10 tech tips to simplify management and automation

Experience consistent and repeatable management of Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®—across your datacenter and cloud environments—by automating manual tasks, standardizing deployment at scale, and simplifying daily administration.

1 Streamline manual tasks with Red Hat Enterprise Linux system roles

Red Hat Enterprise Linux system roles are a collection of supported roles that provide consistent workflows to streamline the execution of manual tasks. You no longer need to be an expert to manage and configure systems across different Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions. For example, the network system role simplifies configuration across multiple servers with automation.

Learn more about automating manual tasks

2 Automate configurations

You can automate configurations across a population of servers by combining multiple roles, such as timesync, kernel setting, and tlog. Using these roles together lets you set the network time protocol (NTP) server settings, kernel tunables for your system workload, and provide terminal session recording across your system population while maintaining common operating environment configurations.

Try an interactive lab to learn more

3 Control settings for entire populations

Red Hat Enterprise Linux system roles use Red Hat Ansible® Automation Platform inventory files that break systems into subgroups and allow you to apply roles to certain groups of hosts or apply unique settings to each group of hosts. This gives you more control over what settings are applied where. For example, with the kernel settings role, you could apply 1 set of kernel settings for your database servers and a different set of kernel settings for your file servers.

Learn more about applying kernel settings

4 Simplify and accelerate deployments

Included in your Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, Red Hat Enterprise Linux image builder saves time by giving you the ability to to create consistent, gold template images that can be deployed into many runtime environments.

Image builder for Red Hat Enterprise Linux takes care of the details needed for cloud, virtual, and physical platforms so you can deploy on different platforms in less time according to your business needs.

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5 Add third-party packages to optimize workloads

When creating your gold images using Red Hat Enterprise Linux image builder, you are not limited to only Red Hat Enterprise Linux content. Image builder for Red Hat Enterprise Linux lets you install custom or third-party packages at build time with RPM Package Manager (RPM), allowing your images to be optimized for your workload and use case while saving provisioning time.

Learn more about third-party packages

6 Customize images with libguestfs

Customize your gold system images using libguestfs, a set of tools that provides additional modification capabilities to the operating system (OS) images created by Red Hat Enterprise Linux image builder. With libguestfs, you can inspect system images, drop in or adjust configuration files, place application content, and more.

Read more about libguestfs tools

7 Simplify IT administration

Red Hat Enterprise Linux web console simplifies administration and helps you accomplish complex tasks, making administration painless and attainable to new users and advanced experts. Web console lets you view and configure devices across your complex infrastructure, from applying system updates to managing network and storage devices.

Visit this interactive lab about using web console

8 Understand firewall rules

Firewall rules can be challenging to view and understand. Web console graphical interface simplifies firewall rule reviewing and editing so you can understand security effects and manage network access to systems. You can better manage tasks, including opening the port to a database application so that services are accessible through the firewall.

Learn more about firewall security effects

9 Gain performance insights without complicated commands

Using the command-line interface to gain performance insights can be challenging. Red Hat Enterprise Linux web console saves time and simplifies how administrators view performance data with new visual insights into network, central processing unit (CPU), memory, and disk performance—all without writing complicated, time-consuming commands.

Visit this interactive lab for more information

10 Extend the web console

Web console in Red Hat Enterprise Linux is modular and extensible, allowing you to choose what functions should be available on your system. You can extend the web console by adding applications, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux image builder, virtual machine management, container management, session recording, storage, and subscription manager.

Try this interactive lab to learn more