As I already reported Red Hat started to embed Xen 3.0 on Fedora Core 5, but the company plans to integrate the virtualization software also in upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
Quoting from NewsForge:
…Crenshaw said the “three pillars” of Red Hat’s vision were virtualization, stateless Linux, and encouraging developers to continue working on cutting-edge software through the Fedora Project. According to Crenshaw, the company has been working with users and client companies to determine where their greatest costs and difficulties lie. Most often, these issues have to do with network maintenance and optimal hardware usage, and Crenshaw said that Red Hat has solutions in mind for these problems.
The Xen virtualization software has been shipping as part of the Fedora Core for some time to allow customers to use, test, and further enhance it to work with RHEL. Having seen a need for virtualization that is “tightly integrated” with the operating system, Crenshaw said the company has “invested quite heavily in helping to add resources to the Xen community, as well as the Linux community, to bring it to market faster.”
“Xen is being integrated into Fedora and subsequently Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the virtualization capabilities will allow higher utilization across compute grids, as well as operational properties which are more agile and scalable,” Stevens said.
Crenshaw said the drive toward virtualization has been further invigorated by data that shows the average server uses between 15% and 25% of its CPU capacity. Virtualization, on the other hand, could improve that to 80% or more, “so you can get more productivity from less hardware,” he said, adding that “it comes down to more productivity at less cost. [You can] take advantage of faster, better, cheaper hardware more quickly and without extensive qualification cycles because the software is qualified to the virtual machine rather than the hardware.”
Where cost really drops, Crenshaw said, is when a virtualized network improves service levels to the point that peak loads, outages, and downtime can all be handled without affecting users. The level of hardware isolation he said this provides, allowing companies to spend less time and money on requalifying application stacks on new hardware, is also in line with the stateless Linux push…
Read the whole article at source.