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Red Hat Introduces Hybrid Cloud Platform

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:28:35 +0000

The largest and most successful commercial Linux distributor has announced the release of the first Linux hybrid cloud platform that integrates with many industry cloud services. Until now, the only other hybrid cloud platform was Azure by Microsoft. The comprehensive package, which they are calling Red Hat Cloud Foundations, gives customers the ability to run applications in both public and private clouds.

Red Hat made the announcement this week in Boston at the Red Hat Summit, where they also announced new additions to the Red Hat Certified Cloud Partner Program, namely IBM, NTT Communications, and Savvis. Amazon Web Services was the first partner to join previously.

Red Hat was one of the first commercial Linux distributions that had a large following of desktop users. They gradually moved their business model to servers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and have since made the natural expansion into virtualization and cloud computing. Many of the servers that power websites and web hosting providers around the world use their software.

Source: ComputerWorld

Linux: Commercial vs. Community Distros

Wed, 05 May 2010 15:16:41 +0000

Your server is your baby. You have worked hard to nurture it and prepare it for the world. Now, the question you need to ask yourself is: Do I want my baby to wear brand name clothes or generic ones? Commercial Linux distributions offer the “brand name”, but is that really what your server needs?

Companies like Red Hat, Novell, and IBM offer commercial Linux support with their servers, and many customers could not be happier, but whether or not you should purchase that type of support depends largely on your individual and business needs. Paying for support of a Linux server can be expensive, but it can sometimes be just as expensive or even more so to have a Linux expert on staff.

If you are flying solo or have a small staff that is comfortable supporting Linux alone, you may be just fine with a community distribution like CentOS, Fedora, OpenSuSE, or Debian. If not, you might strongly consider paying for support, which will save you in the long term, even if it seems like a financial loss in the beginning.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 Beta Released

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:46:33 +0000

As anticipated, the Linux giant Red Hat has released the first beta of the 6th version of its long-awaited enterprise server operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The new OS offers greater server scalability by increasing the strength and performance of KVM hypervisor, its kernel-based virtualization infrastructure.

Rather than a maximum of 16 CPUs under which KVM could run, it now can handle up to 64 and a terabyte of memory. Red Hat also focussed on increasing I/O throughput of the KVM virtual machines.

RHEL will run Linux kernel version 2.6.33 and will also have backwards compatibility with previous versions of RHEL kernels. They will continue to support kernel versions for 7 years. Although RHEL is a commercial Linux distribution that requires licensing, many smaller web servers also run run free and open source versions of it, such as CentOS. Red Hat’s primary business is enterprise-level Linux servers, with an annual revenue of $652 million.

Source: InformationWeek