Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.7 comes with security and server administration enhancements

Larger enterprises with Red Hat contracts will likely welcome the new version, although upgrading may take some time.

Red Hat has announced version 8.7 of its flagship product Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or RHEL. The new version includes a number of improvements aimed at making server administration more manageable.

Red Hat Aims to Ease Administrative Burden with RHEL 8.7

“The latest RHEL 8 update is now available. With the full official release of RHEL 8.7, customers can automate manual tasks more efficiently, standardize large-scale deployments, and simplify day-to-day administration of their systems,” Red Hat’s core product director Gil Cattelain said in an article. Red Hat’s official blog post announcing the product.

To this end, the company has made a big effort to improve the automation of the platform. Red Hat has improved the ability of administrators to automate server provisioning and configuration with its own Ansible platform. Companies can now use Ansible to authenticate smart cards. Administrators can also more easily change server startup options.

RHEL 8.7 launches other enterprise improvements

Since the latest version of the company owned by IBM is intended for use in enterprise servers, the emphasis is on security. It is now possible to manage system-wide cryptographic policies and encrypt “sosreports” through the Web Console, the web-based system management program.

The new version of the operating system launches new system roles for enterprises using Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the SAP Solutions release, a custom RHEL release for that company’s products to manage enterprise functions.

How will businesses react to RHEL 8.7?

Since RHEL is widely deployed in the business world, many Red Hat customers might upgrade, although it might take a while. Enterprise customers tend to prioritize stability over novelty, and large IT departments will want to spend time evaluating this first.

Despite the new version, there are ways to acquire the operating system without having a Red Hat contract. Oracle Linux, Rocky Linux, and AlmaLinux mirror RHEL releases and are actually free releases. Since RHEL is open-source, these projects can do this. As Red Hat has moved CentOS to a streaming model, these are viable alternatives to RHEL, although Red Hat is trying to convert these users to RHEL.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux remains a solid server choice

With the new release, Red Hat looks set to remain the Linux vendor of choice for businesses. It will appeal less to Linux desktop enthusiasts, but those who might have ambitions for enterprise computing may want to evaluate it by signing up for a trial and installing RHEL on a test machine.