| Red Hat releases RHEL 5.1 with greatly improved virtualization |
Nov. 07, 2007
Red Hat announced Nov. 7 the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, with integrated virtualization.
In claims that Red Hat representatives were well aware are extremely broad reaching, they said the new release will provides the most compelling platform for customers and software developers ever, with its industry-leading virtualization capabilities complementing Red Hat's newly announced Linux Automation strategy. It offers the industry's broadest deployment ecosystem, covering stand-alone systems, virtualized systems, appliances and Web-scale "cloud" computing environments.
Scott Crenshaw, Red Hat's vice president of enterprise Linux business, claimed that RHEL 5.1 virtualization delivers considerably broader server support than proprietary virtualization products, and up to twice the performance. This allows greater server consolidation and eliminates a key obstacle to deploying virtualization more widely.
Besides supporting Linux virtual machines, RHEL 5.1 will also support Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 and the forthcoming Windows 2008, Crenshaw said. RHEL 5.1 uses Xen for its virtualization.
Red Hat executives also claim that RHEL 5.1 spans the broadest range of x86, x86-64, POWER, Itanium and mainframe servers of any operating system. For enterprises, this means that, regardless of size, core count or capacity, customers can gain dramatic operational and cost efficiencies when compared with proprietary solutions. It also supports stand-alone server systems, scaling from the smallest single-processor systems to servers with 1,024 processors, multicore servers and mainframes.
Red Hat works closely with its hardware partners to lead the industry in providing support for new hardware features, crediting open source's speed of innovation for this. This is reflected in support for features such as the high-end AMD Pacifica chip's Nested Page Tables. This new AMD architectural feature is specifically designed for use by virtualization.
It's not just AMD though. Users deploying RHEL 5.1 and utilizing Intel-VT (Virtualization Technology) can experience even greater gains. "Red Hat and Intel have worked together in delivering a high-performance platform for virtualization," said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 allows customers to scale up their virtual infrastructure to run high-performance virtual machines that utilize Intel Virtualization Technology and all the processing power of the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors and high-end Itanium servers, without the overhead seen in traditional virtualization environments."
Said Derek Chan, head of digital operations for DreamWorks Animation, in a statement, "Our initial testing indicates that Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualization delivers significant performance gains for our compute-intensive applications and should provide an additional layer of abstraction that will help us manage multiple competing priorities."
"With RHEL virtualization, customers can easily deploy any application, anywhere at any time," said Paul Cormier, Red Hat's executive vice president of worldwide engineering. "Other virtualization products don't scale to support large numbers of cores or CPUs, which limit customers' ability to utilize their infrastructure, or force customers to deploy multiple virtualization platforms. With RHEL Linux, customers enjoy a flexible yet consistent application environment for all of their virtualization requirements: from small servers to mainframe-class systems, for Linux and Windows servers and for even such demanding workloads as real-time, mission-critical applications."
The Raleigh, N.C., company also claims that RHEL virtualization includes the ability to perform live migration, allowing customers to seamlessly move running applications from one server to another, maximizing resource utilization in the face of changing business requirements. RHEL AP (Advanced Platform), the high-end version, includes high-availability clustering, storage virtualization and failover software to provide enhanced levels of application availability, for both physical and virtual servers.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 is immediately available to customers via Red Hat Network, Red Hat's management and automation platform. Managers can also now use Red Hat Network to manage both physical and virtual servers. This means administrators need learn only one common platform for system management.
For more information about Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, visit Red Hat's RHEL page.
—Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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