Manage hybrid clouds with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4
Here in this blog, we are going to learn how to manage hybrid clouds with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4.
Hybrid cloud environment architecture, deployment, and management can be difficult and time-consuming tasks. Workload protection, application management, operating system configuration, and processor selection are the starting and finishing points of it all. For your environment to function at its best, be more consistent, and have better security capabilities, every step needs a solid, dependable software foundation with an extensive feature set. You can expedite and streamline numerous infrastructure life cycle operations throughout your hybrid cloud environment, encompassing on-site data centers, public cloud infrastructure, and edge devices, with the latest features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 (RHEL).
Select the architecture of your processor.
Every application has specific requirements for contemporary IT environments, ranging from cost and dependability to scalability and performance. Part of the entire RHEL platform family, RHEL for ARM gives you the flexibility to run critical services and apps on the processor architecture that works best for each workload. RHEL for ARM enables more consistent and efficient software deployment throughout your whole IT environment with lower power and operating costs, improved uptime, and more predictable performance.
With the 64k page size kernel, RHEL for ARM now supports virtualization with RHEL 9.4 ARM 64 hosts and RHEL 9.4 ARM 64 guests, enabling you to reduce workloads and boost operational effectiveness. Now that 64-bit Arm, x86, and IBM Z host architectures support virtualization, you can select the best hardware for each of your virtual machines and control everything with a single, standardized toolset.
An essential part of the RHEL life cycle, hardware certification testing enhances the infrastructure foundation’s interoperability and supportability. The virtualization capabilities of RHEL for ARM 9.4 are continuously tested and certified, which helps verify that your infrastructure is set up to run virtualized workloads effectively and consistently.
Build and distribute operating system images more reliably
You can increase agility, manage tasks more easily, and optimize operations throughout your hybrid cloud environment by using consistent infrastructure configurations. Image builder, a feature of RHEL subscriptions and a component of Red Hat Insights enables you to more reliably provision RHEL hosts to support standardized operating environments (SOE). Soon, you will have access to suggestions and data for building RHEL images faster and more effectively with the help of new proactive guidance for the Insights image builder. The image builder can recommend more pertinent packages based on an analysis of the packages you have chosen, ensuring you don’t overlook any important parts. Additionally, the image builder can expedite your search by suggesting additional repositories if you are unable to locate a package. As you choose RHEL releases, the image builder shows you relevant life cycle information to aid in upgrading and migrating your system.
You can now get help creating, modifying, and deploying images in public cloud environments with the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console virtual assistant. Additionally, in accordance with Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication 140-2, certified cryptographic modules can now be included when creating RHEL images for edge devices.
Control systems on your network.
In order to maximize uptime, promote compliance, and preserve operational effectiveness, quick and effective server management is essential. You can now configure and manage local systems and networked servers throughout your environment interactively thanks to new features and capabilities in the RHEL 9.4 web console. You can expedite and standardize virtual machine operations with enhanced external virtual machine snapshot capabilities, which include support for live snapshots. Automate the configuration of kernel crash dumps (dump) to increase uniformity throughout your environment. With WireGuard, a high-performance virtual private network (VPN) solution that operates inside the Linux kernel, you can enhance login security. To make managing RHEL edge devices easier, pin rpm-street deployments, reset existing deployments, and carry out cleanup tasks. The best part is that all of this can be done through a single web interface.
Safeguard your data, workloads, and systems.
Automation facilitates the enforcement of standard configurations, remediation of security flaws, and improved adherence to security guidelines. You can automate a lot of routine management tasks for cloud resources, edge devices, and on-site infrastructure with RHEL system roles. By automatically deploying and configuring policy to allow or deny application executions at scale, you can improve security throughout your hybrid cloud.
By using the ad_integration system role to configure dynamic domain name system (DNS) updates, you can increase productivity on RHEL hosts integrated with Microsoft Active Directory. To gain flexibility when systems become unresponsive, customize fencing topologies and quorum device (device) options with the high availability clustering system role. Creating and managing point-in-time snapshots of logical volume manager (LVM) storage volumes is made possible by the new snapshot system role, which makes scalable data backup and recovery processes more swift, reliable, and repeatable. You can further better protect sensitive data by using the Microsoft SQL Server system role, which installs, sets up, and starts Microsoft SQL Server 2022 as a confined application using SELinux.
RHEL 9.4’s additional features and capabilities go beyond system roles to further safeguard your vital data and infrastructure. Fast IDentity Online 2 (FIDO2) passkeys for centrally managed users enable passwordless and multifactor authentication (MFA) through passkey authentication, a component of the zero trust architecture (ZTA) security model. This feature works with hardware key devices that are FIDO2-compliant and has been tested and verified with Yubico YubiKey devices.
Lastly, new features in the RHEL High Availability Add-On can swiftly switch to secondary nodes in the event of a SAP HANA index server failure, reducing recovery times and improving data availability.
