I'm already fond of Red Hat's latest flagship operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.1. Some of you, though, thanks to legacy Linux software, are still using RHEL 6.x. You're in luck. Red Hat isn't just still supporting RHEL 6.x, it's improving it. The beta for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7, is out now.

In this update, Red Hat is offering improved methods to preserve investments in existing infrastructure. These include

Increased interoperability with Active Directory and Identity Management servers through the addition of new capabilities to the System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) Identity Management client code.

Clufter, a tool for analyzing and transforming cluster configuration formats.

This beta release also includes new tools that bolster security, stability, and systems management/monitoring capabilities such as:

Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) Workbench, which functions as a SCAP scanner and allows for the tailoring of SCAP content to specific uses.

The ability to specify allowed mount options in udev rules. This feature can be used to restrict removable media to read-only mode, as a security measure to prevent data leakage. This ability, now that anyone can walk away with terabytes of data on a USB stick in their shirt pocket, is extremely valuable.

An updated Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) for new performance metric monitoring and collection tools. Special Feature Virtualizing the Enterprise Virtualization has swept through the data center in recent years, enabling IT transformation and serving as the secret sauce behind cloud computing. Now it’s time to examine what’s next for virtualization as the data center options mature and virtualization spreads to desktops, networks, and beyond. Read More

This releases includes two other really useful features. These are:

LVM Cache is now a fully supported feature. This enables system administrators users to create logical volumes with a small fast storage device performing as a cache for a larger slower device. This maximizes the benefits associated with using expensive (fast) storage while helping to limit costs.

You can also use the RHEL 6.7 base operating system image within a Docker container. This enables you to easily migrate your RHEL 6.x workloads into container-based applications. This makes them suitable for deployment on RHEL 7x and the new container-specific RHEL release, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host (RHELAC).

In short, RHEL 6.7 promises to be a good, solid update for the older Red Hat line and it includes an easy, containerized way for future RHEL 7 migrations.

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