On May 18th 2021 Red Hat released RHEL 8.4 the fourth service pack for their leading enterprise version. This is a long term support version and therefore a good starting point for new projects as well as an upgrade target for exiting installations.
The kernel level for RHEL 8.4 is kernel-4.18.0-305.el8. It’s the second release to support KVM via the Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM Z & LinuxONE with Comprehensive Add-Ons.
As this is the top Linux version from Red Hat, this release contains many bug fixes but also many features.
Here are a few highlights of the new functions:
- Graphical installer for KVM on Z
- support for a first set of eBPF (Extended Berkeley Packet Filter) functions
- slab cache merging has been disabled in the kernel. If this is causing any trouble (stability or performance), you can reenable it by adding the kernel parameter slub_merge
- New modules: Python 3.9, Redis 6, PostrgrSQL 13, MariaDB 10.5 and more
- gcc toolset 10 update and many other glibc enhancements
Here is my usual summary of links to more information:
- press release
- Complete RHEL 8 documentation
- IBM documentation
- RHEL limits
- KVM limits
- RHEL lifecycle with the end date for the Extended Update Service (EUS)
- RHEL 8 Application Streams Life Cycle
- RHEL 8 package list (will be updated always to the latest service pack)