Open-source software giant Red Hat Inc. is positioning its flagship operating system as the basis for multiple types of computing workloads at the edge of the network.

The company said today the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 is meant to serve as the foundation of its “Red Hat Edge initiative,” which aims to deliver the capabilities of its open hybrid cloud portfolio of software and services to applications operating at the edge.

Edge computing refers to the idea of bringing computation and data storage closer to devices that operate at the “edge” of the network. These could be, for instance, sensors on factory floors, cameras in retail stores and vehicles that are part of a much wider fleet. Traditionally, these devices and sensors would send the data they generate back to a cloud-based data center to be processed, which is fine if just one device is involved, but when you have multiple devices all transmitting information at the same time, latency becomes a big issue, as does the cost of the bandwidth being used.

Processing data at the edge eliminates both the latency and bandwidth problems and enables faster access to insights and lower costs, but doing so demands entirely new capabilities that Red Hat is hoping to provide with its RHEL 8.4 release.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is one of the world’s most popular operating systems for enterprise computer servers and cloud deployments, and today’s release adds new Linux container, deployment and management capabilities that have been scaled down for edge computing.

Announced at the virtual Red Hat Summit today, RHEL 8.4 encompasses not only the basic operating system, but also “edge-ready” versions of the company’s full technology stack, including the Red Hat OpenShift platform that’s used to build container-based applications that run on Kubernetes. With today’s release, Red Hat OpenShift now supports three-node clusters and remote worker nodes, Red Hat said, which makes it possible to deploy the service in space- and resource-constrained locations.

The release also integrates Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, which is used to extend centralized controls from the data center to the furthest flung edge locations, the company said. Another important ingredient is the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, which helps automate the maintenance of software that runs on edge devices. Red Hat Integration is used to connect apps and data across edge locations and cloud-based data centers, while Red Hat Data Services helps with storing, analyzing and distributing said data across various edge locations and data centers.

“The open hybrid cloud isn’t limited to an enterprise datacenter or public cloud environments; it includes the remote servers, advanced machinery and other devices that exist on the far reaches of the enterprise network,” said Stefanie Chiras, senior vice president and general manager of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Business Unit. “Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as the backbone for the Red Hat Edge initiative, provides a consistent, edge-native and intelligent platform to meet the dynamic demands of the hybrid cloud, from bare-metal servers to the cloud to the edge.”

There are plenty of other edge-worthy updates in RHEL 8.4 too. For example, the Podman container engine gets new capabilities that enable automatic updates of containers that host the components of modern apps no matter where they’re located, be it in the data center, in the cloud or at the edge. That should help to ensure container workloads can run properly and more securely at any location, Red Hat said.

Image Builder gets more features too. It’s used to create customized operating system images for different use cases, and in the case of edge computing it now supports the creation of installation media that’s tailored to run on bare metal servers. That way, information technology teams can maintain a common foundation across disconnected edge environments.

Meanwhile, the Red Hat Universal Base Image that enables containers to be created that retain RHEL’s enhanced security and efficiency traits, is now available as a lightweight micro image, which means it can be used to build standardized, cloud-native applications without the overhead of an entire kernel deployment, Red Hat said.

More than just the edge

The edge is far from being the only focus of today’s release. RHEL is, after all, a hybrid cloud platform, and Red Hat stressed that it’s as keen as ever to help its customers further their cloud strategies. To that end RHEL 8.4 gets a more holistic view of subscription deployment and reporting through Red Hat Subscriptions, as well as expanded support for Red Hat Cloud Access, a program that enables customers to run eligible Red Hat product subscriptions on certified public cloud platforms.

The release also enables more simplified and automated system configuration and management via the Tracer utility and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Web Console updates, providing more intelligent guidance around system patching and updates to help identify downtime, the company said.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE that enterprise executives need to pay attention when an update to a key Linux distribution such as Red Hat’s comes along.

“It’s nice to see that the first major release of RHEL since Red Hat became a part of IBM is a very strong one, with the key feature being better edge support,” Mueller said. “It also adds more support for hybrid clouds and better scalability all round.”

There are improvements on the security side too, the most notable being a massive upgrade for the Red Hat Insights platform. Red Hat Insights is a visibility tool that provides continuous analysis of Red Hat systems and the apps that run on them, aiming to identify any threats to security, performance and stability in real-time, in on-premises, cloud, virtual, container and edge deployments.

The big news with this is that Red Hat Insights now works with Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Ansible Automation. With Insights for Red Hat OpenShift, enterprises can more proactively identify, prioritize and resolve potential issues and manage costs across multicluster environments, the company said. And with Insights for Ansible Automation Platform, teams will be able to better understand their automation usage across their business and establish common approaches and practices to automation workflows.

International Data Corp. analyst Stephen Elliot said customers should appreciate the extended capabilities of Red Hat Insights because teams generally prefer to have a consistent view of operations that cross environments. So, for example, most prefer a monitoring solution that appears the same for infrastructure, applications and logs, he said.

“This consistency helps users make meaningful comparisons between environments such as applications performance on premises versus performance in the cloud,” Elliot said. “Many IT executives aspire to include these data sources into a single platform, applying analytics to the data set.”

Mueller agreed that a uniform user interface is key for maintaining visibility across entire organizations and said that’s what Red Hat is addressing with the new Insights offering. “This new offering go a long way toward helping enterprises manage, operate and secure their Red Hat workloads,” he said.

Red Hat said the RHEL 8.4 release will be made generally available in the “coming weeks.”