While virtualization professionals are still trying to figure out how the renewed alliance between Microsoft and EMC will work on virtualization, another major event happens: Red Hat joins the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).
Pretty much like Cisco (why Cisco is here?), Citrix, Novell, Oracle, Sun, Unisys (why Unisys is here?), Virtual Iron and VMware did in the last few months (the SVVP was launched in June 2008) now also Red Hat had to accept the Microsoft conditions to offer concrete Windows support to its virtualized customers.
As side benefit, the Microsoft customers finally will be able to run Red Hat guest OSes on their Hyper-V hosts.
The agreement implies that:
- Red Hat will validate Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows 2000 Server SP42, and Windows Server 2008 guests on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization technologies
- Microsoft will validate Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 and 5.3 guests on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V (all editions) and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008
Note that, as usual, Red Hat is not specifying which virtualization technology will be validated. As their new offering based on KVM is not ready yet, we may safely assume that this agreement is about the implementation of Xen currently part of Enterprise Linux (RHEL).