Red Hat virtualises Enterprise Linux

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 15 Mar 2006 at 11:43

Red Hat has officially announced its virtualisation plans with full integration into RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 5 by the year's end.

Red Hat's 'Integrated Virtualization' strategy includes partners in the form of chip builders AMD and Intel as well as data specialist Network Appliance and virtualisation open-sourcers XenSource.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 will be available by the end of the year with a full integration of XenSource virtualisation technologies including a complete platform for server consolidation, a developer and QA environment to speed testing and optimising software for operating in a virtualised environment, and support for hardware abstraction helping IT managers smoothly introduce new hardware into existing software stacks without expensive migration processes.

Red Hat's outlook on virtualisation is that it is coming, and as Linux increasingly finds its way into data centres and mission critical platforms, Red Hat, as the number one Linux company, intends to lead from the front.

At least part of the virtualisation drive is from the logistical problem of using computing power.

'Conservative estimates show that servers typically operate at between 15 and 25 percent of CPU capacity, but with virtualization that could improved to 80 percent,' said Brian Stevens, CTO at Red Hat. 'Our customers, who already see Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the choice for lower cost of ownership, will be able to ride this next wave of virtualization to further reduce costs and increase operational efficiency. Red Hat's strategy is to methodically target and reduce every cost driver associated with deploying IT infrastructure, we believe integrated virtualization will be a major milestone in this effort.'

Running at just a quarter of potential performance means companies can quickly reach capacity within their data centres and have to hire out further capacity or build extra capacity possibly off-site: an expensive and sometime unfeasible option for financial companies and the like, which have to protect their data keeping it on-site.

The first evidence of Red Hat's strategy will emerge this month in the form of Fedora Core 5, which will contain a preview of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and its integration of the Xen virtualization technology.

In the summer Red Hat will make a beta available previewing its Virtualization Migration and Assessment Services along with an Enterprise Virtualization. Finally, RHEL 5 will launch at the end of the calendar year.

'XenSource and its powerful community of developers, distributors and partners is unified in its commitment to making Xen the de-facto, open industry standard for cross-platform virtualization,' said Peter Levine, CEO of XenSource. 'Our partnership with Red Hat will deliver to enterprise customers all of the benefits inherent in Xen's paravirtualization technology, tightly integrated with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The resulting product will deliver the performance, robustness and security that enterprises demand for virtualized production workloads, taking advantage of hardware virtualization technologies in the latest Intel and AMD platforms.'

Red Hat first talked to us about its virtualisation plans back in November last year.