Explore new capabilities in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 and 8.10 beta releases
To facilitate organizations in deploying applications and workloads with speed and reliability, Red Hat is pleased to announce the release of Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® (RHEL) 8.10 and 9.4 Beta. RHEL 8.10 and 9.4 Beta offer organizations the flexibility and reliability to innovate across hybrid cloud deployments, from physical, virtual, private, public cloud, and edge. These new features and enhancements allow organizations to deliver workloads, applications, and services with increased efficiency and agility across multiple environments.
Web Console
The Red Hat Enterprise Linux web console is a web-based tool that simplifies common configuration and management tasks with a user-friendly interface. It now supports external and live snapshots for virtual machines on RHEL 9.4 and above. Users can also generate Ansible/shell scripts for consistent kdump configurations on multiple systems. In tech preview, the web console can configure WireGuard for enhanced security. Additionally (9.4 only), it offers improved manageability of RHEL systems at the edge, including the ability to "pin" deployments and perform clean-up tasks.
System Roles
The RHEL roles included in a RHEL subscription automate common administrative tasks to provide consistent configuration and workflows at scale. These roles can now be used for edge systems and include features such as automating the configuration of Podman and fapolicyd for improved security. The Microsoft SQL Server role supports the installation and configuration of SQL Server 2022 and can run as a confined application for added security (9.4 only). A new snapshot role allows for the creation and management of point-in-time snapshots of LVM storage volumes, and the Ad_integration role enables dynamic DNS updates for RHEL hosts integrated with Microsoft Active Directory. HA cluster users can now configure qdevice options and fencing topologies for unresponsive systems, and a new bootloader role can automate the configuration of kernel command line parameters for improved consistency and management of RHEL systems at scale.
Podman
In our latest release of RHEL, version 8.10/9.4 beta, we are introducing Podman 4.9. This update includes the ability to combine multiple command line options into a single "module" for easier management, support for Heredoc syntax in Containerfiles, a multi-arch build farm feature (tech preview), and the replacement of BoltDB with SQLite as the default database for new installations. Additionally, the Podman REST API now reports partial progress.
RHEL for SAP
The latest RHEL release introduces a new feature for RHEL for SAP that supports system administrators in meeting their recovery time objectives (RTO). This feature allows HA cluster support for scenarios involving SAP HANA index server crashes, which can quickly switch to a secondary node to mitigate downtime. This improves RTO and helps customers meet their SLAs.
Application Streams
RHEL 8.10/9.4 beta introduces new Application Streams, offering multiple versions of user space components that can be updated more frequently without affecting the platform's stability. RHEL 8.10 and 9.4 beta adds new application streams, including Python 3.12, PostgreSQL 16, Ruby 3.3, and MariaDB 10.11 (only in RHEL 9.4). These new versions bring various features and enhancements, such as improved performance and support for new tools and technologies. Additionally, the compilers for Rust, Go, and LLVM have been updated, along with a new version of Git (only in RHEL 9.4) and an update to Git-LFS.
Security and Compliance
The new release of RHEL has improved features that simplify security and compliance management for both new system deployments and existing infrastructure. Passkey authentication (only in RHEL 9.4) is one of these features, which allows for passwordless and multi-factor authentication using FIDO2-compliant passkeys for centrally managed users. This is part of the Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) security model, a US government initiative that will impact agencies and companies working for them by 2024. The Passkey authentication has been tested and verified with Yubico YubiKey™ devices.
Red Hat customers can directly access RHEL 8.10/9.4 Beta from the RHEL product page.
Additional resources:
