Today, we are pleased to announce the availability of the Beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8. Red Hat’s proven, long lifecycle model considers customer needs and preferences while enabling a stable and feature-rich operating system environment. Through minor releases, such as the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8, Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers experience significant and ongoing value from their subscriptions.

This beta release includes a broad set of updates to the existing features and also provides new functionality, particularly in the areas of power and security management, and virtualization. Support for a range of new hardware is also included.

Key functionality in this beta is as follows:

Installation and Operation Management

• Support for Power Management Quality of Service (QoS) provides automatic power management at the device level for managing latency and throughput based on QoS needs. During critical production windows, system administrators can enforce a high-performance, low-latency mode in lieu of achieving power savings.
• The configuration of IP over Infiniband (IPoIB) adapters is now supported by the system installer, making installation of Infiniband adapters easier.
• New iotop support enables the monitoring of I/O resources, such as storage devices, at the process level, providing insight into potential performance issues.
• PCI-e 3.0 enablement provides support for new and emerging PCI-e 3.0 adapters.
• Network and storage driver enhancements increase the number of devices supported.

Security Management

• OpenSCAP (Open Security Content Automation Protocol) support is now compliant with the SCAP 1.1 (Security Content Automation Protocol) specification, the most recent standard framework defined by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for creating a standardized approach for maintaining secure systems.

Virtualization

• The spice-client package now adds support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 hosts. These improvements also allow users to access their virtual machines over a WAN connection in addition to the local network.
• KVM enhancements include improved guest boot times and improved clock and timer support. The KVM hypervisor has updated real time clock (RTC) support to improve the performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 guests on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 KVM hosts.
• Additional KVM improvements increase the usability and stability of KVM hosts and Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests.
• Xen enhancements provide improved guest performance, improved logging for debug, and virtual disk re-sizing while a guest is running.

Red Hat extends its continued appreciation to its partners and customers for their help in developing and delivering a high quality enterprise operating system platform for users worldwide. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8 beta can be accessed here. The Release Notes can be accessed here.