14 DAY TRIAL // Red Hat Inc. has announced the general availability of the beta release of their upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 operating system, due for release early this spring.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 is the fifth maintenance update to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 operating system series and brings with it yet another layer of security and performance new features and improvements that would benefit enterprise customers on the desktop, server, and cloud infrastructures.
As expected, Red Hat ships the latest mitigations for the Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities with the latest RHEL 7 milestone. In addition, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 release promises to continue to support alternative architectures besides x86 and x86_64 platforms, including IBM Power, IBM System z, and ARM.
Here's what's new in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 Beta
New security features implemented in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 Beta release include the integration of Red Hat Ansible Automation with OpenSCAP, support for more securely unlock Network Bound Disk Encrypted devices during the boot process, and the introduction of failover with bonding interfaces NTP and PTP.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 Beta also introduces the virtual data optimizer (VDO) the technology that's designed to reduce data redundancy through inline deduplication and compression, which could lead to massive cost reductions for active storage and storing of monthly snapshots. Red Hat says that their preliminary testing showed an increase in the effective capacity of up to 6 times when VDO was used in a storage environment running RHEL.
"In a primary storage environment delivered on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, internal testing has shown that VDO can increase effective capacity by up to 6x, helping to free up existing storage and reduce the costs associated with offsite data replication," says Red Hat. "These savings, extended to block storage in the public cloud, can reduce storage footprints by up to 83 percent, helping to reduce the hourly cost for active storage and the monthly costs of storing snapshots."
Last but not least, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 Beta enhances usability for Linux and Windows administrators alike, as well as for developers seeking self-service capabilities by implementing an easier way to use the Cockpit administrator console, and a new method to automatically create bootable snapshots, increasing the speed of recovery and rollback after security patching. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 Beta is now available for download from Red Hat's Customer Portal.