Red Hat Positions its Enterprise Virtualization Platform as an OpenStack Bridge
Red Hat is out with its new Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization platform version 3.4, which arrives just after the new version of its Enterprise Linux offering. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) 3.4 is being positioned as a bridge to the OpenStack cloud, among other things. The latest RHEV version offers new "guest support for [RHEL] as well as advanced OpenStack support across compute, storage and networking."
"Virtualization can vastly improve efficiency, free up resources, and cut costs. But you don't want to sacrifice performance, security, and existing investments. As you plan for your cloud deployment process, it's important to build common services that use your virtualization investment and the cloud, while avoiding vendor lock-in."
"What if you could virtualize both your servers and desktops, manage them from 1 simple interface, and prepare for the cloud on your terms—without compromise?"
In a new interview with Forbes, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst pointed to paradigm shifts coming about due to the open cloud and virtualization. "Traditional virtualization platforms like VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V are legacy infrastructure designed for yesterday’s client-server software, not the sort of distributed, rapidly relocatable, elastically scalable applications that define the era of big data, SaaS and social software," noted Forbes.
Red Hat is also touting the performance of RHEV. "Compared to bare metal, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization can perform as well or better, offering robust Microsoft Exchange performance and high I/O throughput in Oracle database workloads," the company claims.
RHEV offers support for up to 160 logical CPUs and up to 2TB of memory per virtual machine. You can download a datasheet, a features guide, and a server consolidation whitepaper. Red Hat also claims that enterprise users can save 50 to 75 percent with RHEV compared to proprietary virtualization platforms.
Red Hat has done well getting its corporate clients to renew subscriptions for its Linux support offerings, but growth has slowed at the company and cloud computing is all the rage now, with OpenStack and open virtualization rapidly gaining momentum.