What Makes Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 a Powerhouse for Modern Ops?
This article outlines the origins, release cycle, commercial licensing, feature set, and derivative distributions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, focusing on version 7’s hardware support, kernel enhancements, storage, networking, virtualization, container integration, toolchain, and system management capabilities.
Introduction
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is Red Hat's commercial Linux distribution aimed at the enterprise market, including mainframes. Red Hat provides ten‑year support for each major version starting with RHEL 5.
Release Cycle
A new major version of RHEL is released roughly every three years.
Download
RHEL is a commercial product and cannot be downloaded or used for free; a subscription is required for legal acquisition and support. Open‑source derivatives such as CentOS provide the same software without commercial support.
Origins
Initially based on Red Hat Linux with a conservative release cadence, later versions are built on Fedora; roughly every six Fedora releases a new RHEL version appears.
Version lineage:
Red Hat Linux 6.2 → Red Hat Linux 6.2E
Red Hat Linux 7.2 → RHEL 2.1
Red Hat Linux 9 → RHEL 3
Fedora Core 3 → RHEL 4
Fedora Core 6 → RHEL 5
Fedora 12 → RHEL 6
Fedora 19 → RHEL 7
Current Version (RHEL 7.0)
Supports only 64‑bit CPUs (AMD, Intel, IBM POWER7/8, System z) and can run 32‑bit OSes as virtual machines.
Key kernel features: Kernel 3.10, memory‑compression swap, NUMA‑aware scheduling, APIC virtualization, DynTick, module blacklisting, kpatch dynamic kernel patching (preview).
Storage and filesystems: LIO target subsystem, block‑device caching, LVM cache (preview), XFS default.
Networking: LACP bonding, enhanced NetworkManager, firewalld daemon, DNSSEC support, OpenLMI, trusted network connections (preview).
Virtualization: KVM improvements such as virtio‑blk‑data‑plane, PCI passthrough, QEMU sandbox, multiqueue NIC, USB 3.0 (preview).
Containers: Docker support.
Toolchain: GCC 4.8.x, glibc 2.17, GDB 7.6.1.
Languages: Ruby 2.0.0, Python 2.7.5, Java 7.
Services: Apache 2.4, MariaDB 5.5, PostgreSQL 9.2.
Init system: systemd replaces SysV.
Clustering: Pacemaker, keepalived, HAProxy replace Piranha load balancer.
Installer: Anaconda redesigned, bootloader GRUB 2.
History
Derivative Distributions
Derivatives include CentOS, Scientific Linux, and Oracle Linux.
Comparison
RHEL – No free download, no free use, commercial support (paid).
CentOS – Free download, free use, no commercial support.
Scientific Linux – Free download, free use, no commercial support.
Oracle Linux – Free download after simple registration, free use, commercial support (paid).
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