Red Hat has announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 2.2. In addition to providing the first release of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops, the 2.2 release provides new scalability capabilities, migration tools and features to expand the performance and security of the solution.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 2.2, which can host and manage both Linux and Microsoft Windows virtual machines, provides a single infrastructure from which customers can manage their server and desktop virtualization deployments. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops allows customers to deploy hosted virtual desktop (HVD) configurations, also known as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), for scalable, centralized provisioning and management of their desktop systems. It provides a web-based connection broker that allows end users to access their hosted virtual desktops, coupled with the open source SPICE remote rendering technology, which offers a multimedia experience, including multiple monitors, HD-quality video and bi-directional audio/video for video conferences. Other features, such as templating, thin provisioning and desktop pooling, are also included.
With the 2.2 release, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization offers advanced scalability, supporting guests with up to 16 virtual CPUs and 256 gigabytes of memory per virtual machine. The release additionally provides new virtual machine conversion capabilities through a V2V tool designed to automate the conversion of VMware or Xen virtual machines for use within Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, and to simplify moving virtual machine images between environments, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 2.2 includes the ability to import and export virtual machine images and templates with the Open Virtualization Format.
"This release of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is a major milestone toward establishing KVM as a world-class open source hypervisor," states Dr. Bob Sutor, vice president of Linux and Open Source at IBM. "The ability to combine Red Hat Enterprise Linux and virtualization technologies with IBM Lotus software creates a compelling way to build enterprise collaboration environments. Lotus Notes, Sametime and Symphony deliver tremendous productivity on the desktop, Lotus Connections and Quickr enhance interaction among networks of people, and LotusLive adds collaboration through the cloud, all implemented using a scalable, open architecture." To learn more about Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, go here.