Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers

Complete enterprise virtualization solution for server workloads

Red Hat® Enterprise Virtualization is a complete virtualization management solution for servers, powered by the people who brought you Red Hat Enterprise Linux®. With Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, you can maintain business continuity. Scale and integrate both Linux and Microsoft Windows workloads. And extend beyond bare metal. All while taking advantage of the performance benefits, competitive pricing, and trusted, stable environment you expect from Red Hat.

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Ready for the enterprise

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers 3.1 is built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a platform trusted by thousands of organizations on millions of systems around the world for mission-critical workloads. So you know it's enterprise-ready, letting you extend your existing infrastructure, build for the future to embrace new opportunities, and maintain the business continuity that your organization demands.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization features

  • NEW!  Live snapshots let you preserve the live virtual-machine state without interruption to users. Excellent for testing and development environments.
  • NEW!  Storage live migration delivers the flexibility to migrate virtual-machine disk files between storage domains without having to power down the virtual machine.
  • NEW!  Integrated POSIX file system support provides integration with Red Hat Storage and an improved unified storage management console.
  • NEW!  Integrated reporting, an updated historical reporting engine, gives you an integrated dashboard that provides a wide range of reports at the datacenter, cluster, host, and virtual-machine level.
  • NEW!  Web administration portal is now fully HTML-based, including the integrated reporting dashboard.
  • NEW!  Hot plug/unplug networks let you easily change a virtual machine's network interface without interruption.
  • NEW!  Enhanced user management adds assignable quotas for storage, CPU, and memory to power users.
  • NEW!  New disk management interface, including management for internal and external (direct-attached LUN) disks.
  • NEW!  Increased host and guest scalability.
  • NEW!  Improved hypervisor support for the latest industry-standard processors:
    • Intel Core i3, i5, and i7 CPUs (code named "Sandy Bridge")
    • AMD 15h, or Opteron G4, CPUs (code named "Bulldozer")
  • Live virtual-machine migration.
  • Industry-leading security with SELinux and sVirt.
  • Intuitive self-service user portal.
  • An intuitive, centralized graphical administration console.
  • The widest ecosystem of hardware and enterprise independent software vendors (ISVs).
  • The lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) in its class.
  • Built on the record-setting Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor.
  • The ideal platform on which to build an internal or private cloud of Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Windows virtual machines (VMs) and applications.

Does Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization work?

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization offers leading performance, security, manageability, and much more. It's based on the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor technology, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel, and the oVirt.org virtualization management project.

  • The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager is a centralized management system that lets system administrators view and manage virtual machines and images, providing a graphical user interface to administer the physical and logical resources.
  • The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor is a full-featured virtualization platform for quick, easy deployment and management of virtualized Linux and Windows guests. The hypervisor is designed for management via the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager, providing a thin virtualization layer deployed across the server infrastructure.

The hypervisor can be deployed as either of the following:

  • The standalone bare-metal hypervisor Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor (included).
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (optional, purchased separately) installed as a hypervisor host and managed through Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager.
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BENEFITS & FEATURES

High performance and scalability

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers gives you near-bare-metal and better-than-bare-metal performance, and industry-leading scalability for enterprise workloads. Virtualize even the most demanding application workloads with features like:

  • Record-setting results on the industry-standard virtualization benchmark SPECvirt_sc20101, including the highest overall performance and the highest number of performant VMs on a single server.
  • Support for the latest Intel and AMD server chipsets for superior consolidation and VM performance.
  • Up to between 95% and 140% performance relative to bare metal for real-world enterprise workloads like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Exchange.
  • More than 1 million messages per second on a single server with low latency.
  • Consolidation ratios of more than 400 VMs with enterprise workloads running on a single server.

 

1. Comparison based on benchmark addressing performance evaluation of datacenter servers used in virtualized server consolidation at www.spec.org/virt_sc2010/ as of 9 May, 2012. SPEC® and the benchmark name SPECvirt_sc® are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.

Easy manageability

The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager is a centralized management system that lets system administrators view and manage virtual machines and images, providing a graphical user interface to administer the physical and logical resources. The management console provides enterprise capabilities, including:

  • High availability
  • Live migration
  • Live snapshots
  • Storage live migration
  • Storage management
  • Network management
  • System scheduler

Unmatched enterprise security

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers uses SELinux with sVirt and the hardened Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel to provide a secure virtualization infrastructure.

Unparalleled ecosystem for virtualized hardware and software

  • The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization ISV program is a vibrant ecosystem of partners offering solutions in complementary areas, like backup and recovery, workflow automation, and capacity planning.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers also supports the leading enterprise hardware, operating systems, and applications certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP)-certified to support current supported versions of Windows operating systems and Microsoft server applications.

Lower TCO

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers offers a lower total cost of ownership compared to other virtualization solutions. So you can deploy more virtualized servers today and, with a quicker return on investment (ROI), install your next virtualization project sooner.

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Additions

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops lets you host complete desktop environments virtually on servers located in a centralized datacenter. Users connect via inexpensive thin clients or repurposed PCs. The result?

  • A user experience that's nearly indistinguishable from a local PC.
  • Improved data security.
  • Reduced total cost of ownership.

HOW TO BUY

Contact Red Hat Sales

Contact Red Hat Sales to learn more about Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers, to get an evaluation copy, or to purchase Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers.

Find a reseller

Red Hat works with an ecosystem of partners to build, optimize, and deliver complete solutions. Through our global network of leading hardware, software, and service provider vendors, Red Hat offers you a wealth of proven technology solutions that solve real-world business challenges.

RESOURCES

Essential reference materials

Learn more about Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers:

Essential collateral

Performance and scalability

Security

Pricing guides

Red Hat Consulting and Training

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