“Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 delivers increased application performance and a more secure, reliable and innovative enterprise platform, well-suited for existing mission-critical workloads and emerging technology deployments like Linux containers and IoT,” said, Jim Totton, Vice President and General Manager, Platforms Business Unit, Red Hat.
Addressing enterprise networking demand
From video conferencing technologies and voice over IP (VoIP) to web-based applications and services, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 claims to help address the modern enterprise networking demand. With the addition of lightweight tunnels, enabling guest instances of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 to be secure, efficient, scalable and flexible. The OS also adds enhancements to the bulk packet memory allocator improve performance for both 40 and 100 Gb networking interfaces.
The Enterprise Linux 7.3 has added new hardware technologies like non-volatile memory to address issues with high-transaction applications like databases, event processing, and virtual machines which need improved input-output (IO) rates and lower latencies. Thus, expanding support for high speed, low latency non-volatile memory devices. In addition, it also makes performance-sensitive Parallel NFS (pNFS) clusters easier to manage with support for the Block SCSI layout format and the Flex Files layout format.
Security and Identity Management
The new OS has introducing several new and enhanced security features that claim to deliver a secure platform for mission-critical deployments and other essential workloads including:
- Updates to SELinux, a mechanism for enforcing granular, system-level access control policies, for faster policy creation and improved overall ease of use.
- A consistent compliance checking mechanism across containerized and traditional non-container workloads for better overall operations efficiency.
- Improvements to Red Hat’s Identity Management solution, providing better performance for large installations, support for smart card authentication with Active Directory, and support for configurable authentication strength across individual hosts and services.
Reliability
According to the company, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3, clients can deploy a fully-integrated, multi-site disaster recovery solution without having to also rely on custom or third-party solutions. This, as per Red Hat, will result in potential reduction in costs and speedier time to deployment. Customers will be able to:
- Configure pacemaker to manage multi-site and stretch clusters across geo-locations for disaster recovery and scalability.
- Better configure and trigger notifications when the status of a managed cluster changes with the introduction of enhanced pacemaker alerts.
IIoT
Red Hat states that IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) implementations consist of vast connected networks of “smart” edge devices feeding information in real-time to centralized datacenters, allowing for improved operational efficiency and reduced operating costs.
Considering the need for an enterprise-grade operating system to run IIoT, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 introduced two key features:
- Support for communication with Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) devices – an extension of the Bluetooth standard, Bluetooth LE is specifically designed for low energy devices like IoT sensors.
- Kernel support for the Controller Area Network bus (CANbus) protocol – CANbus is a controller area network used in automobiles and high-end industrial controllers.
Containers
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 has also bolstered its support for Linux containers via improvements in addition to enhanced management tools (Atomic CLI / Cockpit) and an updated container runtime (docker engine), including a new container signing capability as a Technology Preview.
According to Red Hat the combined characteristics of containers increase both application portability and infrastructure flexibility and allow organizations to more clearly delineate the roles of developers and IT administrators.
With Linux containers, enterprises are able to scale to new levels of operational efficiency. They provide an innovative packaging and management format that can speed application development and drive more flexibility in managing life cycles based on the application.
Totton, added, “As modern enterprise applications become increasingly resource intensive at both the network and storage levels, IT infrastructure must not just keep pace, but anticipate and adapt to these changing needs.”
“Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 delivers increased application performance and a more secure, reliable and innovative enterprise platform, well-suited for existing mission-critical workloads and emerging technology deployments like Linux containers and IoT.”
