[rhelv6-announce] Red Hat Launches Latest Version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Thu Nov 21 20:30:42 UTC 2013

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 optimizes performance, stability and 
scalability across physical, virtual and cloud environments

Raleigh, N.C. – November 21, 2013 – Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the 
world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the 
general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5, the latest version 
of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 expands Red 
Hat’s vision of providing an enterprise platform that has the stability 
to free IT to take on major infrastructure challenges and the 
flexibility to handle future requirements, with an extensive partner and 
support ecosystem.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 is designed for those who build and manage 
large, complex IT projects, especially enterprises that require an open 
hybrid cloud [1]. From security and networking to virtualization, Red 
Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 provides the capabilities needed to manage 
these environments, such as tools that aid in quickly tuning the system 
to run SAP applications based on published best practices from SAP.

Securing the Next-Generation Enterprise
---------------------------------------
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 continues the push for integrated security 
functionality that combines ease-of-use and up-to-date security 
standards into the platform. The addition of a centralized certificate 
trust store enables standardized certificate access for security 
services. Also included are tools that meet leading security standards, 
including OpenSCAP 2.1, which implements the National Institute of 
Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) Security Content Automation Protocol 
(SCAP) 1.2 standard. With these additions, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 
provides a secure platform upon which to build mission-critical services 
and applications.

Networking – When Every (Micro)Second Matters
---------------------------------------------
In the financial services and trading-related industries, application 
latency is measured in microseconds, not seconds. Now, the latest 
version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 fully supports sub-microsecond 
clock accuracy over the local area network (LAN) using the Precision 
Time Protocol (PTP). Precision time synchronization is a key enabler for 
delivering better performance for high-speed, low latency applications. 
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 can now be used to track time on trading 
transactions, improving time stamp accuracy on archived data or 
precisely synchronizing time locally or globally.

Thanks to other networking enhancements in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5, 
system administrators now have a more comprehensive view of network 
activity. These new capabilities enable sysadmins to inspect IGMP 
(Internet Group Management Protocol) data to list multicast router 
ports, multicast groups with active subscribers and their associated 
interfaces, all of which are important to many modern networking 
scenarios, including streaming media.

Virtualization Enhancements
---------------------------
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 continues Red Hat’s commitment to improving 
the overall virtualization experience and includes several improvements 
that make it a compelling choice for running in virtualized 
environments. Sysadmins can now dynamically enable or disable virtual 
processors (vCPUs) in active guests, making it an ideal choice for 
elastic workloads. The handling of memory intensive applications as Red 
Hat Enterprise Linux guests has also been improved, with configurations 
supported for up to 4TB of memory on the Kernel-based Virtual Machine 
(KVM) hypervisor.

The KVM hypervisor also integrates with GlusterFS volumes to provide 
direct access to the distributed storage platform, improving performance 
when accessing Red Hat Storage or GlusterFS volumes. Finally, guest 
drivers have been updated to improve performance of Red Hat Enterprise 
Linux 6.5 running as a guest on supported third-party hypervisors.

Evolving Ease-of-Use, Storage, and More
---------------------------------------
As application deployment options grow, portability becomes increasingly 
important. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 enables customers to deploy 
application images in containers created using Docker in their 
environment of choice: physical, virtual, or cloud. Docker is an open 
source project to package and run lightweight, self-sufficient 
containers; containers save developers time by eliminating integration 
and infrastructure design tasks.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 stays current with the advancements in 
Solid-State Drive (SSD) controller interface, introducing support for 
NVM Express (NVMe)-based SSDs. The NVMe specification aims to 
standardize the interface for PCIe-based SSDs and its inclusion in Red 
Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 positions the platform to support an expanding 
range of future NVMe-based devices.

Improvements have also been added to improve enterprise storage 
scalability within Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5. It is now possible to 
configure more than 255 LUNs connected to a single iSCSI target. In 
addition, control and recovery from SAN for iSCSI and Fibre Channel has 
been enhanced, and updates to the kexec/kdump mechanism now make it 
possible to create debug (dump) files on systems configured with very 
large memory (e.g. 6TB).

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 makes it easier to track and manage 
subscription consumption across the enterprise, integrating subscription 
tracking into existing business workflow. Usability enhancements include 
support for remote access to Windows clients and servers that use a 
newer version of the RDP protocol, including Windows 7 and 8 desktops 
and Windows Server 2012.

Jim Totton, Vice President and General Manager of the Platform Business 
Unit at Red Hat, had this to say about Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5:

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 provides the innovation expected from the 
industry’s leading enterprise Linux operating system while also 
delivering a mature platform for business operations, be it 
standardizing operating environments or supporting critical 
applications. The newest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 forms the 
building blocks of the entire Red Hat portfolio, including OpenShift and 
OpenStack, making it a perfect foundation for enterprises looking to 
explore the open hybrid cloud."

Additional Resources
--------------------
* Learn more about collaboration between Red Hat and Docker by reading 
the public announcement at: 
http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2013/9/red-hat-and-dotcloud-collaborate-on-docker-to-bring-next-generation-linux-container-enhancements-to-openshift

* To read the public announcement, please visit: 
http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2013/11/red-hat-launches-latest-version-of-red-hat-enterprise-linux-6

* To access and download an evaluation copy for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 
6.5, see: 
http://www.redhat.com/products/enterprise-linux/server/download.html

   Please note that downloading an evaluation copy requires an active 
account on the Red Hat Customer Portal. On the download page, the user 
must filter and navigate to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and the 
architecture of interest (e.g., x86_64, Power, System z, etc.).

* For access to the documentation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 
including the release notes, see: 
https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/

[1] http://www.redhat.com/open-hybrid-cloud/