Red Hat’s much anticipated Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 platform represents a turning point in the maturity of KVM hypervisor and the company’s cloud computing goals, one IDC analyst claims.
RHEV 3.0 — which offers advances in the kernel-based Virtual Machine hypervisor and related server and desktop virtualization management capabilities — was released today with the support from leading partners including Cisco, HP, Intel and NetApp.
Red Hat claims the new platform offers the best performance and scalability in the industry at a fraction of the cost. Version 3.0, for instance, is said to offer the best 2-socket, 4-socket and 8-socket performance and scalability metrics (in terms of VM density and host per cluster) at one third to one fifth of the cost of other leading proprietary platforms.
KVM is integrated within the Linux kernel. Aside from built-in KVM enhancements, RHEV offers a new management system, user portal, support for the RESTful API and local storage and support for Cisco’s Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX) technology for creating an integrated and unified physical and virtual infrastructure.
This is a major step forward. The last RHEV for Servers platform debuted in 2009 and the desktop version debuted in 2010.
Red Hat claims that 50 percent of its largest customers (by revenue) have begun piloting or using its virtualization platform and many are adopting KVM alongside other proprietary solutions such as VMware’s platform. Still, the company only named one customer today — Uttam Energy Tech of India — as an existing user of its 2.2 virtualization platform, with plans to migrate to 3.0.
To advance adoption, the Raleigh, NC Linux giant also introduced today a new certification status for ISVs dubbed Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization-Certified, which signifies integration with the Red Hat Virtualization API.
