Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 Offers Performance and Scalability Improvements

Red Hat has released a new version of its open-source enterprise virtualization platform, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) 3.0. This version introduces new enterprise virtualization management features and improved performance and scalability for Linux and Windows workloads.

The core product, RHEV for Servers, provides server virtualization, and the optional RHEV for Desktops add-on provides virtual desktop infrastructure. RHEV for Servers includes the oVirt open virtualization management system, RHEV Manager, and the kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) hypervisor, RHEV Hypervisor. It supports server operating systems as virtual guests.

The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager platform is now built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. Red Hat claims that this new platform provides performance and scalability improvements.

Key features of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 include:

  • Power user portal for self-service provisioning;
  • Exposure of all RHEV commands through an open-source, community-driven RESTful API;
  • New text-based GUI for RHEV Hypervisor;
  • Reduced latency as a result of moving the kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) networking stack from the userspace into the Linux kernel;
  • Kernel samepage merging (KSM) memory overcommitment to enable users to define more RAM in their virtual machines than is present in the physical host;
  • Support for SELinux and new sVirt capabilities, including Mandatory Access Control (MAC) for enhanced virtual machine and hypervisor security;
  • Support for VM-level "Do Not Migrate" option and VM-host pinning;
  • Integration with Cisco's Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX) technology; and
  • User interface enhancements.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 is now available worldwide. Additional information and a fully supported 60-day trial version are available on the Red Hat site.

About the Author

Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].

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