sub-microsecond clock synchronization accuracy on the LAN using Precision Time Protocol (PTP), which is key for applications that require instant response.

This version is recommended for use in the financial services and trading industries.

2011

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.4

RHEL Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 is optimized for performance, stability, and flexibility, and should help organizations manage operational features built into physical, virtual, and cloud environments. The distribution has also been replenished with a number of new components that will help serve basic business functions, including support for pNFS (Network File System with parallel access), improved interoperability, etc.^[10]

In working on the pNFS industry standard, the company collaborated with its partners and the development community. According to representatives of Red Hat, this helped it solve problems that NFS did not cope with the sharp increase in data volumes and the growing complexity of managing file systems. Additions made to pNFS improve performance when I/O loads are heavy, such as when working with databases. The new pNFS client introduced in RHEL 6.4 allows you to plan and design next-generation scalable file system solutions based on pNFS.

'NetApp and Red Hat feel that users are in great need of pNFS functionality to modernize their data center environments, which have become subject to extreme scalability, performance and manageability requirements, 'said Patrick Rogers, NetApp's vice president of solutions and integrations. - pNFS client support in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 was an important milestone that reflected Red Hat's leadership and innovation in creating open source enterprise solutions. '

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 continued to work on security, which resulted in improved host-based identity and access management. This version also reportedly facilitates interoperability in heterogeneous environments when managing identity through both Linux and Microsoft Active Directory.

In addition, RHEL 6.4 includes Linux drivers that improve the overall performance of the OS when used as a guest of Microsoft Hyper-V. The new release also has tools for installing paravirtualization drivers for VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V, which facilitates the concerns of users working in these environments.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 improves process container management to freely move multithreaded applications between them. The updated performance monitoring tools support Intel's proposed new type of counters - PMU (performance monitoring units).

Finally, RHEL 6.4 is complemented by a number of important office productivity enhancements, including better interaction with Microsoft Exchange, scheduling in Evolution, and new features such as signaling and meeting scheduling. Support for new models of Wacom graphics tablets used by professional animators and designers is also included.

'Red Hat Enterprise Linux has long been considered the premier open source OS for the enterprise market, and the latest release further strengthens its reputation as a top-notch platform for mission-critical solutions in physical, virtual, and cloud environments, 'said Jim Totton, vice president and general manager of Red Hat Platform Business Unit. - The functionality of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4, from pNFS support to advanced security features and more, is proof of our commitment to innovation and provides users with state-of-the-art tools to solve business challenges. '

In addition, Red Hat has announced its Big Data plans and development of robust, scalable, and managed solutions that will enable organizations to leverage systems efficiently for big data analytics. The company also announced that it is transferring its Red Hat Storage Hadoop plugin to the open Apache Hadoop community, making Red Hat Storage Hadoop compatible and fully supported file system for big data environments. At the same time, Red Hat is creating a network of ecosystem partners and corporate integration to provide enterprise customers with big data solutions.

The company plans to share a plugin for Red Hat Storage with the Hadoop community towards the end of the year. According to preliminary technology information, the Red Hat Storage Apache Hadoop plugin implements a new storage option for Hadoop enterprise infrastructures with enterprise storage features, API compatibility and local data access. Red Hat Storage introduces enterprise-class functionality such as georeplication, high availability, POSIX compatibility, disaster recovery, and management into big data environments. This solution provides users with a horizontally scalable software platform for storing combined data, which contains files and objects distributed across physical, virtual, and cloud (public and hybrid) resources.

'Red Hat has a unique position in the big data enterprise market, which IDC predicts could grow from $6 billion in 2011 to 23.8 billion in 2016, 'says Ashish Nadkarni, IDC Director of Storage Research and Co-Head of Global Reviews for Big Data. - This company is one of the very few infrastructure providers capable of delivering comprehensive big data solutions due to the breadth of its infrastructure solutions and application platforms for in-enterprise or cloud deployment models. As a major donor to open communities developing critical technologies in the big data IT stack, whether Linux, OpenStack Origin, or Gluster, it will continue to retain its central role in big data. "

Red Hat's big data infrastructure and application platforms are ideal for businesses using an open-source hybrid cloud environment, company officials say. The company's big data infrastructure solutions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Storage, and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. According to the Enterprise Linux User Report, which the Linux Foundation published last January, most big data analysis systems run on Linux, and because Red Hat is the main provider of commercial Linux, its Red Hat Enterprise Linux plays the role of the main platform for big data systems.

In turn, using Red Hat Storage technology, based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the GlusterFS distributed file system, you can pool low-cost servers of a standard architecture and create cost-effective, scalable and reliable big data storage. In addition, the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.1 solution introduced in December 2012 is being integrated with Red Hat Storage, which can access a shared memory pool managed by Red Hat Storage. The advantages of this integration are the reduction of current enterprise costs, greater portability, as well as the freedom to choose an infrastructure, its scalability and availability. According to Red Hat officials, the combination of these platforms embodies the company's vision of an open hybrid cloud based on an integrated and combined Red Hat Storage node and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, serving computing and storage resources.

Another key solution in the company's big data strategy, Red Hat JBoss Middleware, provides businesses with technology to build and integrate big data-driven applications that can interact with new technologies like Hadoop or MongoDB.

To provide the business with a set of big data solutions, Red Hat plans to cooperate with leading suppliers ON and equipment of this profile to ensure interoperability. At the same time, the company intends to use reference architectures developed by Red Hat itself and its big data partners.

As Vice President and Chief Data Storage Manager of Red Hat Ranga Rangashari said, 'Red Hat demonstrates a strong commitment to continue delivering enterprise infrastructure and platforms to run big data applications efficiently in both traditional environments and open hybrid cloud. By building truly enterprise-grade solutions, Red Hat leverages the power of the open source community to provide customers with a choice of technologies, environments, and partners. "

During the development, pilot validation, and preparation phases of big data projects, many enterprises use public cloud infrastructures, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). After that, work functions are transferred to private clouds to expand analytics to larger data arrays. An open hybrid cloud environment allows enterprises to move operational functions from the public cloud to the private cloud without changing anything in applications. Red Hat is involved in the open cloud community through projects like OpenStack and OpenShift Origin.

Meanwhile, Zadara Storage, an innovator in block cloud memory, announced that its Amazon Machine Images (AMI) virtual machine images with Red Hat Enterprise Linux memory can be purchased from the AWS Marketplace. According to Zadara representatives, thanks to the introduction of Zadara Red Hat AMI on the AWS Marketplace, enterprise-grade STaaS (storage as a service) services will be a viable and attractive solution for users of NAS devices and databases that need shared memory resources.

Zadara's offering includes Native Red Hat Cluster Services with MySQL and easy pre-configured access to NAS enterprise class NAS in the AWS cloud. Zadara Red Hat AMI delivers the benefits of a purely cloud-based storage solution along with easy deployment of pre-configured images. It is provided on demand through the AWS Marketplace and can be deployed in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) environment. Zadara AMI users get standard Red Hat images with a standard set of necessary packages and automated scripts for connecting to Zadara Virtual Private Storage Arrays (VPSA). Zadara RHEL AMI offers features NAS and Clustering - RHEL 6 for Zadara VPSA Cloud Block/File Storage and RHEL 6 Cluster with MySQL.

'We can't help but be pleased with the presence of Zadara Storage's offerings on the AWS Marketplace in addition to the growing ecosystem of Red Hat Enterprise Linux partners, 'said AWS Marketplace Chief Executive Officer Sajay Krishnan. - Zadara products used with the highly scalable, secure, and flexible AWS platform provide its users with NAS storage functionality for working with unstructured data and clustering capabilities for fault-tolerant storage of MySQL 'database information.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.3

In addition to notable performance and scalability improvements, the new release of RHEL 6.3 offers many improvements resulting from close collaboration with OEMs. In particular, the system includes improved drivers for a wide variety of peripheral hardware, as well as optimized compilation tools for processors from the Intel Xeon E5 series.

Red Hat stands out from many other Linux companies for its billions of dollars in revenue per year - despite the fact that the company builds its business almost entirely on open source solutions. Just a day before the official release of RHEL 6.3, Red Hat delivered a brilliant annual report on its financial results. Nevertheless, although the financial success of the Linux business is extremely important and indicative, there is considerable interest in the record technical characteristics and capabilities of the updated flagship platform, designed for industrial operation in the largest companies in the world.

For new application development tools, RHEL 6.3 offers full support for the Java company's latest open-source development toolkit called OpenJDK 7 Oracle for the Java Standard Edition (SE) runtime environment. In the field virtualizations , the new Virt-P2V technology in RHEL 6.3 offers the ability to convert RHEL systems or running Windows directly on physical equipment into virtual guest machines that will run under the KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) hypervisor.

From a security point of view, users are offered full support for two-factor authorization for secure access to RHEL system resources. In addition, the platform provides advanced encryption tools - now individual blocks of data can be encrypted in parallel, effectively taking advantage of multi-core processors. This new mechanism is implemented by supporting the new AES-CTR (Advanced Encryption Standard Counter Mode) algorithm in an updated version of the OpenSSH protocol to protect network connections.

The main record of the RHEL 6.3 system is associated with the number of supported virtual processors: up to 160 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) per guest machine. This is much more than the limit of 32 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) per guest machine in VMware's flagship ESX 5.0 hypervisor. In addition, operating systems on guest machines running the KVM hypervisor will now receive up to 2 terabytes of addressable RAM.

In support storage systems , RHEL 6.3 offers LVM (Logical Volume Manager) logical volume management technology that now supports Level 4, 5, and 6 RAID arrays, making it easier to administer drives by consolidating all management features, including volume creation and modification, RAID deployment, and system snapshot generation, into a single, centralized interface. The RHEL platform also supports the deployment of FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) as a target storage server with Fibre Channel emulation based on conventional Ethernet equipment. According to Red Hat, this will provide a higher level of reliability and performance typical of conventional Fibre Channel channels, but with significant cost savings.

Strictly speaking, RHEL 6.3 cannot be called a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of industrial operating systems, but this platform combines truly advanced capabilities for servicing powerful servers of a traditional nature, but also for virtual machines and cloud solutions. RHEL 6.3 can rightfully be called a powerful system that can serve the tasks of the most demanding customer.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.2

Red Hat has released another version of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 operating system, which supports new technologies that increase the efficiency of enterprise storage systems, as well as the reliability and performance of I/O subsystems.

For the first time, RHEL 6.2 provides full support for iSCSI expansion for remote direct access to RDMA memory. With RHEL 6.2, standard iSCSI drives, and Ethernet network infrastructure, you can build systems with performance comparable to storage networks without separate Fibre Channel links. Thus, RHEL 6.2 is suitable for use as a storage server.

RHEL 6.2 for the first time supports, albeit in a preliminary version, parallel NFS (pNFS) technology. This extension of the NFS file system allows the creation of clustered storage systems with parallel data flows, which can significantly increase throughput.

The implementation of the Transmit Packet Steering (XPS) method and the SCTP protocol in some cases can increase the I/O speed by 30%, according to Red Hat.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.1

Red Hat released Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.1 on May 19, 2011. This is the first big update to the Red Hat server platform since RHEL 6 was released last November.

The new distribution offers improved KVM virtualization technologies, support for new hardware technologies such as hot-enable processors and memory, NUMA and PCI Express 3.0 architectures, and improvements in performance and reliability over the previous version. The new distribution also includes updated versions of the development and monitoring tools, in particular the updated Eclipse development environment, offering significant improvements in Java and C/C + +.

Not surprisingly, the main emphasis in the development of the release is on improvements related to virtualization and cloud technologies. In a press release on the occasion of the release, it was noted that the new distribution shows record performance indicators of virtual machines according to SpecVirt tests. In addition, the company promises additional performance gains on servers from IBM and HP.

Red Hat is the most commercially successful OpenSource company and the most famous OpenSource brand. The main product of the company - a commercial version of the Linux distribution of the same name, distributed by commercial subscription - occupies a leading place in the market for server solutions for business.

In the web server market in recent years, one of the leading positions belongs to the free "clone" of Red Hat - CentOS, as well as other free Linux distributions such as Debian and Ubuntu. It is noteworthy that CentOS recently received support from Microsoft, which included this OS among the officially supported Hyper-V virtualization platform based on Windows Server R2.

Obviously, realizing the threat from freely distributed distributions in its main market, RedHat recently commissioned a IDC total ON cost of ownership (TCO) study, which compares costs when using RHEL and when using heterogeneous infrastructure from various Linux distributions, including free ones.

Red Hat's paid customers have an advantage over companies that prefer to develop their server fleet on a DIY basis, according to the study. According to IDC, RHEL subscribers receive better technical support and higher fault tolerance rates for less money than those who rely on their own system administrators and free solutions.

2010

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6

RHEL 6 Beta is a beta version of Red Hat the Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 industrial distribution. RHEL 6 is distributed to a limited range of strategic partners, including OEMs and ISVs. software Red Hat expects that for third-party developers the new platform will become the foundation for creating industrial systems and business applications. Red Hat also guarantees that the new version has the highest level of stability.

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 beta system is available for i386, AMD 64 and Intel 64, System Z and IBM Power hardware architectures. RHEL 6 includes an updated core and a completely updated set of basic components, including tools for managing the user's working environment. The new platform also includes new versions of applications such as httpd (maintenance of web servers), Samba (support for file servers) and NFS (network file system). KVM hypervisor-based virtualization tools are now fully integrated into the operating system.

For improved power control, the RHEL 6 operating system offers support for tickles in the kernel and application optimization, Powertop provides an accurate measurement of the consumed energy. In addition, the beta version provides full support for IPv6 technologies (for NSF4, CIFS, mobile RFC 3775 and ISATAP networks), FCoE, iSCSI, and an upgraded 802.11 wireless protocol stack.

The RHEL 6 platform offers new tools for improved hardware resource management. CFS (Completely Fair Scheduler) and Cgroups (Control Groups) technologies implemented at the core level allow you to effectively control the distribution of memory, processor and I/O resources between groups of applications or virtual machines. The default ext4 file system supports larger files and shorter recovery times than the previous version of ext3. The XFS file system is also available to customers, optimized for high availability configurations with storage and transfer of the largest amounts of data.

An important news was the emergence of a specialized variety of RHEL distribution with increased security called SELinux. The SELinux edition includes more convenient controls, application isolation technology and improved control of system services. The updated SSSD technology provides unified access to user identity and authorization services, as well as caching information from directories for offline use. ABRT technology is offered for simplified collection of information about emerging failures.

RHEL 6 includes new versions of the GCC 4.4.3 compiler, the glibc 2.11.1 standard component set, and the GDB 7.0.1 debugger.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.9

RHEL 5.9 beta was designed to be interoperable Hyper-V Windows Server 2008 R2 with and. Windows Server 2012 The device drivers required to run Red Hat Linux on top of Hyper-V are built into the system directly. This will make it easier for users to deploy combined environments from Windows and RHEL on their private virtual and cloud services.

Hyper-V support is included in RHEL at the Linux kernel level. The new drivers allow you to install Red Hat as a guest system, as well as perform para-virtualization of Hyper-V hardware.

Among the drivers are: network driver (hv_netvsc), storage device driver (hv_storvsc), HID-compatible mouse driver (hid_hyperv), VMbus drever (hv_vmbus), Hyper-V utilities (hv_util) and timers (i386: hyperv_clocksource, AMD64/Intel 64: HYPER-V timer).

In addition, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 includes the Hyper-V Key-Value Pair (hypervkvpd) guest domain, which transmits basic information such as the guest machine's IP, FQDN, OS name and release number to the host via VMbus.

Hyper-V drivers built into the new release will soon be certified through the Red Hat Hardware Certification Program, a device certification program for Red Hat Linux compatibility. This will allow corporate customers "to be confident that virtualization support is really reliable and implemented at the industrial level," writes Microsoft.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.6

The product was released as part of RHEL 5 support - it will last until 2014 for 7 years after the initial release of RHEL 5. Although the newer RHEL 6 system has been available since November 2010, many customers for various reasons remain faithful to the RHEL 5 platform.

RHEL 5.6 was the sixth update to the RHEL 5 industrial Linux distribution. RHEL 5.6 offers a rich list of fixed security bugs and improvements to all current subscription holders. New hardware types are also supported in version 5.6, and some key technologies in the areas of networking, virtualization, web services, security, electronic identity verification and file systems have been migrated from the newer version of RHEL 6. In total, version 5.6 contains about 2,000 separate fixes and about 340 separate improvements and new hardware drivers.

The most notable innovation in RHEL 5.6 was extended hardware support. The new system supports modern processors and chipsets planned for release in 2011, iSCSI and iSNS I/O systems, as well as fresh models of multimedia equipment. The updated RHEL 5.6 installation disk makes it easier to install the system on OEM platforms containing new types of hardware.

From the point of view of virtualization, RHEL 5.6 for the first time offers full support for sVirt technology (virtualization through the SELinux mechanism) - this technology allows you to apply MAC (Mandatory Access Control) profiles to virtual machines to improve overall system security. New I/O differentiation tools enable enhanced availability mechanisms for virtual machines.

It is also worth noting the updated DNS name service with improved support for encrypted signatures - now RHEL 5.6 meets all the requirements for installation in secure government agencies. To service modern web applications, the package includes a new version of PHP 5.3. The new OpenVector Printer driver and support for the latest printers HP provide customers with the most flexible options for printing information.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5

• upgrade from Linux kernel version 2.6.9 to 2.6.18
• the advent of support for the Xen virtualization system
• integration of highly available Red Hat Cluster Suite software
• support for iSCSI disk arrays
• InfiniBand support with Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA)
• SystemTap System Information Collection Utility and Frysk System Monitoring Application
• support for 4-core X86-64 processors.

Notes