CentOS 6 Now Available!

Steadfast Networks is pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS 6.0 as a supported operating system for our dedicated server and cloud offerings. We will offer continuous support for the CentOS 6 series for the entire 7 year life-cycle typical of Enterprise Linux distributions. All supported control panels: cPanel, InterWorx, DirectAdmin, and Parallels Plesk Panel are immediately and fully supported under CentOS 6. We will continue to support CentOS 5 installations as well for the duration of its life-cycle.

When CentOS 6.0 was released in July 2011, we chose to delay supporting the platform due to the lack of security updates following the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 in May. Internally, we continued to test and evaluate the release, waiting for CentOS 6.1 or some other way to obtain these security updates quickly. CentOS has now deployed a new "yum" package repository called "Continuous Release" which allows CentOS 6.0 users to obtain updates for security and stability from the upcoming 6.1 release. This package set is enabled and included by default in all our installations.

CentOS version 6 is based on the packages of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and includes many benefits over previous editions in the CentOS line:

• The fourth extended filesystem (ext4) is now the default filesystem upon installation. Compared to ext3, this filesystem is faster, more reliable, and scales to much larger volumes up to a maximum potential of 1 exabyte.
• The Linux kernel has been updated to version 2.6.32 which includes many optimizations and improvements that should increase overall performance and stability while adding support for newer hardware and storage technology.
• Virtualization using KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machines) is now supported in addition to Xen. KVM is integrated tightly into the kernel and can deliver better performance and reliability for virtualization.
• Many core packages and utilities have been updated to newer versions, allowing CentOS 6 to better meet dependencies of modern hosting and automation software.

Please see the CentOS 6.0 and RHEL 6.0 release notes for more information on what's new.

CentOS 6 is now the recommended operating system for our dedicated servers and CentOS 6 templates are now available for the Steadfast Cloud Platform.