The Red Hat team announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 is now released with improvements, new features, and waiting for users to test. The beta release introduces live kernel patching for the web console, various system roles and management enhancements, and removes the requirement to explicitly ask for beta access. The next release also aims to make RHEL easier to manage, easier to deploy, and a better foundation.
System roles
New or enhanced system roles for popular workloads on RHEL are being released or updated with RHEL 8.5 Beta, includes:
- RHEL system role for Microsoft SQL Server: Allows IT administrators and DBAs to more quickly install, configure and tune SQL Server in an automated fashion.
- RHEL system role for VPN: Reduces the time to configure VPN tunnels and reduces risk of misconfiguration or use of non-recommended settings. Also supports host-to-host and mesh VPN configurations.
- RHEL system role for Postfix: In tech preview for some time, the RHEL system role for Postfix is fully supported with RHEL 8.5. It enables administrators to skip manual configuration of Postfix, automating how you install, configure, and start the server, as well as specify custom settings to better control how Postfix works in your environment.
- RHEL system role for timesync: Uses a new Network Time Security (NTS) option as part of the existing timesync system role.
- RHEL system role for Storage: Adds support for LVM (Logical Volume Manager) VDO (Virtual Data Optimizer) volumes and volume sizes that can be expressed as a percentage of the pool’s total size.
RHEL 8.5 Beta also brings a few new tricks to a convenient RHEL utility.
- Enhanced web console performance metrics: The enhanced performance metrics page can help identify potential causes of high CPU, memory, disk, and network resource usage spikes. In addition, customers can more easily export metrics to a Grafana server.
- Kernel live patching management via web console: This new web console capability provides a simplified interface for applying live kernel updates without having to use command line tooling.