The latest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, 8.7, has been officially released.

RHEL 8.7 introduces many new security features, including:

• View and manage system-wide encryption policies for consistency and risk mitigation
• Tag and optionally encrypt data in the sosreport generated in the web console
• Install kpatch updates, and improved workflow in the kernel live patching web console
• Download installation media and edit custom firewall services when creating a new virtual machine in the web console

Additionally, this release includes several new RHEL system roles, notably the new Redfish Ansible automation module, which allows customers to use the Redfish hardware management interface to control the system’s power state, manage the order of boot devices, manage Redfish accounts, and virtual media …

Several enhancements have been added in RHEL 8.7 to help simplify the way customers manage security and compliance when deploying new systems, or managing existing infrastructure. Organizations using identity management in RHEL can now leverage the new Ansible tool to configure smart card authentication across their entire topology. Additionally, RHEL systems can now be accessed using identities stored in external sources such as AWS, Azure, Google, etc.

Developer Update

RHEL 8 introduced the concept of application streams – multiple versions of userspace components that are delivered and updated more frequently than core OS packages. Each release adds new application streams, bringing new compilers, runtime languages, databases, and web servers. RHEL 8.7 introduces many improvements, including Mercurial 6.2the latest update to the Mercurial distributed source control management tool.

See the Red Hat blog for other changes.