Red Hat has officially started shipping the new version 6.1 of its flagship enterprise-class distribution - Red Hat Enterprise Linux. After just six months after the first in this series of new industrial version 6.0 Linux-platform offers customers a new kernel 02.06.1932, 314 updated and 49 new packages supplied.
Of course, the 6.1 release contains many fixes for errors and updates to the security system. A new distribution tailored for algorithms allocation of CPU time in the NUMA-servers, as well as free from some problems recently found in the kernel Linux. But the main innovation of RHEL 6.1 is an advanced technology for the latest models of equipment, including processors, chipsets and systems that are not yet available commercially, but are actively being tested server manufacturers.
In particular, it supports disk-SAS-Controller (Serial-Attached SCSI) - such controllers will be integrated into a chipset for Intel Patsburg expected in the third quarter of processors with a core Xeon E5 Sandy Bridge. Also declared support for processors AMD Interlagos Opteron 6200. Courtesy of Intel, Red Hat reported on hot-swappable or add processors and memory in servers based on Xeon 7500 architecture x64. Hot swap should also appear for processors Xeon E7 Westmere-EX, issued in early April and are compatible with newer models Xeon E7s, although this fact is not mentioned in the official release notes.
With regard to networking capabilities of RHEL 6.1, it is worth noting the new and updated drivers for various network adapters. In particular, developers are seriously increased the productivity of protocol FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) which uses a combination of server storage, connected to the 10-Gigabit Ethernet-switches. Also implemented improvements to consolidate data centers, bridges and diversion channels to optimize iSCSI networked storage. The idea of establishing direct links between data centers, servers or disk arrays, iSCSI-to help improve the quality of service end-users. RHEL 6.1 also offers enhanced support for the most advanced network adapters, including prototypes of 40-Gigabit Ethernet-adapters and adapters FDR InfiniBand (speed up to 56 Gbit / c).
It is worth mentioning about the innovations in virtualization technology, KVM, although they mostly do not relate to scalability. According to the developers themselves, the present capability of servicing up to 64 physical cores and 512 GB of RAM for each guest operating system running KVM hypervisors are more than enough for now. Nevertheless, Red Hat engineers have done the bulk, although not very noticeable at first glance, the work to reduce the unproductive burden in connection with the guests. For example, in RHEL 6.1 a huge part of the functions to work with the network removed from the emulator QEMU, which is controlled by the KVM hypervisor, and transferred to the nucleus. As a result of such a course of performance gain for typical tasks should be about 5%.
Together with the already proven technology platform is RHEL 6.1 offers a wide range of emerging technologies that are not yet ready for commercial operation, but should be seriously interested in corporate customers. So, RHEL 6.1 contains a trial version of the file system XFS, which is used in clusters with the superstructure High Availability Add On, as well as experimental support for file system BTRFS.
Additionally, the distribution is included preview Technology FS-Cache, providing a continuous and reliable caching for Network File System NFS, as well as the technology of TPM, which allows systems to a series of RHEL 6 to create, store and use RSA-keys without their placement in memory. In addition, RHEL 6.1 introduces customers to the technology Linux Containers (LXC), suggests alternative mechanisms for resource control and isolation in addition to existing means of separation of virtual machines, and also provides a special container in the user's system space for storage and execution of applications and systems.
RHEL 6.1 is available in the following ways:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client 6 for x86 and AMD64/Intel 64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Performance Compute Node 6 for architecture AMD64/Intel 64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server architectures x86, AMD64/Intel 1964, IBM System z and IBM POWER;
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation for x86 and AMD64/Intel 64
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