January 10, 2013, 10:03 AM — Red Hat on Tuesday announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9, a new update to the company's popular open source enterprise platform.
Though the software maintains backwards compatibility with hardware and software platforms across the RHEL 5 life cycle, it also brings several key new features to the table.
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Ready for a rundown? Here are some of the most notable new features in this latest release.
1. Microsoft Hyper-V drivers
Perhaps first and foremost for companies with multivendor environments are new Microsoft Hyper-V drivers included in RHEL 5.9. "This enhances the usability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 for guests in heterogeneous, multivendor virtualized environments and provides improved flexibility and interoperability for enterprises," the company explains.
2. Heightened security
Also part of the new update are tighter security controls and the ability to verify and check the robustness of new passwords. In addition, RHEL 5.9 includes support for the latest government password policy requirements as well as for using Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) mode with dmraid root devices. "FIPS mode now supports RAID device discovery, RAID set activation, and the creation, removal, rebuilding, and displaying of properties," Red Hat says.
3. Wider hardware support
With RHEL 5.9, Red Hat's software gains support for some of the latest CPU, chipset, and device driver enhancements, the company says.
4. Easier subscription management
Meanwhile, Red Hat Subscription Management comes by default in RHEL 5.9, allowing users to manage their RHEL subscriptions more easily.
