Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 5.5 - S 2010 Installation guide

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2 OVERVIEW
2 HARDWARE ENHANCEMENTS
3Memory Allocation Optimizations
3Schedular Optimizations
3 PowerEfciency
3Reliability
3 VIRTUALIZATION
4 TOOLS AND UTILITITES ENHANCMENTS
4Interoperability Advancements
4Infrastructure Enhancments
4Development Tool Features
5 CONCLUSION
RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX 5.5
TECHNICAL OVERVIEW
By Tim Burke, Vice President, Engineering, Platform Engineering
Abstract
This paper provides a high-level summary of the primary enhancements
includedinthefthupdatetotheRedHatEnterpriseLinux5platform.

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OVERVIEW
InMarch2010,RedHatreleasedthefthupdatetoitsRedHatEnterpriseLinux5family,RedHat
EnterpriseLinux5.5.ThisreleasebuildsuponthestrongenterprisefoundationoftheRedHatEnterprise
Linux5releasestream,andaugmentsitwithsupportforamajornewgenerationofprocessorhardware.
BycarefullyensuringthatapplicationinterfacesarecompatiblewithearlierRedHatEnterpriseLinux5
releases, customers are able to utilize the new features and newly supported hardware without any disrup-
tiontotheiralready-certiedapplicationstacks.Thisofferscustomersthe“bestofbothworlds”—theability
tocapitalizeonthenewfeaturesandfunctionality,suchastheperformanceandefciencyofleading-edge
hardware, while preserving application stability and compatibility, enhanced interoperability with Microsoft
products,andnewtoolsandutilitiesthatusershaverequested.
ThispaperhighlightsthemajorenhancementsinRedHatEnterpriseLinux5.5,butdoesnotattemptto
beacomprehensiveitemization.Inadditiontothefeaturesdescribed,RedHatEnterpriseLinux5.5also
containsanumberofbugxes,securityenhancements,andminorfeatures.Completedetailsontheupdate
areprovidedintheReleaseNotes.Asmentionedabove,alloftheseenhancementsareimplementedsuch
that they ensure application compatibility with earlier releases, and that system stability and performance
aremaximized.Thepaperwillstartwithadescriptionofnewhardwarefeatures,followedbyadescriptionof
virtualizationenhancements,andwillclosewithahigh-levelsummaryofsomeotherimportantnewfeatures.
HARDWARE ENHANCEMENTS
Unquestionably,themostexcitingenhancementinRedHatEnterpriseLinux5.5isthesupportandperfor-
mance optimization provided for the new hardware systems, and processor chipsets with supporting base-
boardcomponents.Specically,thereleasefeaturessupportfortheIntel®Xeon®processor7500series
(formerly code named Nehalem-EX) and AMD's Opteron™ 6000 Series platform (formerly code named
Magny-Cours),aswellassupportforIBM'snewPOWER7processor.Thesesystemstrulydousherinanew
eraofhighlyscalablecomputing.Toputthisintoperspective,considerthatpreviouslyaservercongura-
tionwith64processorsand1TBofmemorywouldconsistofapowerhungry“bigiron”systemoccupyinga
fullheightrackofequipment.Incontrast,asRedHatEnterpriseLinux5.5shipsinMarch2010,ourhardware
partnersaredeliveringcertiedsystemsina4Uformfactorthatofferthesamelevelofscalability.Even
morestunningisthefactthatindividualbladeserverswillbeabletoscaleto32processorsand512GB.
Thisincreaseincapacityisn'tatypical“speedbump,”rather,it'samajorevolutionarystep.
The hardware is, of course, only half the story because without the companion operating system support
andperformanceoptimization,thehardwarebenetswouldnotberealizedinpracticalcustomerdeploy-
ments.HereareafewexampleshighlightingtheoptimizationsimplementedbyRedHatincooperationwith
itshardwarepartners.AnadvantageofthecollaborativeopensourcedevelopmentmodelisthatRedHat's
operatingsystemexpertscanworkverycloselywiththeirpeersinthehardwarevendorcommunitytobuild
supportforthelatesthardwarefeatures.
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Memory Allocation optimizations• – this latest generation of hardware is categorized as NUMA
(Non-Uniform Memory Architecture), meaning that the time it takes to access regions of memory
differsonaper-CPUbasis,basedonitslocality.RedHatEnterpriseLinux5.5incorporatesasubstantial
number of topology awareness enhancements to ensure that the fastest memory regions are allocated
perprocess.
Scheduler optimizations• –identifythemostefcientCPUonwhichtorunaprocess.Thisisacomplex
tradeoffthatbalancesthemostefcientreuseofprocessorcacheswitheffectiveworkloaddistribution
acrossalargepoolofCPUsbasedontopologyawareness.
Powerefciency• – system optimizations automatically run processes on the smallest possible subset
ofCPUs,therebyallowingunusedCPUstoenterlowerpowerstates.
Reliability• – enhancements that provide mechanisms to more precisely pinpoint system faults, trap
errors,createhighlyavailablecongurations,andtakecorrectiveactions.Suchcapabilitieswere
previouslytheexclusivepurviewofexotichighendsystems–andarenowforthersttimeavailable
oncommoditysystems.
VIRTUALIZATION
From a practical perspective, many current enterprise workloads are not able to fully utilize large scale
systemswith64processorsand1TBofmemory.EnterRedHat'svirtualizationcapabilities:thestandalone
RedHatEnterpriseVirtualizationhypervisorandmanagementstation,andtheintegratedvirtualization
providedbyRedHatEnterpriseLinux.Bothoftheseproductsprovideworkloadconsolidationcapabili-
tiesthatallowthenewhardwaresystemstoreallyshine.AndRedHatEnterpriseLinux5.5providesa
numberofvirtualizationenhancementsandoptimizations.Forexample,acustomertestimonialforthe
newNehalem-EXsystemrunningRedHatEnterpriseLinux5.5describeshowamassivelabof10,000
systemswillbeconsolidatingdownto256systems.
ThemajorfocusofvirtualizationoptimizationinRedHatEnterpriseLinux5.5involvesI/Operformance
enhancements—notablyinthenetworkanddiskstacks.ThereareavarietyofI/Ooptimizationsthatenable
virtual guests to more directly access the device hardware, rather than incurring the overhead of indirect
accessthroughthehypervisor.ThisisaccomplishedbyutilizinghardwarefeaturessuchasSR-IOV,VT-D,
andPCI-passthrough.AsatestamenttotheeffectivenessoftheI/Ooptimizations,RedHatEnterpriseLinux
istheonlyoperatingsystemcapableofsaturatinga10GigEnetworkadapterfromavirtualguest.Another
exampleofI/O-andvirtualization-relatedoptimizationis“hugepage”support,whichallowsvirtualguests
toefcientlyallocateanduselargememorypools—atypicalusecasefordatabaseworkloads.
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ThesescalabilityandI/OenhancementssignicantlyreducethevirtualizationoverheadforI/Oboundwork-
loads,typicallytojustafewpercent.Thisopensthedoorforvirtualizationtobeapracticaldeployment
modelforawholenewclassofapplicationworkloads—includingdatabase,leserving,andhightransaction
ratemessagingmiddleware.Theseworkloadscannowbenetfromtheconsolidationefciencyandex-
ibilitythatvirtualizationoffers.
RedHatEnterpriseLinux5.5isanidealvirtualizationfoundationthatcanenablehundredsofvirtualized
guests,LinuxandWindows,insameenvironment,tobeconsolidatedonasinglecommodityhostsystem.
Andnotjustwimpyguestseither,butgueststhatcanbeconguredwith32processorsand512GBof
memory, and deliver performance that is essentially identical to non-virtualized environments, even with
I/Oboundapplications.
TOOLS AND UTILITIES ENHANCEMENTS
InadditiontothehardwareandvirtualizationfeaturesincludedinRedHatEnterpriseLinux5.5,there
arealsoalargevarietyofxesandenhancementstomanyoftheotheroperatingsystemcomponents.
Thissectionisabriefsummaryofthehighlights.
Interoperability advancements•
OpenOfce• –hasbeenupdatedtoversion3.1,providingsupportfortheMicrosoftOfce2007
andOOXMLformats.
Samba• –versionthreeofthisleandprintsharingsubsystemhasbeenenhancedforWindows
Server2008R2interoperability.
Infrastructure enhancements•
Freeradius• –updatedtoversion2.1providing802.1certicatesupport
PostgreSQL• –updatedtoversion8.4affordingperformanceenhancements
LVM• –theLogicalVolumeManagementstoragesuitehasbeenaugmentedtoprovidehotsparing
formirrorjournals,enablingautomaticreplacementorremovaloffailedloggingdevices.
Kernel tracepoints• –havebeenaddedinthenetworkandsignalsubsystems.Theseprovide
pre-congureddiagnosispointsthathavebeenintegratedwiththeSystemTaptracingtool.
Development tool features•
SystemTap• –prolingandtracingutilityhasbeenaugmentedtobettersupportC++application
probing.Anunprivilegedmodethatpermitsusebynon-rootusershasalsobeenadded.
GDB• –debuggerhasbeenenhancedforbetterC++applicationmonitoringaswellasindependent
threaddebugging.
Valgrind• –memorytrackingtoolsetbenetsfromperformancespeedupsandenhanceddetection
ofraceconditionsandmemoryleaks.
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CONCLUSION
RedHatEnterpriseLinux5.5continuestheprogressionoftheRedHatEnterpriseLinux5familybyproviding
industry-leading enablement for the ground-breaking new hardware systems and processor chipsets with
theirsupportingbaseboardcomponents.
RedHatEnterpriseLinuxcustomerswillbeabletodeployRedHatEnterpriseLinux5.5onthelatestgenera-
tionofhardware,fullyoptimized,ontherstdayofsystemavailabilityinMarch2010.Completeapplica-
tioncompatibilityacrossallRedHatEnterpriseLinux5updatesmeansthatcustomerscantakeadvantage
ofthesignicantperformanceandscalabilityenhancementsprovidedin5.5withouthavingtorebuildand
re-certifytheirapplicationstack—andsoharnessthetruevalueoftheRedHatEnterpriseLinuxecosystem.
CustomerscansecurelydeployRedHatEnterpriseLinux5withtheknowledgethatthemoststringentlevels
ofapplicationcompatibilityandstabilityaresafeguardedwiththeircertiedsolutionstacks.
IfyouwouldlikemoreinformationaboutRedHat,visit:www.redhat.com, or call us at 1-888-REDHAT1.
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