Yes, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 will run on Linux
Red Hat created a bit of stir recently when it shipped its Enterprise Virtualization for Servers product because the management component runs on a Window server. That's right -- no Linux support.
The platform is an enhancement of the former Qumranet's KVM-based platform, which was designed for Windows and of course supports Linux virtual machines. But it runs only on the Windows 2003 server. Red Hat purchased Qumranet last fall.
Red Hat maintains that pretty much all of its customers have mixed Windows and Linux environments and so the requirement is no big deal. And the company committed to shipping at least some of the enhanced KVM-based platform in 2009.
I thought I'd allow the largest Linux distributor to elaborate on the next generation version coming out in the first quarter of 2010 -- the one that will run on Linux.
Andy Cathrow, product marketing manager for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, provided these answers to the questions shown below via email:
Q: Much is being made about the fact that the server management solution requires Windows Server 2003 to run. I understand that a Linux port will be made available in 2010. Will this be an entirely new open source product built from the ground up? What is the code going to be based upon?
Cathrow: The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 platform will be based on Java running on JBoss. We're already well underway on this platform based on a port of our C# code to Java. In addition we are leveraging our existing management in infrastructure that we're using today in other Red Hat management products such as JBoss Operations Network.
Q: How will the forthcoming version 3.0 work with the existing Qumranet-based virtualization server manager that was just released?
Cathrow: Customers moving from Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 2.x will be able to move to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 without interruption to their infrastructure with a side-by-side installation.
Q: Will the just released version work with Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2008?
Red Hat's Cathrow: Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 2.1 is currently supported running on Windows 2003 and [the] 2.2 [version] will be tested and certified on Windows Server 2008/R2. As you stated future releases will run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.