Cloud computing has become the newest trend in recent years that has changed the business world as we know it, bringing incredible levels of flexibility and scalability. As clouds offer data computing resources available on demand, they are at the center of innovation and digitalization across almost all industries.

As an open-source solutions company, Red Hat Server has been at the forefront in enabling organizations to embrace Cloud Computing with a range of technologies and platforms suited for Cloud environments.

This blog post will discuss 11 key updates Red Hat has made and released to deliver more functionality and extensibility in the cloud.

1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Improving Life Cycle Management

Red Hat server spearheaded a significant enhancement to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle, managing the platform it offers as a foundation for numerous cloud solutions. These updates assist customers in maintaining and controlling OS updates, rollbacks, and version transitions using automated processes. More control over RH Enterprise Linux versions that are running cloud workloads allows DevOps to maintain steady uptime and availability.

2. On-Demand Patching of Live Kernel for Mainline Critical Exploitable Vulnerabilities

One of the biggest additions to RHEL is the incredibly useful feature of applying critical kernel security updates without a reboot or restarting running instances. Unlike other similar updates where systems are shut down as holes are fixed, constant updates such as Spectre and Meltdown allow organizations to close security loopholes without disruption, especially for cloud-based production workloads that cannot afford extended downtimes.

• The impact of this innovation extends beyond convenience.
• Enables organizations to maintain continuous uptime for mission-critical cloud-based workloads.
• Eliminates the need for reboots.
• RHEL empowers businesses to close security loopholes swiftly and seamlessly, mitigating risks associated with unpatched vulnerabilities.
• Notable examples of constant updates that benefit from this feature include Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities.
• The ability to apply patches without disruption is crucial for safeguarding critical infrastructure and sensitive data.

3. Improvement of Hybrid Cloud Management by Ansible

Red Hat Server Automation now offers new features in managing and automating hybrid and multi-cloud environments. By utilizing Ansible, IT teams can automate the implementation, allocation, and monitoring of resources in public or private cloud environments, as well as on virtual machines, containers, networks, storage, and security frameworks. Adopting DevOps principles is indeed made easier by Ansible when it comes to cloud workloads.

4. Advancements in Virtualization for Modern Workloads

Red Hat Virtualization 4.3 has enhanced the ability to address and manage larger VM memory capacity improvements in live migrated VMs and high-speed RHEL guest access via kernel bypass. These features provide memory-bound and low-latency workloads within the cloud setting.

5. Improvements in Terms of Scalability and Interoperability

The latest version of Red Hat Server, an Infrastructure-as-a-Service solution for creating private and hybrid clouds, offers many developments. When it comes to features, OpenStack Platform 16 is expected to feature enhanced horizontal scalability for handling cloud workloads, extended API interfaces for better integration with public cloud environments, and enhanced integration with automation tools like Ansible to simplify cloud management.

6. Organization Workload Support for Red Hat Openshift

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, easily the market’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform, has also taken significant strides forward with its enterprise feature support. OpenShift 4 broadened its workload reach beyond containers to VMs, cloud-native serverless, functions, and specialized hardware and enables IT teams to increasingly run multiple cloud-native workloads on a standardized OpenShift platform.

7. Better Protection from Threats, Risk and Fraud

Security and compliance are two things that are critical considerations for almost all enterprises when considering cloud solutions. These capabilities are critical to an organization’s overall cloud investment, and cloud computing has dedicated significant resources to enhancing them throughout its cloud offerings. OpenShift extends enhanced security and isolation features, RHEL introduces new FIPS support, and Ansible surpasses over 200 security improvements, Red Hat’s cloud platforms ensure that confidential cloud workloads are protected.

8. Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Sustainable Simplification of Edge Computing

When the requirements of the application are aligned with the edge computing paradigm, modernization has become a much easier task with cloud computing Enterprise Linux. Designed specifically for the performance, space, and networking constraints of edge use cases such as edge stores, manufacturing floors, and telecom shelters, the newest version of RHEL for Edge offers an efficient OS at the edge to host and manage edge workloads across multiple remote locations.

9. Better Integration Concerning Mixed Hybrid Layouts

One of the core themes in Red Hat’s latest releases is enhanced integration, versatility, and consistent management across various scales, from public cloud instances to private data centers or distant edge locations. The customer is now able to monitor Red Hat Linux guest virtual machines on Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure through cloud computing virtualization management. These hybrid capabilities help minimize the complexities of cloud computing.

10. Hyperscaler Converged Infrastructure 

Given that modern applications are constructed with containers in mind and rely on them for deployment and execution, modern cloud-native applications require modern cloud-native Native Storage designed with portability in mind. OpenShift Container Storage 4 provides integrated container-native storage for applications and infrastructure services on Kubernetes.  This provides better support for data persistence and concurrent access, along with dynamic storage provisioning.

11. Extensive ISV Ecosystem And Integration With Cloud Partners

Red Hat Server is also constantly building out its ecosystem of ISV partners with compatible solutions for its cloud platforms. Overall, these simple efforts, such as Red Hat OpenStack Platform 16 certification for Microsoft SQL Server 2019, provide customers with additional choices for hosting commercial software products in Red Hat’s hybrid cloud stack. Such measures also extend the abstractions possible with customer infrastructure when deepening cloud provider partnerships allows their broader deployment.

Final Thoughts

Based on the examples of the 11 updates discussed in this article, it becomes clear that Red Hat keeps on bringing some of the most influential changes in the cloud industry that would help enterprises get the most out of their hybrid cloud solution. The extension of Red Hat’s life cycle management, security, scalability, automation, and ability to work across different platforms in the latest kinds of releases opens the possibilities for organizations to upgrade operational flexibility and to start the real advance to digital transformation based on the hybrid cloud.