RHEL 6 vs RHEL 7 Difference Between Previous and Newer Version

 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is an major / drastic change to enterprise. To serve / meet today’s business critical application performance RHEL 7 is the best Operating system to use, very light weight and container based. In this article we are going to see RHEL 6 vs RHEL 7 Difference Between Previous and Newer Version. RHEL 7 vs RHEL 6.

Complete RHEL 7 Certification Guide

What’s Changed in RHEL 7 Administration side

  • System Boot time is optimized to boot faster
  • Anaconda Installer completely redesigned
  • Grub boot loader version changed from 0.97 to Grub 2
  • No More SysV Initd system changed to Systemd system
  • Network Interface names changed from ethx to ensxxx
  • Introduced new concept of creating multiple Network profiles to activate based on network you connected (Ex. Home, Office and Other)
  • Default Database is changed from MySQL to MariaDB
  • No More editing of Network configuration file for assigning IP address and creating Teaming interfaces use nmcli utility
  • Ifconfig and route commands are deprecated in RHEL 7, Replaced with ip command
  • GNOME Version 2 replaced with GNOME 3 default Desktop
  • System User UID range changed from 0-449 to 0-999
  • Locate command is changed to mlocate
  • Cluster Resource Manager changed from RGManager to Pacemaker and all CMAN features merged into Corosync
  • Netstat command replaced with ss command
  • NTP Daemon replaced with chronyd faster way to sync time RHEL 6 vs RHEL 7
  • Directories /bin, /sbin, /lib and /lib64 moved under /usr directory

RHEL 6 vs RHEL 7 Difference

Feature Name RHEL 6 RHEL 7
Default File System Ext4 XFS
Kernel Version 2.6.xx 3.10.xx
Release Name Santiago Maipo
Gnome Version GNOME 2 GNOME 3.8
KDE Version KDE 4.1 KDE 4.6
Release Date Wednesday, November 10, 2010 Tuesday, June 10, 2014
NFS Version NFS 4 NFS 4.1. NFS V2 is deprecated in RHEL 7
Samba Version SMB 3.6 SMB 4.4
Default Database MySQL MariaDB
Cluster Resource Manager Rgmanager Pacemaker
Network Interface Grouping Bonding can be done as Active-Backup, XOR, IEEE and Load Balancing  Team Driver will support multiple types of Teaming methods called Active-Backup, Load-balancing and Broadcast
KDUMP Kdump does’t support with large RAM Size  RHEL 7 can be supported up to 3TB
Boot Loader Grub 0.97
/boot/grub/grub.cfg
Grub 2
/boot/grub2/grub.conf

File System Check

e2fsck
-Inode check. Block and size check
–Directory Structure check
-Directory Link Check
-reference count check
-Group Summary Check 
 xfs_replair
– Inode blockmap checks
-node allocation map checks
-Inode size check
-Directory check
-Path Name check
-Link count check
-Freemap check
-Super block check
Process ID Initd  Process ID 1  Systemd Process ID 1
Port Security Iptables by default service port is enabled when service is switched on.  Firewalld instead of iptables. Iptables support with RHEL 7, but we can’t use both of them at the same time. Firewall blocks ports by default you have to enable explicitly.
Boot Time 40 Sec 20 Sec
File System Size EXT4 16TB with XFS 100TB XFS 500TB with EXT4 16TB
Processor Architecture 32Bit and 64Bit Only 64Bit.
Network Configuration Tool setup nmtui
Host name Config File /etc/sysconfig/network /etc/hostname No need to edit hostname file to write permanent hostname simply use hostnamectl command
Interface Name eth0 ens33xxx

Managing Services

service sshd start
service sshd restart
chkconfig sshd on
systemctl start sshd.service
systemctl restart sshd.service
systemctl enable sshd.service
System Logs /var/log/ /var/log
journalctl
Run Levels runlevel0 – Power Off
runlevel1 – Single User Mode
runlevel2 – Multi User without Networking
runlevel3 – Multi User CLI
runlevel4 – Not USed
runlevel5 – GUI Mode
runlevel6 – Restart
There is no run levels in RHEL 7. Run levels are called as targets
Poweroff.target
rescue.target
multi-user.target
graphical.target
reboot.target
UID Information Normal User UID will start from 500 to 65534
System Users UID will start from 1 to 499
Normal User UID start from 1000 – 65534
System Users UID will start from 1 to 999 because Services are increased compare to RHEL 6
By Pass Root Password Prompt append 1 or s or init=/bin/bash to Kernel command line Append rd.break or init=/bin/bash to kernel command line
Rebooting and Poweroff poweroff – init 0
reboot – init 6
systemctl poweroff
systemctl reboot
YUM Commands yum groupinstall
yum groupinfo
yum group install
yum group info

Newly Introduced Features in RHEL 7

  1. No More 32-bit installation packages
  2. Docker is an Open Source Project, it helps to deploy applications inside Linux containers.

Thanks for the Read, Please Provide your valuable feedback on the same. RHEL 6 vs RHEL 7

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Conclusion: There are lot many changes out of all few are listed above. For complete and detailed information please read Red Hat enterprise Linux 7 release notes. Download this Complete Changes list

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Thanks for your wonderful Support and Encouragement

Ravi Kumar Ankam

My Name is ARK. Expert in grasping any new technology, Interested in Sharing the knowledge. Learn more & Earn More

19 Responses

  1. rajesh says:

    Hi
    I thing there is some features mentioned in rhel6 instead of rhel7…. boot time, filesystem size and processor architecture

  2. Jeevan says:

    Nice ark

  3. blank OMS says:

    This shows awesome difference 🙂 I appreciate your efforts.

  4. blank siva says:

    nice ravi

  5. blank Raghu says:

    Nice but I want to know how to extract and tar

  6. blank Hitender Pal Singh says:

    seems mistakenly KDE Version, Default Database & Bootloader has been swapped & it needs to be corrected.

  7. blank Chetan says:

    In the above table looks like the Default DB name has got interchanged

    Default Database MariaDB MySQL

  8. blank joshua says:

    good job

  9. blank karthikeyan says:

    Boot Loader
    Grub 2 /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
    Grub 0.97 /boot/grub/grub.conf

    interchange the above mentioned ……..you are wrongly mentioned

  10. blank sangeethkumar says:

    its very useful to me. thanks ark

  11. blank Sachin Patil says:

    Nice Information ARK….it will be very useful.

  12. blank Mukesh says:

    You job is awesome

  13. blank prafulla says:

    Nice. This is very useful for us.

  14. blank ruby singh says:

    really it’s very useful for us and thank’s a lot

  15. blank nikunj says:

    ak no hai bhai

  16. blank manoj singh says:

    very good knowledge about 6rhel vs 7rhel

  17. blank manoj singh says:

    very good knowledge about 6rhel vs 7rhel

  18. blank Surinder Sangral says:

    Great

  19. blank Ravinder Dangi says:

    There is a spelling mistake in Filesystem check ” xfs_replair”…it will be xfs_repair

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