Red Hat Releases ‘Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2’

Red Hat announced that it has officially released ‘Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2’. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 is designed to help IT teams solve human and technology challenges and improve efficiencies in critical infrastructure areas by simplifying complex Linux platform tasks across hybrid clouds, from data centers to public clouds to edge deployments.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 continues to expand system role capabilities and introduces Ansible content specific to Red Hat Enterprise Linux that automates common administrative tasks, resulting in greater consistency and efficiency at scale. This means common Linux roles, from Microsoft SQL Server to VPNs, can be easily configured, validated and deployed with basic Linux knowledge. System roles also allow for easy reconfiguration of any of these functions due to their automated nature, thus supporting deployment in a way that does not disrupt upgrades.

This announcement extends Red Hat Enterprise Linux system roles to Podman, Red Hat’s tool for developing, managing and running containers on the Linux platform. Normally, command-line knowledge is required to create a Podman instance, but new system roles allow administrators to automate configuration for their specific environment. This includes the ability to deploy pre-integrated, production-ready container workloads across Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosts. This allows Linux administrators to extend their skills to even maintaining container infrastructure.

In addition, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux system role update expands Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Active Directory-related capabilities, automating SQL Server/Active Directory authentication, supporting Always-On Availability Groups, and supporting SQL Server 2022.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, through Image Builder, enables IT companies to operate a hybrid cloud based on a single operating system standard. Image Builder simplifies the creation of standardized operating system images optimized for a variety of environments, from public cloud to the edge, and helps ensure compliance with critical IT controls and policies for system security and compliance. New in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 is the ability for tools to include enterprise-specific security policies defined in a given OpenSCAP security profile or created image to more securely provision edge devices.

In addition to Image Builder, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Web Console further facilitates IT security and compliance policy enforcement across hybrid clouds. The console allows administrators to perform a variety of configuration and management tasks from an intuitive browser interface.

The web console includes the ability to configure automatic encrypted disk unlocking on the root filesystem using Network Bound Disk Encryption (NBDE). This feature protects data at rest and is open to a wide range of Linux technologies without requiring expert knowledge of command line parameters. Administrators can also use the web console to select frequently used encryption policy combinations system-wide, keeping all relevant systems in line with various regulatory compliance and organizational requirements.

As containerized applications power the majority of next-generation software, IT organizations now have to manage and maintain exponentially growing containers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 includes the ability to track container creation events manually or as part of an automated workflow, and improved Podman capabilities needed to bring order to potential container sprawl. It supports a full view of system activity in environments where regular auditing is required.

Podman also supports custom container health checks, allowing IT administrators to automatically troubleshoot and mitigate issues when containers become unhealthy. This allows containerized applications in remote or edge environments, and even disconnected applications, to maintain centralized operations and consistency.

The latest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports the Arm architecture with a 64k page size and offers Red Hat customers more Arm-based certified hardware. This allows organizations to choose the underlying architecture that best suits their unique needs, even when running memory-intensive workloads.

Enhanced extended update support is available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 and later, and allows systems to receive software updates for up to four years after each minor update is generally released.
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