Red Hat Powers Network, Storage Performance with Latest Version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Powers Network, Storage Performance
with Latest Version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 enhances
performance for high-bandwidth applications, adds new options for enterprise
innovation with Linux container and Internet-of-Things capabilities

Hong Kong –  9 November, 2016 – Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s
leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the general
availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3, the latest version of the world’s
leading enterprise Linux platform. This update to Red Hat’s flagship Linux
operating system includes new features and enhancements built around
performance, security, and reliability. The release also introduces new
capabilities around Linux containers and the Internet of Things (IoT), designed
to help early enterprise adopters use existing investments as they scale to
meet new business demands.

Performance

From video conferencing technologies and voice
over IP (VoIP) to web-based applications and services, the network demands of
the modern enterprise can be substantial. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 helps
address this need for better networking with the addition of lightweight
tunnels, enabling guest instances of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 to be more
secure, efficient, scalable and flexible. Additionally, enhancements to the
bulk packet memory allocator improve performance for both 40 and 100 Gb
networking interfaces.

Meanwhile, high-transaction applications like
databases, event processing, and virtual machines need improved input-output
(IO) rates and lower latencies to help enterprises realize their benefits. New
hardware technologies like non-volatile memory address these concerns, and Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 expands support for high speed, low latency
non-volatile memory devices. In addition, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 makes
performance-sensitive Parallel NFS (pNFS) clusters easier to manage with
support for the Block SCSI layout format and the Flex Files layout format.

Security and Identity Management

IT security cannot remain static in the face
of an ever-changing threat landscape, and a more secure datacenter begins with
innovation at the operating system level. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 helps to
drive this IT security evolution by introducing several new and enhanced
security features, delivering a more secure platform for mission-critical
deployments and other essential workloads. This includes:

·         Updates to SELinux, a mechanism for enforcing
granular, system-level access control policies, for faster policy creation and
improved overall ease of use.

·         A consistent compliance checking mechanism
across containerized and traditional non-container workloads for better overall
operations efficiency. This is provided through enhancements to OpenSCAP, an
open source implementation of the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP),
which provides a standardized compliance checking solution for enterprise-level
Linux infrastructure. Configuring SCAP-based policies with the OpenSCAP
Workbench graphical user interface is now easier, as well.

·         Improvements to Red Hat’s Identity Management
solution, providing better performance for large installations, support for
smart card authentication with Active Directory, and support for configurable
authentication strength across individual hosts and services.

Reliability

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 continues to
provide a solid, stable foundation for enterprise environments and workloads.
Customers can now deploy a fully-integrated, multi-site disaster recovery
solution without having to also rely on custom or third-party solutions,
resulting in potentially reduced costs and speedier times to deployment.
Specific enhancements in support of this include:

·         The ability to configure pacemaker to manage
multi-site and stretch clusters across geo-locations for disaster recovery and
scalability.

·         The ability to better configure and trigger
notifications when the status of a managed cluster changes with the
introduction of enhanced pacemaker alerts.

Linux Containers

Linux containers provide a compelling
mechanism to help enterprises scale to new levels of operational efficiency.
They provide an innovative packaging and management format that can speed
application development and drive more flexibility in managing life cycles
based on the application. The combined characteristics of containers increase
both application portability and infrastructure flexibility and allow
organizations to more clearly delineate the roles of developers and IT
administrators. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 bolsters support for Linux
containers via numerous incremental improvements in addition to enhanced
management tools (Atomic CLI / Cockpit) and an updated container runtime
(docker engine). It also includes a new container signing capability as a
Technology Preview.

IoT

Industrial IoT implementations consist of vast
connected networks of “smart” edge devices feeding information in real-time to
centralized datacenters, allowing for improved operational efficiency and
reduced operating costs. These implementations need to be backed up by a solid,
enterprise-grade operating system. Presenting a powerful platform upon which to
run enterprise-scale IoT, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 introduces two key
features:

·         Support for communication with Bluetooth LE
(Low Energy) devices – an extension of the Bluetooth standard, Bluetooth LE is
specifically designed for low energy devices like IoT sensors.

·         Kernel support for the Controller Area Network
bus (CANbus) protocol – CANbus is a controller area network used in automobiles
and high-end industrial controllers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Variants

Today’s launch also signifies updates to
several Red Hat Enterprise Linux variants. From powering massive container
build-outs to delivering open innovation on new server architectures, Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 7.3 variants provide answers to some of the most specific
enterprise architecture needs. These variants include:

·         Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host, a
minimal footprint operating system optimized to run Linux containers. Running
applications in containers on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host
provides application portability across the hybrid cloud. New to Red Hat
Enterprise Linux Atomic Host 7.3 as a Technology Preview is the capability for
users to layer additional RPMs, providing additional flexibility often required
by diverse environments.

·         Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Applications,
a variant optimized for running SAP environments, is now supported on IBM z
Systems and IBM Power, big endian.

·         Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server for ARM 7.3
Development Preview, Red Hat’s operating system designed for 64-bit ARM-based
systems has been updated to include:

o   Single-host virtualization based on KVM, one
of the leading open source virtualization technologies.

o   Red Hat Ceph Storage for prototyping and
deploying scale-out, software- defined storage for object, block, and file.

o   Initial support for Red Hat Developer Toolset,
which provides C and C++ developers with the latest stable open source tools to
create, diagnose, and debug applications for 64-bit ARM platforms.