Red Hat has announced the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3, the latest version of their flagship operating system. The new release features improvements across the board, from performance to security.

Much of the focus is on the data center networking experience, with new support for lightweight tunnels that enable more secure, scalable, and efficient guest instances. Additionally, enhancements to the bulk packet memory allocator improve performance for both 40GB and 100GB networking interfaces.

High-transaction applications like databases, event-processing systems, and virtual machines need a high input/​output (IO) rate and low latency. RHEL 7.3 improves performance by adding support for high speed, low latency non-volatile memory devices. In addition, version 7.3 makes performance-sensitive Parallel NFS (pNFS) clusters easier to manage with support for the Block SCSI and Flex Files layout format.

RHEL 7.3 also introduces new capabilities around Linux containers and the Internet of Things (IoT). Two key features aimed at IoT include support for communication with Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) and kernel support for the Controller Area Network bus (CANbus) protocol used in automobiles and high-end industrial controllers.

RHEL 7.3 offers better support for Linux containers through enhanced management tools and an updated container runtime (docker engine). RHEL 7.3 also comes with new container signing capability as a Technology Preview.