Red Hat 7.1 is here, CentOS 7.1 coming soon

Summary: These two popular enterprise Linux server operating systems are getting an Active Directory and container friendly refresh.
 
Serious businesses use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and its near-twin brother CentOS for their servers. The question today for CIOs using or RHEL and CentOS is: When should they upgrade to RHEL 7.1 and/or CentOS 7.1?
 

RHEL 7.1 is the first minor release of RHEL 7, which launched in June 2014. This new version adds improved development and deployment tools, enhanced interoperability and manageability, and additional security and performance features. This release, like all RHEL versions, will be supported for a 10-year life-cycle. 
 
The most important new feature for shops running Linux and Windows is that RHEL 7.1 has improved its Active Directory (AD) interoperability. RHEL's System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) can recognize AD access control group policy objects. Administrators will now also be able to define log-in policies on the Active Directory domain controller. These policies are honored by its RHEL clients and Windows clients alike. The new SSSD also removes the need to use Samba Winbind when integrating directly with AD. This will, Red Hat states, makes it even easier to share files and print services in heterogeneous environments.

 

RHEL 7.1 also comes with new Linux container developer tools. Red Hat, which has recently partnered with Docker, includes the latest Docker packages. It's not just Docker, it also includes Google Kubernetes orchestration tools. It also includes RHEL 6 and 7 base images to provide certified, stable foundations upon which to build enterprise-grade containerized applications. 
 
RHEL 7.1 includes three new specialized editions:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host uses Project Atomic's tools and frameworks for a Docker container specific Linux server. This offers a minimal-footprint, streamlined platform for running Linux containers in an enterprise environment.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Real Time is Red Hat's real-time computing platform for deadline-oriented and time-sensitive applications. This version of RHEL 7.1 uses that has been tuned to deliver consistent low-latency response times.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power is RHEL for IBM's little-endian architecture. IBM and Red Hat claims that RHEL running on POWER8 offers higher performance especially for big data applications through multi-threading, more cache and greater data bandwidth, while little-endian mode removes an application portability barrier and allows data-centers running Power Systems to leverage Red Hat's ecosystem of certified applications originally developed for x86 architecture. This also means that these certified applications can be more easily migrated between x86-based and POWER processor-based systems, giving customers the advantages of both architectures.

For those of you who don't need Red Hat support to run RHEL and its programs, CentOS is on the verge of releasing CentOS 7.1. If all goes well, CentOS 7.1 will be out by March 20. 
 
So when should you switch your company to RHEL or CentOS 7.1? As always, it depends on your needs. If your company workload is already being pulled by the two horses of RHEL and Windows, the improved AD integration makes RHEL 7.1 attractive. Is your business planning on moving to containers for its data-center apps sooner than later? Then, you should start working with the 7.1 releases sooner rather than later.
 
~ Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

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CentOS 7 to be released shortly, project lead says

Summary: The "official" Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone CentOS is releasing its next major version today.
  

As expected, CentOS, the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clone, which now works hand-in-golve with Red Hat, will be releasing CentOS 7 on Monday — less than a month after RHEL 7 was released.
 
While the news hasn't been officially released yet, Karanbir Singh, the Project Lead for The CentOS Project, told me in an e-mail that: "This is the gold release, the content is signed, the ISOs will be on the mirrors."
 
News that the release candidate was on its way has been enough to overwhelm CentOS's servers. Singh explained that the CentOS server had been load-tested only against "about 10-thousand hits a minute and we've had about four times that."
 
Singh said that switching to a server that should be able to keep up with the load.
 
The release candidate itself was quietly released on July 4. Since, no major problems were found, CentOS's developers are going ahead with the final release today.
 
Like Red Hat's RHEL 7, the Linux 3.10 kernel-based CentOS 7 has the following new features:

• XFS is CentOS's new default file system: This enables you to scale file-systems up to 500 terabytes. You can, however, use Ext4 or other major Linux file systems if you prefer since XFS really only shows to advantage on 1 terabyte disks and larger with multiple processor cores.
• Microsoft Active Directory support: With this you'll be able to have cross-realm trust Windows, RHEL 7, and CentOS 7 domains. This is ideal if you have users working with heterogeneous operating system-based datacenters or server farms.
• The adoption of OpenLMI. This is a standard remote application programming interface (API). Red Hat has used this to provide unified management tools and a management framework to streamline administration and system configuration.
• Performance Co-Pilot is now included. This is a set of real-time frameworks and services for recording and monitoring system performance. This lets both system administrators and other sub-systems, such as systemd, keep a close eye on what's actually happening in a CentOS 7 server instance as it happens.
• The arrival of systemd: This is the replacement for init, the old Unix way of starting processes and services on a system and initializing resources. After years of debate, systemd has been adopted by Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, and Ubuntu. It's become the new default way to start Linux systems. It also incorporates performance profiles and tuning and instrumentation for optimized performance and easy scalability.

The CentOS 7 release, which remains free to all users, will be available on the CentOS site and its its mirrors within hours.
 
~ Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

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