Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 is Out

Red Hat announced the availability of a new version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) via Red Hat Network to customers with a Red Hat subscription.

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Release Notes note over 150 updates and upgrades, but here are a few key highlights:

Virtualization enhancements: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 supports larger x86-64 systems. The number of supported physical CPUs is increased to 126, while maximum memory is increased to 1TB. Virtual server CPU and memory limits have been increased to 32 and 80GB respectively.

Next-generation hardware enablement: The soon-to-be-released Tylersberg/Nehalem platform is the next-generation of Intel x86-64 hardware. Support for the virtualization and performance features provided by this processor combined with numerous optimizations have already demonstrated exceptional performance over previous processor generations in internal Red Hat testing.

OpenJDK: Red Hat is taking a leadership position in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 by shipping the first productized implementation of OpenJDK.

Disk encryption: Critical for laptop use, but also becoming increasingly important in server deployments (due to concerns with hardware disposal at the end of its lifecycle), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 includes full support for encryption of storage, either at the block level or file system level.

Read more here: Virtualization gets a boost in RHEL 5.3