Red Hat releases Enterprise Linux 7.3 into the wild

Enterprise Linux vendor Red Hat has released the final version of its business-oriented Linux distribution with version 7.3, bringing a range of improvements to the table for the operating system.

Featuring the open source Linux kernel version 3.10.0-514, RHEL 7.3 includes performance, security and reliability improvements.

Red Hat said the lightweight networking tunnels added to RHEL 7.3 enable guest instances of the operating system to be more secure, efficient, scalable and flexible. Network interfaces with 40 and 100 gigabit per second speeds have been enhanced and perform better, and RHEL 7.3 comes with improved support for solid state storage for high-speed, low-latency memory devices.

The NSA devices SELinux security feature - which provides enforcement of granular system-level access control policies - has been updated in RHEL 7.3, along with improvements to Red Hat's identity management solution, support for smart cards with Active Directory, and configurable authentication strength across individual hosts and services.

Linux Containers, the lightweight environments to run applications rather than fully-fledged virtual machines, feature strongly in RHEL 7.3, with enhanced management tools and OpenSCAP (security content automation protocol) open source implementation for compliance checking.

Support for Bluetooth low energy (LE) devices has been added, as has the CANbus protocol for internet of things applications, as well as automotove and industrial controllers.

Red Hat offers multiple variants of its Enterprise Linux distribution. These include RHEL Atomic Host, aimed at running Linux containers, and RHEL for SAP Applications, which runs on IBM z Systems and IBM Power servers.

ARM-architecture 64-bit systems are catered for with a development preview of RHEL 7.3, with single-host virtualisation based on the open source KVM technology, Ceph Storage for scale-out software defined storage for objects, blocks and files, and the Developer Toolset for C and C++ language developers.

RHEL 7.3 is sold on an annual subscription basis, starting at US$799 (A$1040) a year for two-socket server with one physical or two virtual nodes. A desktop or workstation version of RHEL 7.3 is also available starting at US$49 (A$64) for a one-year subscription.