Red Hat recently announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5, the latest version of its enterprise Linux platform. The new release provides new capabilities to meet evolving and complex IT needs, from enhanced cloud-native container innovations to extending Linux skills with system roles, on whatever footprint customers require.
“Linux is the common language spoken across nearly every public cloud, private cloud, edge deployment and data center,” said Gunnar Hellekson, general manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat. “Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 reinforces the role of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform in the multi-cloud ecosystem, providing new capabilities to meet evolving and complex IT needs, from enhanced cloud-native container innovations to extending Linux skills with system roles, on whatever footprint our customers require.”
According to Red Hat, recent studies indicate that organizations are realizing that using public cloud exclusively may not be economically feasible for long-term scale. At the same time, it notes, Gartner predicts that by 2026, “public cloud spending will exceed 45% of all enterprise IT spending, up from less than 17% in 2021.”
Red Hat says it has long championed a hybrid multi-cloud world, where customers can choose the environment and technologies that build on a flexible, more consistent foundation.
The updated platform extends Red Hat Insights services, builds on existing container management capabilities and makes it easier for IT teams to set up workload-specific systems wherever they may exist across a multi-cloud world.
Red Hat Insights, Red Hat’s predictive analytics service for identifying and remediating potential system issues, is available by default through almost all Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions. With the launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5, Insights adds new capabilities around vulnerability, compliance and remediation, helping organizations more effectively manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux environments across multicloud and hybrid cloud environments, even when it comes to nuanced security or compliance scenarios.
According to Red Hat, containers are a crucial component of modern DevOps implementations, which in turn are key to the adoption of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategies. Supporting these strategies, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 offers:
- Faster image creation through rootless OverlayFS
- Full support for containerized Podman in continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD) systems as well as other operating environments
- Native integration with cgroup2 for better resource utilization
- Default container image signature verification, which verifies the integrity of container images at installation and confirms that images are pulled from the Red Hat Container Registry and have not been tampered with since signing
In addition, Red Hat says, as modern IT environments spread across multiple public clouds, virtualized environments, private clouds, on-premise servers and edge devices, the IT operations experience is becoming more complex. To help address complexity and to extend the existing skills of both new and experienced IT operations teams, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 adds support for new Red Hat Enterprise Linux system roles. System roles are preset configurations for Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, enabling IT teams to more easily support specific workloads from the cloud to the edge. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 now includes:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux system role for Microsoft SQL Server, making it easier for IT and DBAs to install, configure, and tune SQL Server to their specific needs in an automated process
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux system role for virtual private networking (VPN) helps to reduce the time it takes to configure VPN tunnels, improving consistency and reducing the risk of misconfigurations, which can be a common factor in IT security incidents
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux system role for Postfix automates and standardizes the configuration for Postfix mail servers, skipping manual steps while still enabling customization
In addition to these capabilities, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 also adds support for OpenJDK 17 and .NET 6 for developers seeking to modernize and build next-generation applications. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux web console has also been enhanced, making it possible to manage live kernel patching operations and manage overall performance. And, finally, enhancements to Image Builder introduce broader support for creating customized Red Hat Enterprise Linux images on bare metal for edge deployments and for assembling images that have distinct file systems to meet organization-specific internal standards and security compliance requirements.
For more information, read the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 release notes or view the product documentation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5.