Yesterday February 11, Red Hat has announced the global availability of version 3.5 of its virtualization platform: Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (aka RHEV).
RHEV is based on the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor and in this latest release introduced the support for four terabytes (4 TB) of memory per host, 4 TB of vRAM and 160 vCPUs per virtual machine.
The main new features reveal a strong focus on enterprise customers and can be resumed as follows:
- Lifecycle management and provisioning of bare-metal hosts via integration with Red Hat Satellite.
- Compute resource optimization through real-time analytics with oVirt Optimizer integration. Enabling users to identify the balance of resource allocation that meets their needs while provisioning new virtual machines.
- Workload performance and scalability provided through non-uniform memory access (NUMA) support, which is extended to Host NUMA, Guest Pinning and Virtual NUMA. This enables customers to deploy highly scalable workloads with improved performance and minimizes resource overload related to physical memory access times.
- Enhanced disaster recovery via improved storage domain handling, providing support for migrating storage domains between different datacenters supported by Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, enabling partner technologies to deliver site recovery capabilities.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.5 also includes features that enhance its support for cloud-enabled workloads built on Openstack:
- Integration and shared common services with OpenStack Image Service (Glance) and OpenStack Networking (Neutron), available as a Tech Preview, enabling administrators to break down silos and to deploy resources once across the infrastructure.
- Included instance types that unify the process of provisioning virtual machines for both virtual and cloud enabled workloads.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Availability
- As a standalone offering – Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.5 – including Hypervisor and Manager for virtualized enterprise workloads for supported guest operating systems.
- As an integrated offering called Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Smart Virtualization, that includes unlimited licenses for Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests.
- Through Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure, a comprehensive solution that supports Red Hat’s Open Hybrid Cloud vision. Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure is a single subscription offering that includes Red Hat CloudForms, Red Hat Satellite, Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.
Jim Totton, vice president and general manager, Platforms Business Unit, Red Hat, said:
As more enterprises look to reap the benefits of bimodal IT in their virtualized and cloud-based environments, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization offers a key component of an infrastructure ready to accommodate traditional enterprise virtualization while building a foundation for cloud enabled workloads.