Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.8 brings Libreswan VPN protocol implementation

Red Hat has released RHEL 6.8, which is aimed at enhancing security through the allnew Libreswan VPN implementation.

“RHEL 6.8 continues to demonstrate Red Hat’s commitment to our customers’ many mission-critical deployments by delivering a proven foundation for the applications and systems that power the modern enterprise,” said Jim Totton, vice president and general manager, platform business unit, Red Hat, in a statement.

Replacing the existing Openswan, the latest RHEL version comes with Libreswan offering the most recent advances in VPN security. The previous identity management client code (SSSD) has also received new capabilities to deliver faster client-side performance and simpler management. There is simplified support for Adcli, and SSSD now supports user authentication via smart cards for both system login and related functions.

Apart from the major new additions, system archiving tool Relax-and-Recover has been included in RHEL 6.8 to streamline systems administration. This new tool offers sys admins the capability to create local backups in an ISO format. Notably, the backup files can be centrally archived and replicated remotely to enable simplified disaster recovery operations.

The new RHEL comes preloaded with an enhanced Yum tool to simplify the addition of packages. It adds an intelligence layer to the process of locating packages.

Red Hat has added the Dmstats program to display and manage I/O statistics for userdefined regions using the device-mapper driver. Besides, there is expanded XFS filesystem support to let you use the scalable file system add-on for adding up to 300TB of data.

“With enhancements to security features and management, RHEL 6.8 remains a solid, proven base for modern enterprise IT operations,” Totton added.