Announcing the GA release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 and 9.2

We’re pleased to announce today the general availability of Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 9.2 and the forthcoming availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 and 8.8 bring new features and enhancements that deliver a more security-hardened, consistent foundation for an open hybrid cloud environment with the ability to deliver workloads, applications, and services rapidly with less effort across various environments.

With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 and 8.8, organizations can:

Innovate. Organizations are constantly looking to innovate quickly without friction and provide consistency from the datacenter to the edge by streamlining operations and centralizing development and management. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 and 8.8, organizations can spend more time on innovation than maintenance. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 and 8.8 now support Python 3.11, a new version of Python that contains several new features to improve performance significantly. Nginx 1.22—a more recent version of Nginx that is a fast, light-weight web server, reverse proxy, and load balancer—now includes OpenSSL 3.0 compatibility, hardening against request smuggling and cross-protocol attacks, along with Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation (ALPN).

Optimize. System roles are a collection of Ansible® content included in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription to help provide consistent configuration and workflows at scale by automating everyday administrative tasks. New capabilities include the new Podman Red Hat Enterprise Linux system role, which allows organizations to automate the deployment of production-ready container workloads across Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosts to save time and improve consistency. Additionally, the new rhc (remote host configuration) Red Hat Enterprise Linux system role can automate registering Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems to Red Hat, including the configuration of Red Hat Insights, allowing organizations to take advantage of Red Hat’s subject matter expertise in system configuration.

Protect. Continuously mitigating risk across the hybrid cloud—including building, scaling, and managing workloads—can be challenging for most organizations. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 and 8.8, organizations can create a stable, consistent, and trustworthy platform that sets the foundation for a strong security posture to scale applications and roll out emerging technologies across the hybrid cloud. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 and 8.8, the ad_integration Red Hat Enterprise Linux system role automates the process of directly integrating Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems with Microsoft Active Directory for more accessible centralized identity and access control. Continuing to make it simpler for organizations delivering and managing software in containers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Podman custom health checks now allow organizations to automate what happens when a container becomes unhealthy, which is crucial for services in remote locations or critical systems. These resilient services reduce the complexity of deploying containers at scale.

Trust. It’s a never-ending challenge for organizations to manage the complexity of their systems and help provide consistent configuration and workflows at scale by automating everyday administrative tasks. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 and 8.8, organizations can operate confidently and ensure long-term success. The Microsoft SQL system role now automates configuring SQL Server to authenticate with Microsoft Active Directory directly and supports automated installation and configuration of SQL Server 2017, 2019, and 2022. This drastically reduces the time to deployment at scale of SQL Server. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 and 8.8 also offer improved support in the web console for efficient configuration of security-focused, automatic encrypted disk unlocking on root filesystems using network-bound disk encryption. With minimal effort, administrators can protect data at rest without needing to be experts at Linux kernel command line parameters.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 is available today on the Red Hat Customer Portal for all customers with active Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions. To access and download Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2, click here.

Additional Resources
- Press Release: Red Hat Deliver the latest releases of RHEL
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 and 8.8 blog
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 release notes
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 documentation