Server & Storage Virtualisation.
With Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform
Red Hat provides the first complete open source solution of fully integrated server and storage virtualisation.
With the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform Virtualisation technologies are integrated into a single, easily managed product, delivering a complete and highly functional environment. Virtualisation that is easy to deploy and manage. Flexible and available, all of the capabilities an IT organization needs.
Benefits of Virtualisation
Virtualisation technology delivers a quantum step in IT operational flexibility, speed of deployment, and application performance and availability. Virtualisation allows IT managers to deliver more to their customers while gaining control of their costs. And new and exciting uses for virtualised environments are being developed every day.
With Red Hat Virtualisation, processing and data resources - servers and storage - are logically grouped into a single resource pool. Virtual servers and storage can then be dynamically allocated, in just a few seconds, as business demands dictate.
New Virtualisation Features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, released in November 2007, included a number of exciting new Virtualisation features, including:
- Live Migration of fully virtualised guests.
- Save/Restore of fully virtualised guests.
- Para-virtualised device drivers for use with fully virtualised Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, and 5 guests. These provide significant performance gains.
- Full support of Virtualisation with Intel Itanium2 systems.
- The ability to run 32-bit para-virtualised guests on x86-64 systems running in 64-bit mode.
- Improved graphical management tools.
Red Hat Virtualisation architecture
Server consolidation – Consolidate the load of several lightly loaded servers onto one.
Hardware abstraction – Deploying an older operating system and applications on new hardware is easy.
Resource management and high availability – Move guest instances between systems. Give workloads to be to the most appropriate system. Have continued operation during maintenance periods. And a consistent virtualised server environment makes the deployment of disaster tolerant configurations simpler, practical, and trustworthy.
Application isolation – Encapsulate an application together into a single entity with its operating system, performance and configuration parameters, and security environment. Tightly control and manage your applications, immune from other changes in the IT environment.
Virtualisation management
Comprehensive management capabilities for virtualisation are provided, including:
- libvirt: a programmable management library that provides hypervisor independence
- virsh: a scriptable command shell
- Red Hat Network enhancements that manage guest entitlements
- virt-manager: a graphical interface for virtualisation functions (create, start, stop, suspend, resume, monitor, etc.)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform includes Conga, a new management utility that provides web-based control of storage, applications, and servers in small and large multi-cluster environments.
Types of Virtualisation
Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides support for two types of virtualised guests, para-virtualised and fully virtualised.
- Para-virtualised guests offer the highest performance and do not require special processor capabilities. Para-Virtualisation is available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (Update 5) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 guests.
- Full Virtualisation is available for a wider range of guests, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4 and 5, and also for third party operating system guests. Full Virtualisation requires Intel VT or AMD-V processors.
Intel and AMD x86/x86-64 host-guest Virtualisation support
| Host | ||
64 Bit | 32 Bit | ||
Guest | 64 Bit | Yes | No |
32 Bit | Para-virtualisation: Yes | Yes | |
Notes
- For full Virtualisation the processor must provide Intel VT or AMD-V capabilities.
- Host: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 only
- Para-virtualised guests: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (Update 5) and 5 only
- Full virtualised guests: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, and 5; third party operating systems
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 and later provides para-virtualised drivers for use with fully virtualised Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4 and 5 guests. These provide a significant increase in performance over fully virtualised guests using standard drivers. Whenever possible, for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 and 5 guests, Red Hat recommends use of para-Virtualisation, which delivers the highest available performance.