Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 adds new and enhanced capabilities to help organizations more confidently and consistently scale from the datacenter and public clouds to the edge and beyond

Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5, the latest version of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers a common, open operating system that extends across clouds, traditional datacenter operations and out to the edge. The platform enables IT teams to lean on existing skills while they use new and expanded capabilities to build the transformative applications and services required by their business, regardless of where these workloads may ultimately live.

Recent studies indicate that organizations are realizing that using public cloud exclusively may not be economically feasible for long-term scale. At the same time, Gartner predicts that by 2026, “public cloud spending will exceed 45% of all enterprise IT spending, up from less than 17% in 2021.”¹ Red Hat has long championed a hybrid multicloud world, where customers can make the vision of any application, anywhere, a reality by choosing the right environment and technologies that build on a flexible, more consistent foundation. This makes a common Linux foundation, tailored for the rigors of traditional datacenters as well as the complexities of multicloud and edge computing deployments, a necessity for digital transformation.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.5 is designed to offer this backbone, building on Red Hat’s 20+ years of Linux expertise for an innovative platform that spans public cloud providers, multiple hardware architectures, virtualized environments and edge computing models. The updated platform extends Red Hat Insights services, builds on existing container management capabilities and makes it easier for IT teams to set up workload-specific systems wherever they may exist across a multicloud world.

Addressing deployment complexity

Red Hat Insights, Red Hat’s predictive analytics service for identifying and remediating potential system issues, is available by default through almost all Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions. With the launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5, Insights adds new capabilities around vulnerability, compliance and remediation, helping organizations more effectively manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux environments across multicloud and hybrid cloud environments, even when it comes to nuanced security or compliance scenarios.

Bolstering container innovation

Containers are a crucial component of modern DevOps implementations, which in turn are key to the adoption of multicloud and hybrid cloud strategies. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 continues Red Hat’s leadership around making containerized applications easier to use and manage with:

• Faster image creation through rootless OverlayFS

• Full support for containerized Podman in continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD) systems as well as other operating environments

• Native integration with cgroup2 for better resource utilization

• Default container image signature verification, which verifies the integrity of container images at installation and confirms that images are pulled from the Red Hat Container Registry and have not been tampered with since signing

Simplifying multicloud operations

As modern IT environments spread across multiple public clouds, virtualized environments, private clouds, on-premise servers and edge devices, the IT operations experience only becomes more complex. To help address this complexity and to extend the existing skills of both new and seasoned IT operations teams, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 adds support for new Red Hat Enterprise Linux system roles. System roles are preset configurations for Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, enabling IT teams to more easily and rapidly support specific workloads from the cloud to the edge. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 now includes:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux system role for Microsoft SQL Server, making it easier for IT and database administrators to install, configure and tune SQL Server to their specific needs in an automated fashion

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux system role for virtual private networking (VPN) helps to reduce the time it takes to configure VPN tunnels, improving consistency and reducing the risk of misconfigurations, which can be a common factor in IT security incidents

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux system role for Postfix automates and standardizes the configuration for Postfix mail servers, skipping manual steps while still enabling customization

Beyond these key new capabilities, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 also adds support for OpenJDK 17 and .NET Core 6 for developers looking to modernize and build next-generation applications. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux web console has also been further enhanced, making it possible to manage live kernel patching operations and manage overall performance. Finally, enhancements to Image Builder bring broader support for creating customized Red Hat Enterprise Linux images on bare metal for edge deployments and for assembling images that have distinct file systems to meet organization-specific internal standards and security compliance requirements.

Availability

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 is now generally available via the Red Hat Customer Portal.

Supporting Quotes

Gunnar Hellekson, general manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat

“Linux is the common language spoken across nearly every public cloud, private cloud, edge deployment and datacenter. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 reinforces the role of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform in the multicloud ecosystem, providing new capabilities to meet evolving and complex IT needs, from enhanced cloud-native container innovations to extending Linux skills with system roles, on whatever footprint our customers require.”

Additional Resources

• Learn more about what’s new in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5

• Read the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 release notes

• Download Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 (subscription required)

• View the product documentation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5

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About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver reliable and high-performing Linux, hybrid cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Red Hat helps customers integrate new and existing IT applications, develop cloud-native applications, standardize on our industry-leading operating system, and automate, secure, and manage complex environments. Award-winning support, training, and consulting services make Red Hat a trusted adviser to the Fortune 500. As a strategic partner to cloud providers, system integrators, application vendors, customers, and open source communities, Red Hat can help organizations prepare for the digital future.

Forward-Looking Statements

Except for the historical information and discussions contained herein, statements contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are based on the company’s current assumptions regarding future business and financial performance. These statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Any forward-looking statement in this press release speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Except as required by law, the company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.

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¹ Gartner Press Release, Gartner Says Four Trends are Shaping the Future of Public Cloud, August 2, 2021.

Gartner is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

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