What's New in Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Stable. Secure. Scalable. And, Innovative!

Red Hat subscriptions provide continuous access to Red Hat software as it is created, tested, and certified by Red Hat and its partners -- all supported versions, including security updates, bug fixes and feature enhancements. With a rich ecosystem of customers, community and partners, there is always something new about Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Red Hat Delivers Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1

On May 19th, Red Hat released the first service pack since the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. As with every service pack, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 consolidates all patches and security updates since the introduction of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, while maintaining application compatibility, ISV and IHV support.

The established performance leader as both a virtual machine guest and hypervisor host, we already set another new SpecVirt record in multi-core scaling with RHEL6.1 due to lower latencies in networking and I/O.

Many customers moved immediately to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 for the latest in filesystem performance and options. This update updates our advanced networking storage offerings. FCoE, Data Center Briding and iSCSI offload allow networked storage to deliver the quality of service required.

Keeping pace with the latest hardware innovations, we worked with Intel to support the latest hot-plug processors and memory – as well as the latest NUMA architectures and PCI express 3.0,

Developers can now process memory with Valgrind improvements and learn even more about running processes with SystemTap. These enhancements have been integrated into the Eclipse IDE for a unified development experience.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports the entire data center architecture and major infrastructure projects like:

• Moving to IPv6 is easier with optimized networking, firewall and DHCP/DNS services.
• Intelligent application consolidation using Control Groups functionality for resource control of applications and virtual machines.
• Managing application uptime using transparent proxy or High-availability Add-Ons, that can fail-over applications, services or virtual machines.
• Tracking Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments and subscriptions by using the new Subscription Manager, currently only available with 6.1 and for use with RHN
• Planning user authentication and authorization with LDAP, kerberos, AD integration or Red Hat Enterprise Identity (IPA) services, now in Tech Preview

IDC Research Highlights Significant TCO Value of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Subscriptions

Primary research from IDC confirms Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 customers spend less overall because of outstanding IT inefficiencies, the least amount of downtime and quick time-to-market for new applications.

SPECvirt Benchmark Tests Rank Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 as #1 performance leader as both a Virtual Machine Guest and Hypervisor.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 surpasses competitors in four SPEC tests for virtualization based on the KVM technology, including record-setting SPECvirt_sc210 performance of 1820@114VMs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux KVM on HP ProLiant BL620c G7 Blade servers.

IBM xSeries Servers set world records in SPECvirt performance testing on the largest systems ever tested for virtualization capabilities.

Red Hat and IBM also recently announced that the companies submitted a benchmark to SPEC in which a combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and IBM systems showed 45% better consolidation capability than competitors.

SPECvirt benchmark Red Hat stands alone in the ability to demonstrate virtualization on a large 64-core, 2Tbyte system for the best consolidation and performance test results yet.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 pushes Storage Boundary

Red Hat and Fusion-ios' Solid State Discs (SSD) performance tests showed Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 can support more than 1.4 million I/O operations per second, significantly higher than published competitor results at only 1 million. Internal testing delivered sustained throughput of 11.2GB per second for an 8KB transfer.

Breakthrough TPC-H Performance

Ingres Corporation VectorWise announced it has broken two records for the Transaction Processing Performance Council's Industry Standard TPC-H benchmark across 300GB and 1TB data sets running VectorWise on a Dell PowerEdge R910 server with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0. Adding to its previous 100GB record-breaking benchmark, the new 300GB and 1TB benchmarks underscore improved scalability, delivering a solid foundation for real-time information retrieval and analysis as companies continue to grapple with increasing volumes of data.

Security Certifications for Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat is committed to providing secure and stable software that can be easily used in security-sensitive environments. We continue to work closely with U.S. Government customers and security specialists to get Red Hat products certified for Government use and accredited by the appropriate authorities. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 continues on the path of critical security certifications to help our customers have smooth transitions to newer Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 In Evaluation for FIPS 140-2 Certification

Red Hat Achieves Six FIPS 140-2 Security Certifications on HP Systems

Red Hat announces the completion of six Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 certifications.

Red Hat Announces Extended Lifecycle Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4

February 28, 2011, Red Hat announced the availability of Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, in line with the one-year notification of the end-of-life of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.