Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4, the latest version of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 offers new automation capabilities designed to limit IT complexity while enhancing workload security and performance for traditional and cloud-native applications. This provides a powerful, flexible operating system backbone to address enterprise IT needs across physical servers, virtual machines and hybrid, public and multi-cloud footprints.
From traditional physical servers and virtual machines to next-generation cloud and container services, the operating system serves as a critical linchpin in connecting deployment footprints across the enterprise. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 acts as this keystone by pairing open source innovation with enterprise-grade stability, providing a foundation for digital transformation while still maintaining existing systems and workloads.
Security Features
As threats to IT infrastructure evolve,
enterprises require more security innovation in their software stack to
help prevent breaches and more proactively manage vulnerabilities. This
innovation starts at the operating system level, and Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 7.4 brings to bear new and enhanced features designed to foster a
more secure production environment for mission-critical workloads, both
cloud-native and traditional. This includes:
- Updated audit capabilities to help simplify how administrators filter the events logged by the audit system, gather more information from critical events and to interpret large numbers of records.
- USB Guard, a feature that allows for greater control over how plug-and-play devices can be used by specific users to help limit both data leaks and data injection.
- Enhanced container security functionality with full support for using SELinux with OverlayFS helps secure the underlying file system and provides the ability to use docker and use namespaces together for fine-grained access control.
Performance
Modern business applications require more
bandwidth and increased storage, placing a performance strain on
traditional operating systems and hardware. Engineered to meet the needs
of organizations seeking to both modernize and optimize their enterprise
IT infrastructure, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 offers new features
designed to improve the performance of both networking and storage. New
features include:
- Support for NVMe Over Fabric helps to provide customers with increased flexibility and reduced overhead when accessing high performance NVMe storage devices located in the data center on both Ethernet or Infiniband fabric infrastructures.
- General enhancements to Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s performance when deployed on the public cloud, highlighted by decreased boot times to better enable mission-critical applications to start sooner, and support for the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enable new network capabilities.
Linux Containers and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host
Linux
containers present an evolution in how businesses develop, deploy, and
manage modern applications, helping enterprises scale to new levels of
operational efficiency, speed application development and drive
increased flexibility in managing application life cycles. Based on Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4, the latest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Atomic Host further refines enterprise-grade Linux containers with
enhancements that include:
- Improved security without sacrificing performance, thanks to integrated support for SELinux and OverlayFS, as well as full support for the overlay2 storage graph driver.
- Full support for package layering with rpm-ostree, providing a means of adding packages like monitoring agents and drivers to the host operating system.
- The introduction of LiveFS as a Technology Preview, which enables users to install security updates and layer packages without a reboot.
Management and automation
With datacenter footprints that
span from bare-metal to the cloud, the complexity associated with
controlling IT environments continues to increase. Complementing the
capabilities of Red Hat Satellite and automation via Ansible Tower, Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 introduces Red Hat Enterprise Linux System
Roles as a Technology
Preview. System Roles provide a common management interface across
all major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, enabling an automated
workflow via Ansible automation to be created once and used across
large, heterogeneous Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments without
additional modifications.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for multiple architectures
Red Hat
remains committed to providing customer choice when it comes to
datacenter infrastructure. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 maintains this
commitment with availability across multiple architectures, including
IBM Power, IBM z Systems and 64-bit ARM (as a Development Preview). For
the IBM Power Little Endian architecture, this release enables support
for the High Availability and Resilient Storage Add-Ons as well as the
Open Container Initiative (OCI) runtime and image format.
Supporting Quote
Jim Totton, vice president and general
manager, Platforms Business Unit, Red Hat
“The modern
enterprise will not be solely based in physical servers or cloud
services; rather, the path to digital transformation weaves across four
distinct technology footprints. The latest version of the world’s
leading enterprise Linux platform supports each of these deployment
methodologies with new security features, improved performance and
introduces new automation capabilities to cut through the inherent
complexities of heterogeneous datacenters.”
Additional Resources
- Read more technical details about Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4
- Learn more about Red Hat Enterprise Linux
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About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat is the world's leading provider
of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to
provide reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage
and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning
support, training, and consulting services. As a connective hub in a
global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities,
Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate
resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn
more at http://www.redhat.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in
this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within
the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events
based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not
directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may
differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking
statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks
related to the ability of the Company to compete effectively; the
ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and
technological innovations on a timely basis; delays or reductions in
information technology spending; the integration of acquisitions and the
ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products;
fluctuations in exchange rates; the effects of industry consolidation;
uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements;
the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and
the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or
relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and
information security vulnerabilities; the ability to meet financial and
operational challenges encountered in our international operations;
ineffective management of, and control over, the Company's growth and
international operations; and changes in and a dependence on key
personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent
Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through
the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at http://www.sec.gov),
including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and
"Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results
of Operations". In addition to these factors, actual future performance,
outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general
factors including (without limitation) general industry and market
conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions,
governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural
disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements
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representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date
of this press release.
Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Shadowman logo and Ansible are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.
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Contacts:
John Terrill, +1-571-421-8132
jterrill@redhat.com