Top reasons to upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux transforms an existing infrastructure from a cost center into an innovation engine. Upgrade to the latest version to gain access to the following tools for rapid deployment and modern workloads: 

• AI-ready foundation: Upgrade for AI/ML-optimized libraries and performance drivers.
• Image mode for Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Manage an operating system (OS) as a bootable container image. This stable and flexible foundation can simplify IT updates, allowing for customized reboot behavior.
• Application Streams (AppStreams): Deliver multiple versions of runtimes and databases without affecting core platform stability. Staying within the 10-year lifecycle ensures these streams remain supported.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a consistent administrative experience to streamline the deployment through automated, repeatable workflows. Try these automation capabilities to reduce manual intervention and human error:

• Red Hat Ansible® Automation Platform: Automate the entire upgrade workflow—from prechecks to post-upgrade validation—across thousands of nodes.
• System roles: Use preconfigured roles for SAP, Microsoft SQL Server, identity management, and security to ensure consistent configurations.
• Red Hat Lightspeed (formerly Red Hat Insights): Take advantage of AI-assisted remediation playbooks for patching and configuration, reducing the complexity of Linux upgrades.

A Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription includes Red Hat Lightspeed, offering AI-powered visibility into operational and security risks. Use this predictive data to stay ahead and optimize the environment’s IT health:

• Know before you go: Identify which systems are modernization-ready and which require remediation.
• Identify drift: Detect and correct configuration drift automatically to maintain system hygiene.
• Plan with data: Register systems with Red Hat Lightspeed as an essential 1st step for any modernization roadmap.

Red Hat has demystified the transition process with a predictable, supported framework. This proven migration path ensures the move to the next generation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is both stable and efficient: 

• In-place upgrades: Using the Leapp tool to preserve customizations and configurations during the move from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 to 10, eliminating critical risks.
• Preupgrade analysis: Learning how Leapp scans environments for inhibitors and provides a clear remediation report before any changes are made.
• Strategic transition: Modernizing an IT environment can help to pay down technical debt and avoid the mounting costs of Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS).
• Red Hat’s 10-year major release lifecycle: Allowing flexibility for long-term planning (with 2 years of support for select minor releases). 

Red Hat uses a 3-point approach to address evolving threats for organizations to consider. Implement these built-in security features to protect your data across the entire hybrid cloud:

• Mitigate: The Security Select Add-On expands coverage to moderate and low-level common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs). Features like live-patching minimize reboots, while sandboxing prevents application exploits.
• Focus on security: Centralize identity management and implement system-wide cryptography policies. Image mode reduces attack surfaces by using immutable system images.
• Comply: Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides independently validated solutions and built-in tools to deploy security baselines at scale, including user activity recording for simplified auditing.

The web console used to manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a lightweight, user-friendly interface for IT staff who prefer graphical tools. Oversee the infrastructure and take complex administrative actions through an intuitive dashboard:

• Core tasks: Manage users, storage, networking, and performance monitoring directly from a browser.
• Advanced capabilities: Extend functionality to manage Kernel-based Virtual Machines (KVMs) and Linux containers.
• Single-click upgrades: Prepare for major version upgrades within the console using Leapp’s integrated preupgrade reports and remediation steps.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes a toolkit to create and manage Linux containers. These cloud-native tools allow you to build and run portable, secure applications without the overhead of heavy daemons:

• Buildah and Skopeo: Tools to build, inspect, and transfer, Open Container Initiative (OCI)-compliant images.
• Podman: A daemonless engine for running containers. Podman can automatically detect new image versions, redeploy containers, and perform automatic rollbacks if an update fails.
• Rootless containers: Enhancements to systemd allow containers to run as services without root privileges, significantly increasing application security and portability.