Red Hat is announcing the developer preview of a new Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
This new MCP server is designed to bridge the gap between RHEL and Large Language Models (LLMs), enabling a new era of smarter troubleshooting, according to Red Hat.
MCP is an open standard that allows AI models to interact with external data and systems, originally released by Anthropic and donated in December 2025 to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation.
RHEL's new MCP server is now in developer preview and uses this protocol to provide direct, context-aware access to RHEL from AI applications that support the MCP protocol, such as Claude Desktop or goose.
The company has previously released MCP servers for Red Hat Lightspeed, and Red Hat Satellite that enable several use cases. This new MCP server expands on these use cases, and is purpose-built for deep-dive troubleshooting on RHEL systems.
Connecting LLMs to RHEL with the new MCP server enables use cases such as:
- Intelligent log analysis: Sifting through log data is tedious. The MCP server allows LLMs to ingest and analyze RHEL system logs. This capability enables AI-driven root cause analysis and anomaly detection, helping you to turn raw log data into actionable intelligence.
- Performance analysis: The MCP server can access information about the number of CPUs, load average, memory information, and information about CPU and memory usage of running processes. This enables an LLM system to analyze the current state of the system and identify potential performance bottlenecks and make other performance related recommendations.
The MCP server enables an LLM to inspect and recommend, and utilizes standard SSH keys for authentication. It also can be configured with an allow list for log file access and log level access. The MCP server does not allow for open shell access to your RHEL system as the commands the MCP server runs are pre-vetted.
While the company is starting with read-only analysis, Red Hat said its roadmap includes expanding out to additional use cases.
The MCP server for RHEL is available now in developer preview.
For more information about this news, visit www.redhat.com.