Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 Beta now available

We are pleased to announce that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 Beta is now available, the latest update to the stable and more secure Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 platform. RHEL 7.7 marks the final release in the Full Support Phase (formerly known as “Production Phase 1”) of the RHEL 7 lifecycle as described in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Lifecycle.

This 10-year lifecycle is a key feature of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform. As minor releases progress within a major release lifecycle, focus is placed on maintaining infrastructure stability for production environments and enhancing the reliability of the operating system. With RHEL 7 entering the next phase of its lifecycle, future releases will emphasize production stability, rather than introducing net-new features.

RHEL 7.7 Beta includes a host of enhancements and bug fixes to help deliver a powerful, flexible platform for hybrid cloud computing. Key updates include support for the latest generation of enterprise hardware as well as remediation for the recently-disclosed Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS)/ZombieLoad vulnerabilities.

The beta release also includes performance enhancements for the network stack, along with the ability to offload virtual switching operations to network interface card (NIC) hardware. The value of these features also improve the operation of Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat OpenShift deployments, both built on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, that use virtual switching and network function virtualization (NFV).

Additionally, RHEL 7.7 Beta users will have default access to Red Hat Insights as part of their Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription. Encompassing Red Hat’s extensive expertise in delivering enterprise Linux deployments, Red Hat Insights provides a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based predictive analytics solution, helping enterprise IT teams to better assess and mitigate potential problems to their systems before they impact production.

For more information on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 beta, please read the release notes). Existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers can try out the latest version of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform while other interested users can access a 30-day evaluation trial.

Chris Baker is manager, product marketing, Red Hat Enterprise Linux at Red Hat