Delivering a cost-effective and highly manageable solution without compromising performance, scalability, or security

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Georgina Fox
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1 The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Platform: Extending the Reach of Virtualization Delivering a cost-effective and highly manageable solution without compromising performance, scalability, or security

2 Virtualization is transforming the way organizations deploy and manage their IT resources. By helping them more efficiently utilize hardware, software, and personnel, virtualization enables them to build infrastructures that are flexible, scalable, and most importantly economical as they strive to become truly agile businesses. But although virtualization is now considered a mainstream technology, virtual machines still only account for less than 20 percent of all data center servers. Today s x86 virtualization solutions are typically deployed only in non-mission-critical workloads or development and test environments. There are several reasons for this. Despite the fact that proprietary virtualization solutions come with robust management tools that ease their deployment and administration, their use is constrained by poor performance, limited scalability, compromised stability and security, and high cost. First, performance. Traditional virtualization products have relied on hardware emulation that intercepts hardware requests from the guest virtual machines and translates them to the host server. This approach creates significant overhead, especially for I/O-intensive workloads such as databases and enterprise applications overhead that can slow down performance by 40 percent or more. Because of this, enterpriseclass production applications such as databases are seldom virtualized. Additionally, the clock drift common to many virtualization products has forced enterprises running applications requiring low latency or which are time sensitive such as financial trading systems to leave those applications on physical servers. Next, scalability. The current generation of x86 virtualization products typically limits guests to four virtual CPUs. This prevents businesses from virtualizing enterprise-class applications such as ERP systems, since they require significantly more processor resources than that. Security and stability are also key concerns. When carving up one physical machine into multiple virtual machines, enterprises are literally placing all their eggs in one basket. After all, if the virtualization host crashes, or is compromised by a virus or other security breach, then all the virtual machines are in turn compromised. Many organizations are simply not willing to expose their critical information assets to this risk. Finally, there is cost. Although many vendors offer the hypervisor for free, the total cost of proprietary virtualization solutions including management tools run between $5,000 and $10,000 per host. The resulting high cost of virtualization tends to restrict deployments to projects where costs can quickly be recouped, such as lightly used applications with high consolidation rates of 10 to 20 servers per host. But the limitations of today s proprietary virtualization solutions should not be viewed as inherent problems with virtualization per se. Specifically, enterprises do not need to settle for inadequate performance and scalability and pay exorbitant prices to reap the many benefits of virtualization. 2

3 Red Hat: Breaking the barriers to widespread x86 virtualization adoption Red Hat is uniquely positioned to push virtualization to the next level. With many years of experience delivering the industry s most stable and secure computing platform Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat is creating a platform that provides a high-performing, scalable and secure virtualization environment for enterprise-class applications. Building upon the virtualization technology currently integrated inside Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat will deliver the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization platform in 2009, providing virtualization powered by kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) virtualization the Linux kernel s native virtualization technology which transforms the Linux kernel into a fully featured, high-performance, and secure hypervisor. With Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization technology, enterprises will get a proven virtualization platform, built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, that s been tested and certified by the leading hardware vendors and hardened by many years of production deployments in the some of the most demanding enterprises. The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization platform will enable organizations to run low-latency, high I/O throughput applications in a virtualized environment applications previously not considered suitable for virtualization because of the performance hit they took under existing, proprietary solutions. Red Hat s virtualization solution will also enable organizations to scale their virtualization deployments to tens of thousands of virtual machines, allowing them to run the largest and most mission-critical production databases. And Red Hat s Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) developed in conjunction with the National Security Agency and the U.S. federal government allows Red Hat s virtualization solutions to avoid the security vulnerabilities of most existing virtualization products. In addition to all this, the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization will deliver the kind of manageability that enterprises require for large-scale virtualization deployments. It will eliminate silos of virtualized and physical servers within the data center, allowing customers to minimize administration costs. And as a cross-platform solution, it supports Windows as well as Linux virtual servers and virtual desktops. 3

4 Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization will enable organizations to run Windows and Linux virtual machines. Windows and Linux guests Virtual Machine Virtual Machine KVM Linux Kernel VT-X AMD-V x86 Hardware A unique differentiator of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is the ability to run both physical and virtual machines on the same platform. Previously when using standalone virtualization products organizations had to cope with individual silos of virtual and physical machines that required different software, different skills, and different management tools. With the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization platform these silos disappear, greatly improving the capital and operational efficiency of the data center. Red Hat has a proven track record in delivering a secure operating environment to the most demanding organizations. Rather then simply layering security products on top of the hypervisor, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization will include a hardened security infrastructure within the hypervisor kernel. This leverages the security strengths of SELinux developed in partnership with the NSA to deliver military-grade security within the hypervisor enabling enterprises to add security policies and mandatory access controls. Bottom line: Although in the past organizations have had to sacrifice performance, security, and scalability to take advantage of virtualization, with Red Hat s virtualization technologies, that isn t the case. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization will deliver rich management capabilities in the industry s most high-performing, scalable, and secure platform at a fraction of the cost of competing solutions. 4

5 Robust management tools to ease enterprise virtualization There are few organizations that have not tested the virtualization waters. By some estimates, upwards of 90 percent of all IT organizations have used virtualization in some form. However, despite these initial forays, few have ventured into wide-scale implementations. In addition to the concerns about performance, scalability, and cost mentioned earlier, there has been a lack of scalable management tools. Indeed, scalable manageability has emerged as one of the key roadblocks to virtualization. Although the existing hierarchical tools that most virtualization solutions offer might work for a few hundred virtual machines, they break down when used for larger deployments. Search-driven management capabilities that can scale to thousands of virtual machines are necessary if virtualization is going to move past limited implementations in development and testing environments to full-scale implementations in production systems. Today s organizations require virtualization management tools that enable them to: Search for any object in the system. This critical function allows organizations to easily manage thousands of virtual systems by creating dynamic views based on criteria such as up-time, resource utilization, and application workload. Leverage image management capabilities. By capturing snapshots, templates, and overlays, organizations can easily accomplish save/restore virtual machines when required. Support high availability. Organizations need to be able to restart guest virtual machines from failed hosts automatically on other hosts to eliminate downtime. Perform live migrations. The ability to dynamically move a running virtual machine from one host to another with no downtime and without losing sessions is essential when running mission-critical applications in a virtualized environment. Provide automated system scheduler capabilities. To allocate resources efficiently, organizations need the capability to continuously load balance virtual machines based on resource usage and policies. Save power. By concentrating virtual machines on fewer servers during off-peak hours, organizations can significantly cut power requirements. Manage maintenance. Organizations also need to eliminate downtime on virtual machines during planned maintenance windows. Monitor and report on infrastructure. Management tools that enable organizations to stay on top of all objects in the system including virtual machine hosts, guests, networks, and storage are essential for reaping the full operational efficiencies promised by virtualization. 5

6 The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Platform: Extending the Reach of Virtualization The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization portfolio of products Organizations seeking to virtualize their IT environments have a broad array of options to choose from. With the upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization product portfolio, Red Hat establishes itself as the industry leader for providing a stable, secure, scalable, high-performing, and manageable virtualization environment at a significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO). API and Scripting Administrator Console Web-based UI Linux shell Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers Windows PowerShell LDAP Directory / Active Directory Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor TEMPLATE LIBRARY Red Hat Enterprise Linux Guests Web server Database server Hypervisor Hypervisor Hosts Publish template Storage Third party Install media provisioning Virtual Appliance 6 RED HAT SATELLITE Hypervisor Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux Enterprise Linux

7 paragraph style: WP CHart Title Virtualization management features in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers will deliver a rich management interface for: High availability. Define policies for high availability and failover. Continually monitor host systems and virtual machines. Automatically restart virtual machines in the case of a host failure, hardware fault or operating system failure. Live migration. Move a running virtual machine to another host while it is still running with no interruption to service. System scheduler. Define policies for managing a virtualization infrastructure. Automatically balance workloads in the data center by live migrating virtual machines based on resource usage and service levels. Intelligently place virtual machines on hosts systems based on service levels and operating system requirements. Power saver. Reduce power and cooling costs by automatically consolidating virtual machines on to fewer hosts during off peak hours. Automatically power down unused servers, restarting them automatically based on a schedule or utilization levels. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers. As the industry s most scalable virtualization management system, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers is planned to be the first product to allow fully integrated management across virtual servers and desktops. Its simple, scalable Web-based user and scripting interfaces and search-driven management capabilities will make managing thousands of virtual machines easy. It will support advanced virtualization management capabilities, including image management, live migration, high availability, system scheduler, power saver, maintenance manager, and infrastructure monitoring and reporting. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Desktops. This fully integrated management system will provide remote rendering technology and a hypervisor stack for virtual desktops. It will include a connection broker, provisioning management, image management, and high availability, among other management capabilities, and SPICE remote rendering technology for making the user experience on a virtual machine indistinguishable from that of a physical PC. Because of the high density of virtual desktops, optimized rendering technology performance, and savings on storage, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager will offer an industry-leading cost-performance ratio for the virtual desktop interface (VDI). Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor. Planned for release in 2009 and offering high performance, excellent scalability, and secure hypervisor, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor will support both Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux as guest operating systems. Based on the trusted Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel with KVM technology, this product will feature market-leading host scalability of 96 cores and 1TB of memory, with guests scaling up to 16 virtual CPUs and 64GB of memory. Advanced features will include live migration, memory page sharing, thin storage provisioning, and SELinux security, and it will be simple and easy to deploy in either stateless or stateful modes. Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 has included Xen hypervisor technology since its original release, in March Xen provides a proven, stable, and mature virtualization environment, with many successful deployments in place today. Red Hat is committed to support Xen for the full lifecycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, which extends until at least Meanwhile, beginning with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, Red Hat will add the KVM hypervisor, allowing customers to run either Xen or KVM virtualization. Existing customers are expected to continue to use Xen virtualization, and transition to KVM at a suitable time, while new customers will use KVM from the outset. 7

8 Maintenance manager. Automate maintenance procedures to reduce downtime and improve operational efficiency. Image manager. Rapidly deploy new virtual machines based on templates. Create snapshots of virtual machines. Use thin provisioning to reduce disk utilization and maximize capacity. Backup and restore virtual machines. KVM allows Red Hat Enterprise Linux to simultaneously act as a hypervisor as well as operating system. Red Hat Enterprise Linux with KVM dramatically improves the efficiency of the data center without compromising performance of either physical or virtual machines. It also enables smooth transition of mission-critical data center applications to a virtualized environment. Conclusion: take advantage of the Red Hat virtualization industry ecosystem No technology exists in a vacuum and virtualization is no exception to this rule. Considering Red Hat s vast ecosystem of hardware and application partners is also relevant when organizations choose a virtualization platform. Red Hat is working with its independent software vendor (ISV) partners to ensure that if their applications are certified to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on physical hardware, that they are also certified to run under the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization platform. No modifications are necessary. No re-certifications. All are supported by Red Hat. In a similar manner, Red Hat pledges that all hardware certified to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux is virtualization-ready. And it is working closely with its hardware partners and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to make sure that all new hardware is certified for the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization platform. With the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization platform, there s no need to compromise. High-performing, secure, and scalable, the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization platform delivers virtualization functionality with the management tools organizations need at a fraction of the cost of competing virtualization solutions so they feel comfortable trusting their most mission-critical applications and systems to a virtualized environment. Red Hat Sales and Inquiries NORTH america europe, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA REDHAT europe@redhat.com ASIA pacific latin AMERICA sales-ap@redhat.com info-latam@redhat.com 2009 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. Red Hat, Red Hat Linux, the Red Hat Shadowman logo, and the products listed are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. in the US and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. #964722_0209

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