Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 Launched

Open source pioneer Red Hat Inc. has launched an update to its Enterprise Linux OS. v.6.1 brings better performance, reliability and support for more hardware.

This is the first update to the platform since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 was launched in November 2010. Patches and security updates have been included.

"With Linux adoption growing across all workloads, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 provides more enterprise reliability, performance and control throughout the datacenter," said Jim Totton, vice president and general manager, Platform Business at Red Hat, in a media release issued by the company. "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 continues to lead Linux innovation as we drive adoption across workloads that include physical, virtual and cloud deployments."

The updates to the version include additional configuration options for advanced storage configurations with improvements in FCoE, datacenter bridging and iSCSI offload; enhancements in virtualization, file systems, scheduler, resource management and availability; a technology preview of Red Hat Enterprise Identity (IPA) services, based on the open source FreeIPA project; support for automatic failover for virtual machines and applications using the Red Hat High Availability Add-On; integrated developer tools that provide the ability to write, debug, profile and deploy applications without leaving the graphical environment and improvements to network traffic processing to leverage multi-processor servers.

According to recent researh by analyst firm IDC commissioned by Red Hat, organisations that were heavily standardized on Red Hat Enterprise Linux witnessed benefits of lower IT staff costs and reduced end user downtime when compared to organisations that used a mix of Linux distributions or non-paid Linux distributions.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 is currently deployed as a virtual machine guest and hypervisor host by various enterprises such as IBM, which has reported a 45 per cent better consolidation, and HP, on a HP ProLiant BL620c G7 20-core blade server. A whitepaper detailing more deployment strategies is available here.

IBM's director of Cross-IBM Linux and Open Virtualization, Jean Staten Healy said, "Building on our decade-long partnership to optimize Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM platforms, our companies have collaborated closely on the development of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 combined with IBM hardware capabilities offers our customers expanded flexibility, performance and scalability across their baremetal, virtualized and cloud environments. Our collaboration continues to drive innovation and leading results in the industry."