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.
Read the full story on Linux-Watch.com: Red Hat Releases RHEL 5.1 with Greatly Improved Virtualization