[rhelv6-beta-list] Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 is now available

Thu Feb 21 19:47:38 UTC 2013

Today, Red Hat announced the general availability of the next minor 
release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4.

This release includes a broad set of updates to the existing feature set 
and provides rich new functionality in the areas of identity management, 
file system, virtualization, resource management, networks, storage, 
security, and end-user productivity tools.

We continue to work with our customers and partners as well as the open 
source community to deliver technology that is innovative yet stable. 
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 has been designed for optimized 
performance, stability, and scalability to cater to today's diverse 
workloads running in physical, virtual, and cloud environments.

Key new features and enhancements include:

Identity Management
* System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) enhancements extend the 
interoperability experience with Microsoft Active Directory by providing 
centralized identity access control for Linux/Unix clients in a 
heterogeneous environment.
* Administrators can now manage Secure Shell (SSH) keys across multiple 
systems from a single server.
* It is now possible to map user records to their associated SELinux 
records, making it easier to manage user access across platforms.
* Administrators can assign priorities to servers so that identity 
lookup occurs in the defined order which can reduce network traffic. 
This provides IT with another tool to help meet Quality of Service (QoS) 
commitments or performance expectations.

File System
* Red Hat has taken a lead role with its partners and the upstream 
community on the parallel Network File System (pNFS) industry standard, 
driving the addition of capabilities that allow database workloads to 
benefit from the advantages of pNFS. This functionality offers 
performance gains for I/O intensive workloads like database access. 
Using the first-to-market, fully supported pNFS (file layout) client -- 
delivered in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 -- customers can begin to plan 
and design next-generation, scalable file system solutions based on pNFS.

Virtualization
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 includes the Microsoft Hyper-V Linux 
drivers, which were recently accepted by the upstream Linux community, 
improving the overall performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux when 
running as a guest on Microsoft Hyper-V.
* Installation support for the VMware and Hyper-V para-virtualization 
drivers enable easy deployment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a guest in 
these environments.
* A new storage architecture for virtual environments (virtio-scsi) 
provides guests with industry-leading scalable access to the storage stack.

Resource Management
* Enhancement to control groups (cgroups) delivers the ability to 
migrate multi-threaded applications without errors.
* An optimized version of perf, the performance monitoring tool, is now 
available for the newer Intel processors.

Networking
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 introduces the Precision Time Protocol 
(PTP) as a feature in Technology Preview. This feature is hardware 
dependent and applies to a set of new devices. PTP is known for CPU 
efficiency, network bandwidth, and low administration effort. It 
provides clock synchronization across the network in the sub-microsecond 
range by eliminating network and equipment timing variability or “jitter.”
* The Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) provides support for 
multi-homing communication. Multi-homing allows a single SCTP endpoint 
to support multiple IP addresses, which means that a session is more 
likely to survive a network failure. Red Hat Enterprise 6.4 implements 
the protocol’s “Quick Failover Algorithm” to reduce the amount of time 
it takes to migrate from a failed connection to an active connection.
* NetworkManager now has a standard, easy-to-use graphical user 
interface (GUI) for configuring and managing network interface 
controller (NIC) bonding and network bridges.

Storage
* New system log features identify the mapping from logical block device 
name to physical device identifier – allowing an administrator to easily 
identify specific physical devices as needed.
* New support for scalable snapshots and thinly-provisioned volumes in 
the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) allows storage pool capacity to be used 
as efficiently as possible. Thinly provisioned volumes consume storage 
space only when data has been written to them - and only as long as that 
data is still in use. Thin snapshot volumes allow many virtual devices 
to share the data blocks they hold in common.
* The number of supported virtual tape drives has increased from 100 to 512.

Security
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 complies with Transport Layer Security 
(TLS) 1.1. The 1.1 version of TLS increases communication security and 
integrity. It has the ability to protect against cipher block chaining 
(CBC) attacks. Other enhancements to TLS include improved error handling 
and operations between networked nodes.
* The Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) is a standardized 
suite of specifications used in facilitating security auditing for 
enterprise-class systems. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 now supports SCAP 
1.2.
* System administrators can now define the amount of time that must 
lapse before an account is considered inactive. This automates locking 
inactive accounts and closes the gap during which these accounts can be 
exploited.

Productivity Tools
* Evolution now interoperates better with Microsoft Exchange. 
Productivity functions such as calendar support with alarm notification 
and meeting scheduling are improved.
* Customers such as animation studios and graphic design houses now have 
support for the newer Wacom Intuos tablets.

We greatly appreciate the dedication and collaboration within the 
company and with our partners and community to develop and deliver the 
highest quality open source enterprise platform available today.

Sincerely,

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Team

To read the Red Hat press release, please visit:
http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2013/2/red-hat-announces-general-availability-of-next-minor-release-of-red-hat-enterprise-linux-6 

To access and download an evaluation copy for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 
6.4, please visit: https://access.redhat.com/downloads/

Please note that this requires an active account on the Red Hat customer 
portal, and the user must filter and navigate to Red Hat Enterprise 
Linux 6 and the architecture of interest (e.g., x86_64, IBM Power, IBM 
System z, etc.).

For access to the documentation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 
including the release notes, please visit: 
https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/