Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX User manual

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RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX
Flexibility. Red Hat Enterprise Linux gives customers a
wide range of features that can be selected to best suit
their environment. For example, a web-serving environ-
ment may require a different feature set than a database
or nancial application environment. The same applies to
running guest instances of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on
common third-party hypervisors and hardware partition-
ing technologies. Customers can select the feature set for
their targeted environment while still receiving the value
and high quality of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. In addition,
with Red Hat's unique subscription model, customers have
the choice of any currently supported version of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux. Visit redhat.com/rhel/server/advanced/
virt.html for details on the supported combinations.
Performance and scalability. Red Hat Enterprise Linux
performance scales on all levels, from desktops to work-
stations, from blades to rack environments, from single
CPU systems to the largest SMP servers and mainframes.
As hardware upgrades deliver additional processing and
storage, Red Hat Enterprise Linux scales with that growth.
Red Hat continues to innovate and deliver advanced func-
tionality of the highest quality to its customers. Red Hat
works continuously with hardware and software partners
to enhance the performance of its platforms. For example,
improvements in virtualization performance make it prac-
tical to deploy any application workload, even I/O-bound
applications.
The most dramatic improvements in recent virtual machine
performance are made possible by I/O optimizations,
including support for new hardware capabilities, such as
10 Gigabit SR-IOV adapters, and NPIV. These have reduced
overhead for I/O-bound environments to less than ve per-
cent, which opens the door to a whole new class of applica-
tions, such as database, transaction, and le servers. Red
Hat leads the industry with new capabilities that enable
customers to fully utilize a virtualized environment.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in cooperation with Red Hat's
hardware partners, is enabling RAS (reliability, availability,
security) and scalability features that have been recently
introduced to mainstream architectures. Operational cost
savings and physical space considerations drive the need
for these higher-efciency systems. For example, a 64-CPU
Red Hat®Enterprise Linux®is the operating system
trusted by thousands of enterprises around the world to
power their most mission-critical applications. Red Hat
Enterprise Linux delivers performance, reliability, scalabil-
ity, and security for its customers. Certied by the leading
hardware and software vendors, it is suitable for, and has
been deployed on, desktops, servers, and mainframes.
Engineered by Red Hat and backed by a powerful open
source development model, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has
proven performance and reliability. It has also completed
the most stringent government security certications,
safeguarding your systems and your data. Key features
that customers rely on are built into and fully integrated
with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, including virtualization,
mandatory access control (MAC) security, high-availability
clustering, modularity, and extensive energy management
capabilities. Operational ease-of-use is facilitated by allow-
ing customers the exibility to select features and deploy-
ment methods that will enable them to manage thousands
of servers as easily as one.
KEY ATTRIBUTES
Stable, trusted platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the
long-term, predictable operating platform that embraces
open source software and delivers to customers an enter-
prise-ready solution that can handle any application work-
load. With a rigorous engineering process, Red Hat ensures
long-term stability, embraces industry innovation, and puts
customers in control of their environment.
Red Hat meets the challenge of maintaining a stable,
trusted platform in many ways. Key partnerships across
the industry allow Red Hat to test for the stability of their
hardware, software, and management interfaces. Support
for the latest hardware is included with service packs and
is delivered through minor releases. Applications do not
need to be re-built or re-certied with each release update
because the application programming and binary inter-
faces (API/ABI) are held stable for the full life of a Red Hat
Enterprise Linux release, regardless of the physical or vir-
tual deployment model. This means that Red Hat's rich
ecosystem of thousands of applications are immediately
available, avoiding delays that would otherwise occur with
expensive and time-consuming re-testing efforts.

2www.redhat.com
Red Hat Security Response Team, recognized as industry
leaders for addressing security vulnerabilities. In summary,
Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides an unmatched security
environment for customers and their applications. View
redhat.com/security for more detail.
High availability. An integrated high-availability clustering
capability allows customers to easily deploy and manage
high-availability applications. Scaling from two to 16 nodes,
application high availability can be managed through pol-
icy denitions. Integrated application failover agents are
included for SAP, Sybase, and Oracle, and customers may
customize the Red Hat-supplied resource agents for other
applications.
Manageability. Deploying and managing a Red Hat
Enterprise Linux environment is enabled by Red Hat
Network (RHN). RHN is a highly scalable management
platform for provisioning, updating, and controlling
Red Hat Enterprise Linux environments. RHN and its on-
premise version, RHN Satellite, provide organizations and
their administrators with tools to lower their per-system
deployment and management costs by automating and
centralizing routine tasks and creating a consistent envi-
ronment, resulting in less unexpected downtime due to
human error.
THE TRANSPORTATION INDUSTRY
RELIES ON RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX
"Migrating to Linux was synonymous
with migrating to Red Hat. Its reliability
continues to impress us daily."
- Brad Massey
IT Support Services,
Odyssey Logistics and Technology
Storage. Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes sophisticated
disk and logical volume management capabilities that
support numerous enterprise features, including high-
resiliency via multi-pathed storage devices, the ability to
combine physical devices into logical units, RAID capabili-
ties, online device addition, dynamic volume expansion,
and online lesystem growth. All storage management
functions are available online, without impacting applica-
tion availability.
system with 1 Terabyte of memory, which previously may
have consumed a full rack, can now be congured in a
single 4U form factor, and can deliver improved perfor-
mance at a much lower cost. Red Hat Enterprise Linux also
includes low-level kernel optimizations aimed at providing
full application performance while in the lowest possible
power states.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux continues to regularly set new
standards in the industry on workload benchmarks as
diverse as ERP, Business Intelligence, TPC, and SPEC. See
why Red Hat solutions are preferred for getting the most
out of hardware and applications. Visit spec.org, tpc.org
and redhat.com/rhel/details/benchmarks/.
Virtualization. Red Hat is a driving force behind the
development of open source virtualization technology.
Red Hat's approach to virtualization is easy to adopt,
because it is delivered as an integral part of the Red Hat
Enterprise Linux platform. The original release of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5 in early 2007 incorporated an enter-
prise-hardened implementation of the Xen-based hyper-
visor technology. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4,
Red Hat also introduced the newest virtualization technol-
ogy, Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), which is inte-
grated into the Linux kernel and leverages the newest
hardware virtualization capabilities provided by Intel
and AMD processor platforms. The modular design of
Red Hat Enterprise Linux allows customers to choose when
and where to use virtualization within the context of their
deployment. For additional exibility, customers can deploy
both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Microsoft® Windows®
as fully supported guests. Red Hat Enterprise Linux sup-
ports multiple virtualization use cases, from hardware
abstraction for existing software stacks, to datacenter
consolidation, to virtualized clusters and private clouds.
Security. Security for Red Hat Enterprise Linux begins
with a core feature known as Security-Enhanced Linux
(SELinux). Co-developed with the U.S. Government's
National Security Agency, SELinux provides for a strong
and exible MAC framework to enforce role-based access
control and multi-level security. In addition to SELinux,
Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes system rewalls, audit
capabilities, and system package and le integrity verica-
tion tools for a complete security architecture that covers
deployment models ranging from Internet-facing servers to
trusted computers. Backing up the core technology is the

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RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX BENEFITS
With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you receive:
The applications you need•
Thousands of certied applications from ISVs (Independent Software
Vendors). redhat.com/partners/isv/
Your choice of hardware platform•
Hundreds of certied hardware systems and peripherals from leading
OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) vendors, spanning multiple
processor architectures. redhat.com/partners/hardwarepartners/
Comprehensive service offerings•
Up to 24x7 support with one-hour response, available from Red Hat
and selected ISV and OEM partners. redhat.com/support/
The leading operating system•
Excellent performance, security, scalability, and availability,
with audited industry benchmarks. spec.org, tpc.org
(redhat.com/rhel/details/benchmarks/)
Robust and quality technology•
Red Hat is the world's leading open source developer, enabling
it to deliver the highest-quality enterprise deployments.
A stable future•
Every major version provides stable application interfaces and seven
years of product support.
Interoperability•
A product family that enables seamless interoperation of systems from
the laptop, to the datacenter, to the mainframe. Plus, excellent interoper-
ability with existing UNIX and Microsoft®Windows®deployments.
RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX POWERS MANY OF THE
WORLD'S MOST DEMANDING FINANCIAL INSTITUTES
"Our ability to add incremental capacity to the thousands
of servers we maintain daily with the reliability to deal
with the great demands of day-to-day trading is only
capable because of Linux and our work with Red Hat."
 -JoePanl
Managing Director of Enterprise
Technology Services, CME Group
ROAD TO THE CLOUD
Choosing Red Hat as the standard
for applications is the rst step in
moving toward a service-oriented
IT model that includes cloud capa-
bilities. As a host or a guest, Red Hat
Enterprise Linux delivers the core
technologies to deploy both private
and public clouds. The application
management, tuning, and security
environment is consistent whether
the workload is deployed on a physi-
cal system, as a virtual guest on any
of the leading hypervisors, or with a
public cloud provider.
In shared and virtualized environ-
ments, the features and capabilities
of Red Hat Enterprise Linux make it
the ideal host and guest operating
system.
REFERENCE ARCHITECTURE
LIBRARY
The Red Hat Enterprise Linux refer-
ence architecture library includes
comprehensive solutions that help
customers get the most out of their
Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based envi-
ronment. These reference architec-
tures will explain the capabilities of a
given solution and provide a how-
to for implementing best practices.
Provisioning, management, congura-
tion, and performance tuning are also
covered, along with information about
interoperability with other products.
Find the solution that best suits your
environment by visiting:
redhat.com/rhel/resource_center/
reference_architecture.html

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Red Hat, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.
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such as update management, conguration management,
provisioning, and monitoring for all deployments. RHN
Satellite can manage all Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems,
whether they are physical or virtual, from its web-based
interface. RHN Satellite provides efcient management
of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, managing a thousand sys-
tems as easily as one. For third-party management frame-
works, there is extensive support for Web-Based Enterprise
Management (WBEM).
MANAGING RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX
WITH RED HAT NETWORK SATELLITE
In order to obtain the maximum value from their Red Hat
Enterprise Linux subscriptions customers update, cong-
ure, and provision their systems using Red Hat Network
(RHN). RHN Satellite is an easy-to-use systems manage-
ment platform that provides lifecycle management for
small, medium, and large infrastructures. RHN Satellite
provides powerful systems administration capabilities,
FEATURE SUMMARY
FEATURE RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX
ADVANCED PLATFORM
RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX
Number of processor sockets Unlimited 2
Number of supported
active guests Unlimited Up to 4 guests
Architecture support 1x86, x86-64, Itanium x86, x86-64, Itanium, IBM Power, IBM System z
Storage support FC, FCoE, iSCSI, NAS, SATA, SAS, SCSI FC, FCoE, iSCSI, NAS, SATA, SAS, SCSI, DASD
Manageability Includes Red Hat Network Update module with optional bundles for management and provisioning modules
Network support 10M/100M/1G/10G Ethernet, InniBand
Includes server applications Full
Includes client applications Partial
High availability 16 nodes N/A
Globallesystem Cache coherent clustered le system
16 nodes N/A
Virtualization Integrated with KVM and Xen; Can be run on 3rd party virtualization 2
Certications:
Application support Certications are valid for virtualized and non-virtualized environments
Supported guests Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, and 5; Microsoft Windows
1 Technical limits may apply depending on architecture; view matrix: redhat.com/rhel/compare
2 Virtualization support matrix: redhat.com/rhel/server/advanced/virt.html