Red Hat introduces the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 OS

Red Hat has announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, the operating system designed to span the breadth of deployments across enterprise IT. For any workload running on any environment, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 delivers one enterprise Linux experience to meet the unique technology needs of evolving enterprises. From deploying new Linux workloads into production to launch digital transformation strategies, the next-generation enterprise is built on top of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is the operating system redesigned for the hybrid cloud era and built to support the workloads and operations that stretch from enterprise datacenters to multiple public clouds. Red Hat understands that the operating system should do more than simply exist as part of a technology stack; it should be the catalyst for innovation. From Linux containers and hybrid cloud to DevOps and artificial intelligence (AI), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is built to not just support enterprise IT in the hybrid cloud, but to help these new technology strategies thrive.

For more than 15 years, Red Hat has helped enterprises innovate on Linux, first in their datacenters and now across the hybrid cloud. As datacenters grow in scale and scope and workload complexity builds, the skills required to deploy and maintain Linux-based production systems become increasingly critical. With the announcement of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, this intelligence and expertise is now built-in to Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions by default with Red Hat Insights, delivering Red Hat’s Linux expertise as-a-service.

Red Hat Insights helps proactively identify and remediate IT issues, from security vulnerabilities to stability problems. It uses predictive analytics based on Red Hat’s vast knowledge of open technologies to help administrators avoid problems and unplanned downtime in production environments.

Managing systems dispersed across a variety of on-premise and cloud-based infrastructure can present a significant challenge to IT organizations. Red Hat Smart Management, a layered add-on for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, helps IT teams gain the benefits of hybrid cloud computing while minimizing its inherent management complexities. Combining Red Hat Satellite for on-premise systems management and cloud management services for distributed Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments, Red Hat Smart Management provides rich capabilities to manage, patch, configure and provision Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments across the hybrid cloud.

To meet evolving business demands, IT organizations are looking to new workloads, from artificial intelligence (AI) to the Internet-of-Things (IoT), to drive competitive advantages in crowded marketplaces. Linux provides the innovative muscle to power these differentiated services, but only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 delivers this innovation along with a hardened code base, extensive security updates, award-winning support and a vast ecosystem of tested and validated supporting technologies.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has always been known as a stable and secure foundation for applications. However, in the past it was hard to get the most up-to-date languages and frameworks that developers wanted without compromising that stability. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 introduces Application Streams - fast-moving languages, frameworks and developer tools are updated frequently in this stream without impacting the core resources that have made Red Hat Enterprise Linux an enterprise benchmark. This melds faster developer innovation with production stability in a single, enterprise-class operating system.

Linux continues to be the number one operating system for developers building the next generation of enterprise applications. As these applications move into production, stability, enhanced security and testing/certification on existing hardware and environments become paramount needs. This shifts the onus from developers to operations teams and, paired with the trend of Linux being looked to as a primary platform for production applications, makes Linux administration and management skills critical for modern datacenters. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is designed to lower the barrier to entry for Linux, enabling greater accessibility for Windows administrators, Linux beginners and new systems administrators without fear of the command line.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 abstracts away many of the deep complexities of granular sysadmin tasks behind the Red Hat Enterprise Linux web console. The console provides an intuitive, consistent graphical interface for managing and monitoring Red Hat Enterprise Linux system, from the health of virtual machines to overall system performance. To further improve ease of use, Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports in-place upgrades, providing a more streamlined, efficient and timely path for users to convert Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 instances to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 systems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 also includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Roles, which automate many of the more complex tasks around managing and configuring Linux in production. Powered by Red Hat Ansible Automation, System Roles are pre-configured Ansible modules that enable ready-made automated workflows for handling common, complex sysadmin tasks. This automation makes it easier for new systems administrators to adopt Linux protocols and helps to eliminate human error as the cause of common configuration issues.

IT innovation is rooted in open source, with Linux often serving as the catalyst for major advancements in enterprise technology, from Linux containers and Kubernetes to serverless and AI. Backed by a more secure, hardened open source supply chain, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 helps pave the way for IT organizations to adopt production-ready innovation by deploying only the necessary packages for specific workloads. This enhances the adoption of emerging technologies while helping to minimize potential risk.

To enhance security, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 supports the Open SSL 1.1.1 and TLS 1.3 cryptographic standards. This provides access to some of the strongest, latest standards in cryptographic protection that can be implemented system-wide via a single command, limiting the need for application-specific policies and tuning.

With cloud-native applications and services frequently driving digital transformation, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 delivers full support for the Red Hat container toolkit. Based on open standards, the toolkit provides technologies for creating, running and sharing containerized applications. It helps to streamline container development and eliminates the need for bulky, less secure container daemons.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 drives a thriving partner ecosystem, as is expected of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, encompassing thousands of certified applications, Linux container images, hardware configurations and cloud providers. Building on the deep collaborations forged by Red Hat with other IT leaders and through extensive testing, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 drives added value for specific hardware configurations and workloads, including the Arm and POWER architectures as well as real-time applications and SAP solutions.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 forms the foundation for Red Hat’s entire hybrid cloud portfolio, starting with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 and the upcoming Red Hat OpenStack Platform 15. Also built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is the forthcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS, a minimal footprint operating system designed to host Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform deployments.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is also broadly supported as a guest operating system on Red Hat hybrid cloud infrastructure, including Red Hat OpenShift 4, Red Hat OpenStack Platform 15 and Red Hat Virtualization 4.3.

The launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 also coincides with the general availability of the Red Hat Universal Base Image, a userspace image derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux for building Red Hat certified Linux containers. The Red Hat Universal Base Image is available to all developers with or without a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, providing a more secure and reliable foundation for building enterprise-ready containerized applications. Applications built with the Universal Base Image can be run anywhere with the benefits of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux life cycle and support from Red Hat when run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.