Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 Released in Beta

Today, we are pleased to announce the availability of the beta version of the seventh update for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.  This beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 contains a number of enhancements for enterprise management, virtualization performance and datacenter flexibility.  Also included are updates to the drivers and kernel to support Intel, AMD, POWER and IBM Mainframe hardware updates.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 isn’t simply about supporting new technology.  Proven methodology and lifecycle for backports are just as important.  All new capabilities in Red Hat Enterprise Linux were developed in the open source community and on the latest upstream kernels.  With both Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 in the Production Phase 1 of their lifecycle, the features are first supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and then selectively backported to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.  Today’s beta release significantly enhances the value of standardizing on Red Hat Enterprise Linux by adding new features specifically for the enterprise, such as security profile auditing and flexibility in enterprise directory integration.

In the four years since the introduction of Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5, our customers’ systems have grown incredibly.  And, the variety of workloads they are running has increased dramatically. Many customers have tens of thousands of servers running everything from networking to inventory management, from desktops to custom risk analysis, the importance of enterprise management  continues to increase.

  
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 Technical Cool Stuff
 

Enterprise management

• OpenSCAP improves security operations by verifying security configurations and vulnerability status across the infrastructure;
• SSSD for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 authentication integration into the enterprise directory services;
• Expanded LDAP options for auto-mounted file systems, and;
• Subscription Manager, a management application of Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions, is a continuing option in Red Hat Network (RHN) Classic for our Satellite and other users to run without disruption (please see the Knowledgebase and Customer Portal).

Virtualization performance optimizations

• KVM enhancements improve convergence speeds during live migration of virtual machines, and;
• Xen hypervisor environment developments for smaller and faster boot images and more attached disks and serial interfaces.

Development and monitoring tools for  more flexibility and control

• CMake cross-platform build tool supports applications requiring a common build environment between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows using native tools;
• Buildsys-macros gives ISVs more flexibility for queries or use tags when building Red Hat Enterprise Linux application packages;
• Updated rsync package for better performing data replication, and;
• Javascript support in OpenJDK.

Datacenter flexibility & the High Availability Add-On

• High Availability on VMware platform with a native SOAP API fencing agent;
• Cluster fencing agents extensions supporting many of the latest hardware innovations, including Cisco UCS sub-organizations, for high-availability operations in a multi-tenancy environment.

Complete details about today’s beta update can be found in the release notes.

Community feedback is a critical part of the Red Hat engineering process.  We invite our customers to download and test the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 beta via the Customer Portal at https://access.redhat.com/downloads/.