Oracle announced the general availability of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 for Oracle Linux.
Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 includes performance and scalability enhancements that allowed Oracle to achieve record database benchmark results(1,2).
Based on the 3.0.16 mainline kernel, Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 also includes improved memory and resource management, and is optimized to be deployed as a virtual guest.
The Btrfs file system is now production-ready with this release. Standard in Oracle Linux, Btrfs supports data stores of up to 16 exabyte, is optimized for solid state disks, is easy to administer, and includes built-in data integrity.
In addition, Oracle is offering technology previews of the very popular dynamic tracing mechanism, DTrace, and a powerful instance isolation capability, Linux Containers, to Oracle Linux support subscribers.
Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 is included with Oracle Linux 5 and 6.
Record-Setting Linux Performance Plus the Most Modern Feature Set
Highlights of Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 (R2) include :
- Performance Improvements: to the scheduler, memory management, file system layer and networking stack, all lend to performance advantages on any size system.
- Performance Benchmarks: Oracle Linux with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R2 has recently delivered two record breaking TPC-C benchmark results, on a small and a large system (1,2).
- Btrfs: the “next generation file system” for Linux. With btrfs included, Oracle Linux can support large files and file systems, snapshots and checksums for data and meta-data, provides integrated RAID and volume management, and simplifies administration.
- Transparent Hugepages: automatically organizes memory in larger units to reduce memory management overhead and improve stability for memory-intensive workloads.
- Optimized for deployment as a virtual guest: the same Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R2 kernel image, with full support for the Xen hypervisor included, can be used to run both in hardware virtualized and paravirtualized modes.
- Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R2 also includes the following technology previews:
- Built-in virtualization: Linux Containers allow multiple isolated Linux instances (containers) to run on the same host. Processes running in containers can have their own private view of the operating system, file system structure and network interfaces, and their use of server resources can be tightly controlled.
- DTrace: provides a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework that is designed to quickly identify the root cause of system performance problems without rebooting the kernel and recompiling—or even restarting—applications.
- Running Oracle Linux with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R2 fully maintains existing userspace application compatibility and certification without any modification.
- Oracle Linux with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel is extensively tested with the most demanding workloads, both on third-party servers and Oracle’s, including Engineered Systems such as Oracle Exadata Database Machine, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine and Oracle Big Data Appliance – to help ensure superior performance and reliability.
- With Oracle Linux Premier Support, customers can implement zero downtime kernel updates for Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R2 with Ksplice technology.
- Oracle Linux is open source with a public git source code repository and compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
