Red Hat, MS partner for server virtualization solns

 MUMBAI, INDIA: Red Hat has signed reciprocal agreements with Microsoft Corp to enable increased interoperability for the companies’ virtualization platforms.

Each company will join the other's virtualization validation/certification program and will provide coordinated technical support for their mutual server virtualization customers.

“The world of IT today is a mixture of virtualized and non-virtualized environments. Red Hat is looking to help our customers extend more rapidly into virtualized environments, including mixed Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows Server environments,” said Mike Evans, VP—Corporate Development, Red Hat.

The customers of both the companies will have the ability to run Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual servers on either host environment with configurations that will be tested and supported by both.

The key components of the reciprocal agreements are:

Red Hat will validate Windows Server guests to be supported on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization technologies.

Microsoft will validate Red Hat Enterprise Linux server guests to be supported on Windows Server Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.

Once each company completes testing, customers with valid support agreements will receive coordinated technical support for running Windows Server operating system virtualized on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization, and for running Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualized on Windows Server Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.

“Customers are rapidly adopting Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, and in doing so are interested in support for running more operating systems on Hyper-V in their virtualized environment, including those from Red Hat,” said Mike Neil, GM—Virtualization Strategy, Microsoft. “We welcome Red Hat’s participation in our Server Virtualization Validation Program and look forward to ongoing collaboration with them to bring the benefits of coordinated technical support to our customers for their heterogeneous IT environments,”he added.

The agreements establish coordinated technical support for Microsoft and Red Hat's mutual customers using server virtualization, and the activities included in these agreements do not require the sharing of IP. Therefore, the agreements do not include any patent or open source licensing rights, and additionally contain no financial clauses, other than industry-standard certification/validation testing fees.

Validations for Red Hat and Microsoft server virtualization solutions included in the reciprocal certification and support agreements are underway, with the first results expected later this year.