Red Hat launches Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host

Red Hat has launched Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host, an operating system optimized for running the next generation of applications with Linux containers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host provides all of the components necessary to easily package and run applications written for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7 as containers.

As monolithic stacks give way to applications comprised of microservices, a container-based architecture can help enterprises to more fully realize the benefits of this more nimble, composable approach. Based on the world's leading enterprise Linux platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host enables enterprises to embrace a container-based architecture, reaping the benefits of development and deployment flexibility and simplified maintenance, without sacrificing performance, stability, security, or the value of Red Hat's vast certified ecosystem.

An application architecture based on Linux containers requires not only the tools to build and run containers, but also an underlying foundation that is secure, reliable, enterprise-grade, with an established lifecycle designed to meet the ongoing requirements of the enterprise over the long term. These requirements include mitigation of security concerns, ongoing product enhancements, proactive diagnostics, and access to support. Red Hat is committed to offering enterprises a complete and integrated container-based infrastructure solution, combining container-based application packaging with robust, optimized infrastructure that will enable easy movement of Red Hat Enterprise Linux-certified applications across bare metal systems, virtual machines and private and public clouds - all of this with the product and security lifecycle that enterprise customers require. The release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host delivers on Red Hat's intent to make Linux containers a stable and reliable component of enterprise IT across the open hybrid cloud.

The Enterprise-Ready Container Host

Specifically designed to run Linux containers, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host delivers only the operating system components required to run a containerized application, reducing overhead and simplifying maintenance. Because Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host is built from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, it inherits Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7's stability and maturity, as well as its vast ecosystem of certified hardware partners.

To address container security and lifecycle concerns, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host offers automated security updates on-demand, bringing enterprise customers the support and lifecycle benefits that come with Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a reduced image size. From Heartbleed and Shellshock to Ghost and beyond, Red Hat customers receive security notifications and product updates as they are available and also have access to security tools that address container reliability and security. This is a benefit Red Hat uniquely brings to container deployments for enterprise customers.

For building and maintaining container infrastructure, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host provides many benefits, including:

* Atomic updating and rollback through an image-like update mechanism. An atomic update can be downloaded and deployed in a single step, while the previous version is retained, allowing for easy atomic rollback, if necessary.

* Container images in docker format can be deployed and run as application containers.

* Certification and support, along with a chain of trust for containers built using platform images provided by Red Hat, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7 and certified containers from Red Hat's independent software vendor (ISV) partners.

* Container orchestration at scale through Kubernetes, creating large-scale business applications from discrete services deployed in containers across clusters of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host.

* Stronger security by default through SELinux, cgroups and kernel namespaces, isolating each container in a multi-container environment.

* Support for super-privileged containers enables host management applications to access the host and other containers in a secure manner. This specialized container provides users with the means to install third party software and the atomic command inherent to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host makes creating and running super privileged containers dramatically easier.

* Application portability across the open hybrid cloud by leveraging Red Hat's vast certified ecosystem, enabling secure, stable container deployments on physical hardware, on certified hypervisors including Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V, and on certified public cloud services like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.