RHEL – Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.1 Released – A Quick Review and Installation Instructions

Red Hat Enterprise Linux commonly but not officially abbreviated as RHEL is a Linux distribution developed from commercial point of view. Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides their source code for free but keep check on free re-distribution of their officially supported version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. All the third party derivatives and community supported distributions be it CentOS, Oracle Linux and Scientific Linux build and redistribute their distribution by removing non-free components and Trade mark of Red Hat.
Red Hat releases its distribution under various editions viz., Server, Desktop, Academic, Entry-level server (ES), Advanced Server (AS), Work Station (WS), etc. Since the product is commercial-centric it is free as in speech but not free as in beer.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, codename “Maipo” was released on June 10, 2014. It is based on Fedora core 19, upstream Linux Kernel 3.10, Gnome 3.8 and Systemd 108. The life cycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is 10 years.
The first point update of latest stable release was released on march 06, 2015. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 has enhanced interoperability, improved development and deployment tools as well as security and performance of next level, stability, Red Hat Support, functionality improvement for Active directory environment and access to Microsoft windows file and print server adds to the list.
The world’s leading enterprise operating system gets several improvement and enhancement. Here is the list of most important improvements that is useful for industry use case:
  1. Available for architectures x86_64 AMD, x86_64 Intel, IBM Power 7, Power 8 and System z. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 installation is supported only on x86_64 box though it can run on x86 processor as virtual machines.
  2. Network boot and Installation media is powered with GRUB2 boot loader.
  3. Turbostat tool which is a part of kernel is updated to support new processors.
  4. Installer Anaconda has been updated to improve installation.
  5. Kdump which is used for kernel crash dumping is now configurable from the installation screen. Previously it could be configured on first boot and not before that. Also kdump will have large memory upto 6TB in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
  6. Manual Partitioning has been improved with a little change in the location of controls.
  7. Network bridge is now configurable from the Network and Hostname interface.
  8. Get help for Anaconda in command line by using # anaconda -h option.
  9. Secure Encrypted Partitions and logical volumes with 256 bits of random data.
  10. Get help in Graphical installation screen.
  11. LVM cache supported – use small fast device to create Logical volume that act as cache for larger, slower devices.
  12. Btrfs file system supported as technical preview thus offering advanced, reliable, manageable and scalable feature.
  13. Kpatch introduced. A dynamic kernel patching utility introduced as technology preview.
  14. Booting crashkernel enabled with more than 1 CPU, supported as technology preview.
  15. dm-era, Device Mapper target is introduced as technology preview. It keep track of which block were written within user defined period, ‘era’.
  16. Scheduler Load-Balancing Performance Improvement.
  17. Deterministic random bit generator, updated to work on x86 based machine.
  18. Increased number of virtual CPUs (vCPUs) in KVM uptop 240.
  19. USB 3.0 support enabled in KVM as Technology Preview.
  20. FreeOTP supported for two-factor authentication applicationfor one time password authentication.
  21. Red Hat High Availability improved to next stage.
  22. Open JDK 8 supported in parallel of existing java-1.7.0-openjdk.
  23. Trusted Network Connect feature has been added as Technology Preview.
  24. Updated Network Manager
  25. Virtual Tunnel Interface (VTI) support included.
  26. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is shipped with Docker Project Version 1.4.1– Deploy Application within Linux Container.
  27. SSSD is integrated for Common Internet File System (CISF).
  28. Restricted domain access for unauthorized users.
  29. SELinux policy has been updated.
  30. OpenSSH updated and improved systemd suppor.
  31. Mozilla Thunderbird – an alternative to Evolution has been added.
  32. Next Level security implementation by use of AD sudo provider along with LDAP provider.

Download RHEL 7.1 DVD ISO Images

  1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux being a commercial distribution is not free to download and use. You have to pay for the subscription. Different editions have different subscription charge. If you have an active subscription you may login to the official website and download your distribution from there.
    Here is the link to login and download from official site.
    1. https://idp.redhat.com/idp/
    If you don’t have a subscription and want to buy one, you may refer to the below link.
    1. https://www.redhat.com/wapps/store/catalog.html
    Alternatively, you may download and test a 30 day evaluation edition for free from the link below.
    1. https://access.redhat.com/products/red-hat-enterprise-linux/evaluation
  2. Read more: http://www.tecmint.com/redhat-enterprise-linux-7-1-installation/

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