[rhelv6-beta-list] Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta Now Available - Testers Wanted

[Engineering Partner Management]

Today marks an exciting milestone for Red Hat as we share news of the 
beta availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. Since its introduction 
more than a decade ago[1], Red Hat Enterprise Linux[2] has become the 
world’s leading enterprise Linux platform, and it has helped set 
industry standards for performance[3], capacity[4], capability[5] and 
security[6]. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a leading force in enterprise 
datacenters; it spans nearly every industry and has advanced to deliver 
the original cloud operating system[7], powering many of the world’s 
largest clouds.

With today’s announcement, we are inviting Red Hat customers, partners, 
and members of the public to provide feedback on what we believe is our 
most ambitious release to date. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is designed 
to provide the underpinning for future application architectures while 
delivering the flexibility, scalability, and performance needed to 
deploy across bare metal, virtual machines, and cloud infrastructure.

We believe that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 represents the future of IT. 
As hypervisors and cloud deployments become increasingly common and face 
integration with physical servers, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 continues 
Red Hat's track record of cultivating a foundation upon which to build 
next-generation IT infrastructure. No other Linux operating system 
combines the flexibility and stability needed to handle critical 
workloads across all environments with as extensive an ecosystem of 
solutions and support.

Based on Fedora 19 and the upstream Linux 3.10 kernel, Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux 7 will provide users with powerful new capabilities 
that streamline and automate installation and deployment, simplify 
management, and enhance ease-of-use, all while delivering the stability 
that enterprises have come to expect from Red Hat. This further 
solidifies Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s place as the world’s leading Linux 
platform and a standard for the enterprise of the future. Whether 
rolling out new applications, virtualizing environments or scaling the 
business with cloud, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 delivers the keystone to 
IT success.

The beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 adds value to new and 
existing IT projects across industries by adding key capabilities to 
improve critical but often cumbersome IT tasks like virtualization and 
storage while offering a clear pathway to the open hybrid cloud[8]. Red 
Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta showcases hundreds of new features and 
enhancements, including:

     Linux Containers - With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, applications 
can be created and deployed in isolated environments using Linux 
Container technology, such as Docker. System resources can be 
partitioned to each application container, providing each application 
with the appropriate resources and security isolation that they require 
- a key capability for enterprises seeking more agility and scalability 
within their infrastructure.

     Performance Management - More than just benchmark results, Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux 7 helps customers optimize system performance 
out-of-the-box while helping reduce performance-related IT costs. In 
addition, users have the option to select the appropriate performance 
profile for their application that helps them to achieve optimal 
application results.

     Physical and Hosted In-place Upgrades - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 
will offer an in-place upgrade feature for common server deployment 
types, allowing data centers to migrate existing Red Hat Enterprise 
Linux 6.5 systems to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. Additionally, Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux 7 enables virtual machine migration from a Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux 6 host to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 host without 
virtual machine modification or downtime.

     File Systems - File systems within Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 
continue to be a major focus of development and innovation, with 
enhancements to the ext4 and btrfs file systems. Red Hat Enterprise 
Linux 7 will include XFS as the default file system, scaled to support 
file systems up to 500 TB. The ext4 file system adds scalability 
enhancements to increase the maximum standalone file system size from 16 
TB to 50 TB, and gains support for block sizes of up to 1MB, 
considerably decreasing the time spent doing block allocation and 
reducing fragmentation. Btrfs, an emerging file system, will be 
available as a technology preview within Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and 
includes integrated basic volume management, snapshot support, and 
checksum capability to validate full data and metadata integrity.

     Networking - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 enhances networking 
configuration and operation and adds support for some of the latest 
networking standards. Performance improvements are delivered for network 
intensive applications with the availability of 40Gb Ethernet support, 
improved channel bonding, TCP performance improvements and low latency 
socket poll support.

     Storage - Storage receives significant updates within Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux 7 with support of very large scale storage 
configurations, including support for enterprise storage arrays. For 
more price-sensitive deployments, enhancements to Red Hat Enterprise 
Linux’s scalable storage stack provide an alternative to expensive 
storage arrays. New capabilities in storage management simplify the 
management of heterogeneous storage environments.

     Windows Interoperability - For datacenters where co-existence of 
Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows ServerTM is a 
requirement, interoperability capabilities have been expanded within Red 
Hat Enterprise Linux 7. Specifically, IT professionals can bridge 
Windows and Linux infrastructure by integrating Red Hat Enterprise Linux 
7 systems and SAMBA 4.1 with existing Microsoft Active Directory 
domains. Additionally, staff can choose to deploy Red Hat Enterprise 
Linux Identity Management in a parallel trust zone with Active 
Directory, allowing customers to leverage the investments they have 
already made.

     Subsystem Management - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 simplifies 
configuration and administration with uniform management tools for 
networking, storage, file systems, performance, identities and security. 
It does this by delivering a Linux management framework that also 
interfaces to popular system management frameworks via OpenLMI. Through 
OpenLMI, system administrators can use scripting and APIs to automate 
management across multiple systems.

Today’s beta announcement marks the beginning of our public journey to 
introduce our vision for the future of enterprise computing. We’re 
excited to be starting this public journey, and look forward to sharing 
our vision starting with these key highlights of new and enhanced 
capabilities and continuing on our new Red Hat Enterprise Linux-focused 
blog, located at http://rhelblog.redhat.com/.

AVAILABILITY

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 beta is available to Red Hat customers, 
partners, and members of the public. If you are interested in trying the 
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta, we encourage you to download and 
install it, and tell us[9] what interests you the most about the Beta. 
You may download the beta from the "Get Beta" link provided below.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Please visit the below resources for more information about Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux 7 Beta.

     Access the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta today: 
https://access.redhat.com/site/products/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/Get-Beta

     Access documentation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta (requires 
login):

         Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta release notes:

https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7-Beta/html/7.0_Release_Notes/index.html

         Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta technical notes:

https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7-Beta/html/7.0_Technical_Notes/index.html

         Red Hat Enterprise Linux documentation:
         https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/

     Follow updates about the Beta via the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Blog:
     http://rhelblog.redhat.com

Sincerely,

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Team

[1] - http://www.redhat.com/10yearsofrhel
[2] - http://rhel.redhat.com
[3] - http://rhel.redhat.com/performance
[4] - http://rhel.redhat.com/capacity
[5] - http://rhel.redhat.com/capability
[6] - 
http://www.redhat.com/solutions/industry/government/certifications.html
[7] - 
http://rhel.redhat.com/sites/default/files/RHEL_Org_Cloud_OS_WP_10935437_0413_jw_WEB_0.pdf
[8] - http://www.redhat.com/solutions/open-hybrid-cloud/
[9] - 
https://www.techvalidate.com/registration/Red-Hat-Enterprise-Linux-7-Beta