5 benefits of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure

Your enterprise operating system (OS) should provide a reliable foundation for performance, consistency, and security across workloads. Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® for Microsoft Azure is integrated with Microsoft Azure infrastructure to provide built-in, Azure-specific configurations that offer high performance, observability, and a ready-to-run image for your Azure-based systems. Explore 5 benefits of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure in this checklist.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure comes with cloud-optimized images preconfigured with Microsoft Azure-specific profiles. These ready-to-run images help to boost:

• Efficiency. Limit manual configuration to help deploy workloads in less time.
• Consistency. Use persistent settings to ensure image consistency across deployments.
• Reliability. Deploy with confidence, knowing your workloads are running on images maintained by Red Hat and Microsoft.

Red Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure includes image mode, which uses container-native tooling to facilitate delivery of Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a single, bootable container image.

This approach lets you manage your OS using the same container tools and workflows as your container-based applications, which helps you to:

• Limit drift. Image mode keeps server configurations consistent to avoid deviations.
• Speed delivery. Development time is reduced by using the same application tools and workflows.
• Boost efficiency. Optional automated updates and rollbacks can streamline and accelerate operations.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure simplifies and streamlines OS management through the following key features:

• Red Hat Lightspeed (formerly Red Hat Insights). Gain visibility into business, operations, and security risks to identify and mitigate issues proactively across your infrastructure before they affect your bottom line. This AI powered management tool helps report issues in both cloud and on-premise environments from a single interface.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux command line assistant powered by Red Hat Lightspeed. This proactive feature combines decades of Red Hat Enterprise Linux expertise with gen AI technologies to simplify the building, deploying, and managing of Red Hat Enterprise Linux using plain language queries.
• Azure Command-Line Interface (Azure CLI). This Microsoft Azure-native command-line tool allows you to manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure images and resources using interactive commands or scripts.

The comprehensive integration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux into Microsoft Azure infrastructure extends to resources and applications.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure lets you use Microsoft Azure-native tooling to monitor and manage your Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment and workloads. Integrated applications include:

• Azure Monitor is used for collecting, analyzing, and visualizing both performance and diagnostic data.
• Azure Arc can be used for centrally managing your Red Hat Enterprise Linux infrastructure.
• Azure DevOps is used in combination with image mode for automating, managing, and deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux images.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides built-in security features, including live kernel patching, security profiles, security standards certification, and a trusted software supply chain.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure offers further features to safeguard Azure-based workloads, including:

• Secure Boot, confidential compute, and confidential hypervisor provide image attestation and top-down memory encryption to protect workloads from boot to runtime.
• Image mode provides image rollback capabilities, and uses immutable system images to reduce attack surface area.
• Azure confidential virtual machines (VMs) make sure that customer data in transit, at rest, and in use is protected on a running VM.