upgrading things in redhat linux

[Pepsi90919]

one of my servers is a redhat enterprise server and i had discovered that there are lots of outdated things on it (apache for example). i know freebsd has the extremely useful ports system, but the closest thing i can find would be yum, apt, or rpmfind. however i'm looking for the easiest way to upgrade over existing installations without breaking anything. i'm just afraid if i do a source build of apache it's going to go all default on me.

 

[Pepsi90919]