May 19, 2011 13:50 GMT  ·  By

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1, the first update for the latest addition to the Red Hat line of Linux, has just been released. It comes six months after the initial release and bundles all of the security patches and security fixes issued for RHEL 6.0 to date.

It also brings several new features and technologies, understandably, mostly aimed at complex data center configurations and virtualization environments.

"With Linux adoption growing across all workloads, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 provides more enterprise reliability, performance and control throughout the datacenter,” Jim Totton, VP and general manager, Platform Business at Red Hat, wrote.

The latest update also adds better support for some hardware configurations and newer devices or standards, such as PCI-E 3.0, that have been launched since November when RHEL 6.0 was released.

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 enhancements provide customers with improvements in system reliability, scalability and performance, coupled with support for upcoming system hardware," Red Hat said in a statement.

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 also delivers patches and security updates, while maintaining application compatibility and OEM/ISV certifications," it added.

One area that saw some improvements is support for advanced storage configurations particularly with FCoE (fiber channel over ethernet), Datacenter Bridging and iSCSI offload.

RHEL 6.1 introduces a technology preview version of Red Hat Enterprise Identity (IPA) services which is based on the open source project FreeIPA, already available in Fedora. Other areas that saw updates were virtualization, file systems support, the scheduler and so on.

The beta for RHEL 6.1 was released a couple of months ago and the build has been in testing since then. It is now ready to roll out.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 is available via the company's Red Hat Networks service which is available to subscribers.