Our Notion Of High Performance and Reliable Computing Environment

With the Linux's entrance into enterprise applications in 2002, enterprise and e-government customers begin to impose more strict requirements on Linux operating system, especially in its performance and reliability. Red Flag Server 4.0 reflects our new notion of these two factors. To improve the performance of products, Red Flag has applied following optimization technologies.

note: features listed above are only available in Red Flag Advanced Server 4.0 and DC Server 4.0

Manageability

To increase the manageability of Linux operating system and lower the cost of system management, this is one of major improvements of Red Flag Server 4.0 Series. With the Linux's entrance into enterprise, more and more system administrators are switching from Unix and Windows to Linux platform. Tools are made for both Unix experts and Windows system administrators and entry-level technicians, the former can get things done quickly using traditional methods, while the latter can also get started easily, this is the main goal of Red Flag Server 4 Series.

New Network Device Configuration Tool: GUI-based network device configuration tool shows all configuration options in an easy-to-find fashion, it also supports configuration of multiple network cards.

Hardware Management: Red Flag Server 4.0 support automatic hardware configuration, if a new piece of hardware is plugged in, the system will scan and install the driver automatically, for most hardware, it is not necessary to find corresponding drivers by hand.

Disk Storage Management: Red Flag Server 4.0 support LVM (Logical Volume Management), which increase the scalability and management efficiency of disk subsystem. Sysadm can define up to 2TB of storage, and adjust the volume size from 8-32M, its manageability is much better than the traditional partition method. Using EVMS enterprise volume management tool, sysadm can manage disk  subsystem more efficiently under graphical interface.

New GUI-based Server Management Tools: Red Flag Server 4.0 provides system management and network service configuration tools, which cover major server administration tasks. It aims to eliminate  three differences, that is, differences between hand-editing configuration files and tool-based configuration; the difference between Windows administration and Linux administration; and the difference between local administration and remote administration. By using these management tools, both Unix sysadm and Windows sysadm are able to manage Red Flag Linux servers easily and efficiently, and management cost can also be lowered.

Unique Security Enhancement Features

Red Flag Server 4 Series improve greatly in manageability, availability, reliability and scalability, and become the new generation of enterprise network server platform. To meet the needs of information security area, Red Flag also has released Red Flag Advanced Server 4.0 SE, which is based on all the new improvements of the Server 4 Series, with 6 extra security enhancement features:

User-transparent Fine Grind Encrypted Filesystem：Using encrypted file system, it is possible to ensure the safety and privacy of data. Even if the computer is stolen, one can not get the encrypted data without the key.  Only with the key made by non-symmetric encryption algorithm can user access the encrypted files, directories and disk partitions. Encrypted filesystem is transparent to user operations, and only the one who encrypts the file can decrypt it.

ACL-based Discretionary Access Control: Discretionary access control means user can determine the file access attributes of his files himself. For example, user can let user A read one of his file, while make user B be able to write this file, and prevent other users from accessing it. Thus, ACL-based discretionary access control offers finer grind access control compared with traditional Linux operation system file access management, it is beneficial for security settings of multi-user system.

Security Domain Confinement: Security domain confinement is based on the industrial leading technology of RBAC (Role-based Access Control), which is enforced by kernel as a security mechanism. It provides security policy protection for applications, which means only the programs in the same security domain are able to access the sensitive and important resources in the domain, such as DNS records or Web server pages. Security domain confinement is especially useful to keep the integrity of important system resources and protect system from attacks like stack overflow. It is easy to deploy the domain policies by using the Red Flag Security Domain Administration Tool,

Kernel Module Restriction: The operating system kernel is the soul of system. Normally user space programs will not interfere with kernel, it is because kernel has some protecting mechanism to isolate kernel-space from user-space. However, Linux kernel provides a special feature called "kernel module", which makes it easier to enhance kernel functionalities, this feature is especially useful for device drivers, which are usually made as kernel modules to be loaded into kernel dynamically. Though it makes Linux kernel more powerful and flexible, if malicious code exists in kernel module, it may introduce severe security problem for the system.

Red Flag Advanced Server 4.0 SE provides restriction function for kernel module, security administrator can forbid any user from inserting unchecked modules while the system is running, or specify which module is allowed to use. Thus Linux kernel security is enhanced greatly.

Security Audit: Security audit is essential for collecting legal evidence and monitoring system security. Red Flag Advanced Server 4.0 SE provides a kernel-based, detailed, configurable and complete security access auditing method, which audits security events that user cares, including access record of sensitive resources and any unauthoritative access attempt. A special role is given by system to define all these rules for security audit and review all the recorded audit trail. System security audit can not be maliciously turned off, and the auditing records are protected by the kernel and thus can not be maliciously deleted either.  Auditing records can also be imported into MySQL database, which makes the data management, access and query much easier.

Host Port Protection (Firewall): Host port protection is a basic network access control method, which can be used as a local firewall for server or workstation, though its functionality is very simple, such firewall can protect the network security effectively, it can also be used to implement certain access policy. With GUI-based tools, sysadm can close ports of all network connections, and only open the necessary network ports, then specify the network addresses that are allowed to access these ports. By combining these security features, it is able to form a pretty good server host protect plan, and protect the host from attacks such as hacker intrusion, virus, trojan programs, and human mistakes like security-leak, damage and misoperation.

note: the security features listed above are only available in Red Flag Advanced Server 4.0 SE

64-bit Computing Environment Support位

Red Flag Advanced Server for Itanium2 uses 64-bit Linux 2.4 series kernel, which offers high performance, high stability, high security and wide range of hardware support. Basic components like Glibc、 GCC、XFree86 are all optimized for 64-bit computing, which enables more performance for applications. Red Flag Advanced Server for Itanium2 is compatible with 32-bit Linux applications, most applications can run without any modifications, thus customers can get more high performance, flexibility and investment protections.

Improvements Of Installation Process

Red Flag Server 4.0 use new 2-disk based installation program, give graphical Chinese installation environment with blue-color-based background, which is much prettier and easier than 3 series. Besides that, it also includes following important new features:

Red Flag Server 4.0 employ 2-disk form of installation, the first disk installs a basic Linux system, after the installation of first disk and rebooting, user can continue with the installation of second disk, which includes enhanced kernel and many applications. Series number is required for the second disk installation. For more detailed installation instructions, please refer to "Red Flag Server 4.0 Installation Guide".

New Features Of Interface:

The user interface of Red Flag Server 4.0 has been improved significantly. KDE 3.1 offers more pleasing user interface and more smooth operations compared with KDE 2 (Red Flag 3 series).  Benefiting from the interface research works conducted by Red Flag, this version brings the look-and-feel, useability, configurability and Chinese support of Linux interface to a new level. Considerable careful works are done to satisfy the user habit. New features including:

• more Chinese input method: including ZiGuang, WuBi and easy-to-use input method management tool;
• better vector fonts, provide anti-aliasing and superb displaying effect;
• what-you-see-is-what-you-get style of graphical monitor configuration tool;
• integrated computer management interface - control panel;
• new system management tool, easy for both Windows and Linux sysadms to get started.
• unified clipboard
• enhanced recycle bin
  
• automatic software installation and management, by double-clicking on software package file, software management tool will be fired up automatically to prepare for installation.
• on-line software upgrading and installation, which searches the upgrading list posted on Red Flag website, download and upgrade software packages.
• web browser mozilla is upgraded from Server 3.0R2's 0.9.3 to 1.3.