Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2

The second update for version 6 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL 6.2, focuses on improvements mainly in the areas of performance and scalability. Red Hat says that RHEL 6.2 achieved the best result ever for a Linux system when benchmarked with SAP-SD on a server with eight ten-core processors. The distribution's resource management has been improved so that it is now possible to set maximum values for CPU consumption associated with a virtual machine or define priorities for individual services.

The high-availability add-on for RHEL 6.2 can now be used in VMware guests and includes full support for the GFS2 cluster filesystem. RHEL 6.2's High Performance Networking now supports the iSCSI extension for RDMA, so the RDMA protocol is now available to access storage devices via up to 10Gb Ethernet connections. A central Identity Management feature interoperates with Microsoft Active Directory and is designed to reduce the Linux infrastructure's administrative overhead. Data throughput has been improved in the network and in the Ext4 default filesystem.

Update: An overview of these and other enhancements in Red Hat Enterprise 6.2 can be found in a feature article on The H Open:

• What's new in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2

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