Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux server details

Virtualization

A base Red Hat Enterprise Linux server provides fully-virtualized guest support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, and 5. Third party operating systems may also be hosted. Additionally, offering the highest levels of performance, para-virtualized guest operating system support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and version 4 Update 5 is available.

Fully-virtualized guest support requires hardware features provided by Intel Virtualization Technology and AMD-V processors. Para-virtualized guests can be configured on any 32-bit x86 (with PAE support), 64-bit x86, or Itanium2 system.

With Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform the number of guest operating systems that may be hosted is unlimited, constrained only by physical hardware resources.

With Red Hat Enterprise Linux a total of four guest operating systems are supported.

When running on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux host, Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests do not require separate subscriptions. Guests are automatically entitled to subscription services through the subscription to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux host. Third party operating system guests must be licensed according to the practices of the respective vendor. For information on Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests deployed on third party virtualization platforms, please refer to your local Red Hat sales representative.

Benefits:

Virtualization systems provide many attractive capabilities, including:

  • Reduced costs through server consolidation, coupled with savings in power, cooling, maintenance and third party software.
  • Improved application availability and response due to flexible resource management.
  • The ability for IT departments to innovate, responding to new business demands quickly and at minimal cost.
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Virtualization management

Comprehensive management capabilities for virtualization are provided, including:

  • libvirt: a programmable management library that provides hypervisor independence
  • virsh: a scriptable command shell
  • Red Hat Network enhancements that manage guest entitlements
  • virt-manager: a graphical interface for virtualization functions (create, start, stop, suspend, resume, monitor, etc.)
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform includes Conga, a new management utility that provides web-based control of storage, applications, and servers in small and large multi-cluster environments.
Benefits:

Easy, comprehensive management of virtualized environments.

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Supported architectures and environments

Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports the following system architectures and deployment environments:

Example server environments

  • Standalone server
  • Large SMP "scale-up" server
  • Blade server
  • High availability cluster server
  • Rack server
  • Fault tolerant server
  • HPC "scale-out" server
  • Mainframe server

Supported Architectures

  • Intel and AMD x86/x86-64
  • Intel Itanium2
  • IBM POWER
  • IBM z-Series and S/390
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Common deployments

Example Applications Benefits
File/Print server Provides file and print serving services to Microsoft® Windows® clients, with Active Directory integration and new support for nested groups. Provides print and file service services for UNIX® environments, with NFSv4 and AutoFS support, including authenticated binds and shared maps.
Web server The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Apache-based http server provides high performance, excellent security, and a comprehensive set of optional plug-ins.
Application server Apache Tomcat servlet container, included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, is the reference implementation, powering large-scale, mission critical web applications.
Database server Choose from the MySQL and PostgreSQL open source databases included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux or a third party product from vendors such as Ingres, Sybase, or Oracle.
Network infrastructure server Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a full complement of network services applications, including DHCP, DNS, firewall, etc.
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Kernel

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is based on the Linux 2.6.18 kernel and includes many enhancements over prior releases. These include:

  • Per queue, switchable on-the-fly I/O schedulers
  • High performance pipe implementation
  • IPv4/IPv6 performance enhancements
  • Support for shared cache and multi-core systems
  • Kernel SMP locking enhancements for improved scalability and performance
Benefits:

Improved performance and scalability across the board - memory, CPUs, I/O, networking.

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Security

Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) provides support for MLS (Multi Level Security) policies.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 services are provided with targeted policies enabled by default.

Significant ease-of-use enhancements are provided with the inclusion of the SELinux Troubleshooter, a GUI-based analyzer which guides system administrators on appropriate actions to take in the event of a security alert.

The distribution is built using the fortify-source compiler flag which provides more stringent run-time buffer bounds checking, thereby adding to overall system security.

Benefits:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers the highest level of out-of-the-box security in the industry. Security administration is greatly simplified.

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Auditing

Tracks activities and modifications to the entire system, including file system operations, process system calls, user actions such as password changes, account additions/deletions/modification, use of authentication services, and configuration changes (such as time changes). Provides powerful searching and reporting tools and a unique real-time interface that permits applications to analyze and react to events as they occur.

Benefits:

Auditing allows Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 to meet US Government certifications such as CAPP/LSPP and NISPOM and also assist organizations to meet regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes, Oxley, and HIPPA.

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File systems and storage (virtualization)

To simplify system growth and virtualization adoption, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 includes single system/guest versions of three distributed system technologies:

  • Logical Volume Manager (LVM): for creating and managing pools of virtual storage devices
  • Global File System (GFS): a high performance, scalable, POSIX compliant file system. GFS provides support for file systems with up to 8EB theoretical capacity.
  • Distributed Lock Manager (DLM): a sophisticated application synchronization interface.

Single systems or virtualized guests using these technologies can be easily upgraded to operate in multi-system and multi-guest configurations by upgrading to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform, which provides multi-system and multi-guest (cluster-wide) versions of the LVM, GFS and DLM. This seamless migration eliminates the need to remap the storage subsystem, reformat disk partitions, or rewrite application synchronization routines when moving from a standalone server to a multi-system or virtualized configuration.

Benefits:

Upgrade from small and non-virtualized systems to larger configurations while maintaining a consistent file system and logical volume configuration.

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File systems and storage (general)

A large number of new capabilities are provided, including:

  • The Ext3 file system will now support 16TB file systems.
  • iSCSI and Fibre Channel can be configured during installation.
  • OpenAIS - a standard API that can mask many types of faults in applications, middleware, operating systems and hardware by providing a simple framework for allowing developers to create redundant applications.
  • Dm-crypt provides block-level storage device encryption.
Benefits:

Enhanced storage scalability and security combined with simplified configuration.

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UNIX interoperability

New AutoFS and NFSv4 capabilities for UNIX interoperability include:

  • Direct Map Support - providing compatibility with UNIX environments.
  • Lazy-mount and unmount - greatly reduces the number of simultaneous mounts on client systems, thereby allowing efficient deployment in large NFS infrastructures.
  • Maps can be shared with Sun Solaris, HP/UX, IBM AIX, and other UNIX systems.
  • Authenticated binds with LDAP servers using Kerberos, Digest-MD5, etc.
  • Significant NFSv4 enhancements in performance, stability and, with SecureNFS, security, and server-side delegation.
Benefits:

Secure and high performance interoperability with UNIX environments.

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Microsoft Windows interoperability

Samba provides interoperability with Microsoft Windows file and print (CIFS) systems. New features include improved integration with Microsoft Active Directory ® with, for example, more consistent user and group mapping, and better support for nested groups. Extensive development work and numerous enhancements have improved the quality and stability of the entire subsystem.

Benefits:

Robust and highly compatible integration with Microsoft Windows file/print and authentication environments.

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Compiler and toolchain

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 provides the GCC 4.1 and Glibc 2.4 toolchain. SystemTap and Frysk kernel mode and user mode profiling and debugging tools simplify application development.

Benefits:

Enhanced compiler and tools improves application performance and streamlines application development.

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Compatibility

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 includes compatibility libraries that enable applications built on the versions 3 and 4 to run without recompilation.

Benefits:

User mode applications do not need rebuilding.

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Manageability

Red Hat Network up2date has been replaced with the industry standard Yum updater and Pup graphical interface. A Yum plug-in provides access to Red Hat Network content channels.

Benefits:

Improved, industry standard software installer and updater. Ability to directly access public software repositories.

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