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On this page:

• Virtualization

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux • 3rd-party hypervisor support

server details • Virtualization management
• Supported architectures and environments
Virtualization • Common deployments
• Kernel
A base Red Hat Enterprise Linux server provides • Security
fully-virtualized guest support for Red Hat • Auditing
Enterprise Linux 3, 4, and 5. Third party operating • File systems and storage (virtualization)
systems may also be hosted. Additionally, offering • File systems and storage (general)
the highest levels of performance, para-virtualized • UNIX interoperability
guest operating system support for Red Hat • Microsoft Windows interoperability
Enterprise Linux 5 and version 4 Update 5 is • Compiler and toolchain
available. • Compatibility
• Manageability
Fully-virtualized guest support requires hardware • Lifecycle and Errata Policy
features provided by Intel Virtualization Technology
and AMD-V processors. Para-virtualized guests can
be configured on any 32-bit x86 (with PAE support), 64-bit x86, or Itanium2 system.

With Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform the number of guest operating systems that may
be hosted is unlimited, constrained only by physical hardware resources.

With Red Hat Enterprise Linux a total of four guest operating systems are supported.

When running on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux host, Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests do not require
separate subscriptions. Guests are automatically entitled to subscription services through the
subscription to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux host. Third party operating system guests must be
licensed according to the practices of the respective vendor.

Benefits:

Virtualization systems provide many attractive capabilities, including:

• Reduced costs through server consolidation, coupled with savings in power, cooling,
maintenance and third party software.
• Improved application availability and response due to flexible resource management.
• The ability for IT departments to innovate, responding to new business demands quickly and at
minimal cost.

3rd-party Hypervisor support

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is certified and supported for use as a guest operating system with the
following 3rd-party hypervisors:

• VMware ESX and VMware ESXi

• IBM POWER LPARs
• IBM System z

Number of supported virtual machines with Enterprise Linux as the guest operating
system that can be run simultaneously on one server

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Hypervisor
Advanced Platform Server
VMware ESX and VMware
10 4
ESXi [1]
IBM POWER LPARs [2] 25 4
IBM System z [3] Unlimited Not available

Notes:
Special Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions must be purchased to enable this functionality. These
special subscriptions contain the exact same code and feature set as normal Red Hat Enterprise
Linux subscriptions. However, they come with the rights and the functionality to support more than
one virtual machine running Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the guest operating system on a single
server.

[1] The special subscriptions to use with VMware are:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (up to 2 sockets) for VMware

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform for VMware

[2] The special subscriptions to use with IBM POWER LPARs are:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (up to 2 sockets) for IBM POWER

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform for IBM POWER

[3] The special subscriptions to use with IBM System z are:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Mainframe Computing

Virtualization management
Comprehensive management capabilities for virtualization 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 virtualization 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.

Benefits:

Easy, comprehensive management of virtualized environments.

Supported architectures and environments

Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports the following system architectures and deployment
environments:

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Example server environments

• Standalone server
• Large SMP "scale-up" server
• Blade server
• High availability cluster server
• Rack server
• Fault tolerant server
• HPC "scale-out" server
• Mainframe server

Supported Architectures

• Intel and AMD x86/x86-64

• Intel Itanium2
• IBM POWER
• IBM System z and S/390

Common deployments
Example Applications Benefits
Provides file and print serving services to Microsoft® Windows®
clients, with Active Directory integration and new support for nested
File/Print server groups. Provides print and file service services for UNIX®
environments, with NFSv4 and AutoFS support, including
authenticated binds and shared maps.
The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Apache-based http server provides high
Web server performance, excellent security, and a comprehensive set of optional
plug-ins.
Apache Tomcat servlet container, included in Red Hat Enterprise
Application server Linux, is the reference implementation, powering large-scale, mission
critical web applications.
Choose from the MySQL and PostgreSQL open source databases
Database server included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux or a third party product from
vendors such as Ingres, Sybase, or Oracle.
Network infrastructure Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a full complement of network
server services applications, including DHCP, DNS, firewall, etc.

Kernel
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is based on the Linux 2.6.18 kernel and includes many enhancements
over prior releases. These include:

• Per queue, switchable on-the-fly I/O schedulers

• High performance pipe implementation
• IPv4/IPv6 performance enhancements
• Support for shared cache and multi-core systems
• Kernel SMP locking enhancements for improved scalability and performance

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Benefits:

Improved performance and scalability across the board - memory, CPUs, I/O, networking.

Security
Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) provides support for MLS (Multi Level Security) policies.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 services are provided with targeted policies enabled by default.

Significant ease-of-use enhancements are provided with the inclusion of the SELinux Troubleshooter,
a GUI-based analyzer which guides system administrators on appropriate actions to take in the event
of a security alert.

The distribution is built using the fortify-source compiler flag which provides more stringent run-
time buffer bounds checking, thereby adding to overall system security.

Benefits:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers the highest level of out-of-the-box security in the industry. Security
administration is greatly simplified.

Auditing
Tracks activities and modifications to the entire system, including file system operations, process
system calls, user actions such as password changes, account additions/deletions/modification, use
of authentication services, and configuration changes (such as time changes). Provides powerful
searching and reporting tools and a unique real-time interface that permits applications to analyze
and react to events as they occur.

Benefits:

Auditing allows Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 to meet US Government certifications such as
CAPP/LSPP and NISPOM and also assist organizations to meet regulatory requirements such as
Sarbanes, Oxley, and HIPPA.

File systems and storage (virtualization)

To simplify system growth and virtualization adoption, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 includes single
system/guest versions of three distributed system technologies:

• Logical Volume Manager (LVM): for creating and managing pools of virtual storage
devices
• Global File System (GFS): a high performance, scalable, POSIX compliant file system. GFS
provides support for file systems with up to 8EB theoretical capacity.
• Distributed Lock Manager (DLM): a sophisticated application synchronization interface.

Single systems or virtualized guests using these technologies can be easily upgraded to operate in
multi-system and multi-guest configurations by upgrading to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced
Platform, which provides multi-system and multi-guest (cluster-wide) versions of the LVM, GFS and
DLM. This seamless migration eliminates the need to remap the storage subsystem, reformat disk

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partitions, or rewrite application synchronization routines when moving from a standalone server to
a multi-system or virtualized configuration.

Benefits:

Upgrade from small and non-virtualized systems to larger configurations while maintaining a
consistent file system and logical volume configuration.

File systems and storage (general)

A large number of new capabilities are provided, including:

• The Ext3 file system will now support 16TB file systems.
• iSCSI and Fibre Channel can be configured during installation.
• OpenAIS - a standard API that can mask many types of faults in applications, middleware,
operating systems and hardware by providing a simple framework for allowing developers to
create redundant applications.
• Dm-crypt provides block-level storage device encryption.

Benefits:

Enhanced storage scalability and security combined with simplified configuration.

UNIX interoperability
New AutoFS and NFSv4 capabilities for UNIX interoperability include:

• Direct Map Support - providing compatibility with UNIX environments.

• Lazy-mount and unmount - greatly reduces the number of simultaneous mounts on client
systems, thereby allowing efficient deployment in large NFS infrastructures.
• Maps can be shared with Sun Solaris, HP/UX, IBM AIX, and other UNIX systems.
• Authenticated binds with LDAP servers using Kerberos, Digest-MD5, etc.
• Significant NFSv4 enhancements in performance, stability and, with SecureNFS, security, and
server-side delegation.

Benefits:

Secure and high performance interoperability with UNIX environments.

Microsoft Windows interoperability

Samba provides interoperability with Microsoft Windows file and print (CIFS) systems. Key features
include improved integration with Microsoft Active Directory® with, for example, more consistent
user and group mapping, and better support for nested groups. Recently added is support for
improved interoperability with Microsoft Windows. This extends the Active Directory integration to
better map users and groups on Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems and simplifies managing
filesystems across platforms. Extensive development work and numerous enhancements have
improved the quality and stability of the entire subsystem.

Benefits:

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Robust and highly compatible integration with Microsoft Windows file/print and authentication
environments makes it easy to seamlessly bring the performance, security, and reliability of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux to enterprise customers as a complement to customers' existing Windows
investments.

Compiler and toolchain

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 provides the GCC 4.1 and Glibc 2.4 toolchain. SystemTap and Frysk
kernel mode and user mode profiling and debugging tools simplify application development.

Benefits:

Enhanced compiler and tools improves application performance and streamlines application
development.

Compatibility
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 includes compatibility libraries that enable applications built on the
versions 3 and 4 to run without recompilation. Applications certified on any minor release will run un
-modifed on any subsequent minor release or update within each major release.

An important feature of any Red Hat Enterprise Linux update is that kernel and user application
programming interfaces (APIs) remain unchanged, ensuring Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 applications
do not need to be rebuilt or re-certified. The unchanged kernel and user APIs also extend to
virtualized environments: with a fully integrated hypervisor, the application binary interface (ABI)
consistency offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux means that applications certified to run on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux on physical machines are also certified when run on virtual machines. With this, the
portfolio of thousands of certified applications for Red Hat Enterprise Linux applies to both
environments.

Benefits:

User mode applications do not need rebuilding, and applications certified once can continue to run
un-modified on future minor releases and support either physical or virtual environments.

Manageability
The Red Hat Network product family provides a complete life cycle management solution for you Red
Hat Enterprise Linux environment. To access Red Hat Network, all a customer needs is an Internet
connection to update their Red Hat Enterprise Linux Systems. Customers interested in more
advanced system management capabilities such as provisioning, configuration management and
monitoring can deploy Red Hat Network Satellite. Red Hat Network Satellite provides all these
capabilities on-premises, and does not require a direct connection to the Internet.

Benefits:

Red Hat Network (RHN) Satellite makes Linux deployable, scalable, manageable, and consistent.
RHN Satellite provides administrators with the tools to efficiently manage their systems lowering per
-system, deployment, and management costs. RHN Satellite offers superior security by having a
single centralized tool, secure connection policies for remote administration, and secure content. Use

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RHN Satellite to ensure security fixes and configuration files are applied across your environment
consistently.

Lifecycle and Errata Policy

Each version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a defined 7-year lifecycle for errata and support. See
http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/ for a detailed overview of the lifecycle for each
version of Enterprise Linux.

Benefits:

7-year lifecycle of errata and support.

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