What’s New in RHEL 8.5? Deep Dive into Container and Cloud‑Native Enhancements

RHEL 8.5 is the newest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, officially released on the 13th.

Red Hat director Joe Brockmeier noted that RHEL 8.5 addresses user needs across on‑premises, public cloud, and edge deployments.

With a continued shift toward container and Kubernetes environments, RHEL 8.5 introduces significant container enhancements:

Podman container images are fully supported, enabling cloud‑native CI/CD workflows; the system also supports Windows Subsystem for Linux 2, macOS, and RHEL 6, 7, 8 for developing and running other container images.

Container image signing is enforced out‑of‑the‑box, ensuring images originate from Red Hat and have not been tampered with.

Rootless containers gain native OverlayFS support, delivering better performance when building and running unprivileged containers.

The web console, built on the open‑source Cockpit project, now allows real‑time kernel patching and includes an enhanced performance metrics page, making it easier to identify high‑load CPU, memory, disk, and network resources, export data to Grafana, and gain deeper insight into server behavior.

Red Hat’s system roles now leverage Ansible roles and modules to configure, automate, and manage RHEL services. New or enhanced roles include:

VPN tunnel configuration with reduced setup time and lower risk of misconfiguration, supporting host‑to‑host and mesh VPNs.

Postfix system role, fully supported in RHEL 8.5, automating installation, configuration, and startup, with customizable settings for better control.

Network Time Security (NTS) option added as part of the existing time‑security and synchronization role.

Support for LVM VDO volumes and volume sizing.

RHEL 8.5 also provides a system role for Microsoft SQL Server, enabling IT administrators and DBAs to automatically install, configure, and tune SQL Server, and includes the latest .NET 6 runtime, which runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS, offering a unified platform for cloud, desktop, IoT, and mobile applications.

In summary, RHEL 8.5 is ready to run on any platform you envision.