Red Hat is rolling out its Enterprise Virtualization for Servers platform, which is aimed at heterogeneous server environments and cloud computing deployments. Red Hat officials said the platformwhich includes a standalone hypervisor and management softwareoffers users better performance at a lower cost than competing products from VMware and Microsoft. A management solution for virtualized desktop environments will be available in early 2010, they said.Red Hat is continuing to expand its virtualization strategy, rolling
out the latest parts of its enterprise portfolio that is aimed at
heterogeneous servers and cloud computing environments.
Red Hat Nov. 3 unveiled its Enterprise Virtualization for Servers
platform, which includes a standalone hypervisor and a management
product for servers that run Linux and Windows workloads.
Red Hat officials say the platform addresses the key
concernsincluding performance, ecosystem support and costthat are
holding back the wider adoption of virtualization in the data center.
The virtualization platform offers better performance at a lower price
than competing products from VMware and Microsoft, they said.
In a Webcast announcing the new offerings, Navin Thadani, senior
director of Red Hats virtualization business, offers the performance
and scalability that businesses are looking for in their virtualized
environments, all at a cost that can be more than a third less than
competing offerings from the likes of VMware and Microsoft.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is ready to make virtualization pervasive throughout the data center, Thadani said.
The platform comes in two pieces, the first of which is the RHEV
(Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization) Hypervisor. The standalone
virtualization technology can host Linux and Microsoft Windows virtual
machines and desktops. It is based on Red Hats KVM (Kernal-based
Virtual Machine) technology.
KVM, which was introduced in September as
part of the companys RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 5.4 release. KVM
is essentially integrated into the Linux kernel, which gives it all the
inherent benefitsfrom management to security to performanceinherent
in the kernel itself, said Brian Stevens, CTO and vice president of
engineering at Red Hat.
The hypervisor can scale up to 96 cores on the host and up to 16 virtual CPUs and up to 1 terabyte of capacity.
The second part is RHEV Manager for Servers, which enables IT
administrators to configure, provision and manage virtualized Linux and
Microsoft Windows servers. It offers such features as high
availability, live migration, system scheduling and power-saving
capabilities, such as the ability to concentrate more virtual machines
on fewer physical servers during off-peak hours, Thadani said.
The new Red Hat offerings come with a large ecosystemthey can run
more than 3,500 applications and run on more than 1,000 hardware
platformsand cost $499 for the Standard Edition and $749 for the
Premium Edition.
The key difference between the two is that the Standard Edition
comes with 12-hours-a-day, five-days-a-week tech support, while the
Premium Edition comes with 24/7 support, Thadani said.
The new offerings and RHEL 5.4 with the KVM technology are key parts
of a larger enterprise virtualization strategy Red Hat laid out in
February. Another key partRHEV for Desktopsis in beta and will be
generally available in early 2010, Thadani said. The desktop product is
essentially an entire VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) management
tool, he said.
Virtualization 
