Red Hat announces 'Integrated Virtualization'

NEW DELHI: Low total cost of ownership has been one of the biggest pull for enterprises wanting to move over to open source options.
Red

Hat, leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, has formally announced its 'Integrated Virtualization' strategy.

In partnership with AMD, Intel, Network Appliance and

XenSource the Red Hat

virtualization environment can simplify virtualization deployment for customers. "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."

Integrated Virtualization

Red Hat will tightly integrate virtualization capabilities with its operating system and ensure all aspects of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform, from management tools and installation to software management, will enable customers to deploy virtualized environments easily and effectively.

The integrated virtualization initiative include:

• A complete platform to implement server consolidation, reducing costs and improving service levels.



• A comprehensive development and QA environment, which allows developers to substantially reduce the time and complexity of writing and testing code on diverse target systems.



• Support for hardware abstraction, which allows IT managers to reap the benefits of the latest hardware using existing software stacks, without the expense of extensive qualification and migration processes.

Product Roadmap

Fedora Core 5 to be available sometime this month will contain a preview of Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualization technology. In the summer of 2006, Red Hat will make Virtualization Migration and Assessment Services available along with an Enterprise Virtualization beta. Red Hat Enterprise Linux v. 5, scheduled for general availability by the end of 2006, will feature fully integrated virtualization.

"By the end of this year the integration of Xen into Red Hat Enterprise Linux will result in several important customer benefits, including better support for consolidation; more flexible lifecycle management; and improved workload management and availability," said Tony Iams, Vice President of System Software Research at Ideas International, Inc. "Further, by making Xen a pervasive part of its Linux distribution, Red Hat will drive virtualization deeply into the

mainstream."

Integrated Partnerships

AMD and Intel are working closely with Red Hat in its development and test labs to ensure their virtualization-enhanced chipsets are tightly integrated with the 'Integrated Virtualization' environment initiative. This tight integration will give Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers maximum software and hardware performance, as well as enabling support for legacy Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases running on upcoming releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Network Appliance's participation will ensure seamless integration with their storage solutions.

The development relationship between Red Hat and XenSource will ensure Red Hat Enterprise Linux status as being best-in-class, including the enablement of XenSource management tools.

"Virtualization, is expected to bring new levels of performance, security and utilization to x86 systems, designed to delivering measurable business value to our customers," said Joe Menard, Corporate Vice President, Software Strategy,

AMD.

According to Brian Stevens, CTO, Red Hat, virtualization can scale

server performance from the current 15 and 25 percent to upto 80 percent. What

is your take on this? Is it possible? Will we see many takers for Red Hat's

integrated virtualization strategy? Post your comments here.