Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers: Unparalleled ecosystem for virtualized hardware and software

With any Red Hat Enterprise Linux update, we make sure that kernel and user application programming interfaces (APIs) are unchanged, so that Red Hat Enterprise Linux applications do not need to be rebuilt or re-certified. However, this commitment can break down with virtualized servers since the application binary interface (ABI) compatibility can break at the hypervisor layer.

With Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization:

• the hypervisor is integrated into the same Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel that runs your certified applications, and
• binary compatibility is maintained from the guest to the hypervisor down to the physical hardware.

Red Hat's existing ABI commitment exists with or without Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and supports applications between minor releases on physical servers or virtual machines. We can extend this level of commitment for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization because Red Hat can control the the behavior of the operating system and the hypervisor. If a problem should occur, we will fix the issue with the same service level response that we use to fix any other issue that might occur in a physical environment.

Virtual Machines and Applications

Red Hat Enterprise Linux runs best on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization: With the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor, the ABI consistency offered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux means that applications certified to run on Enterprise Linux on physical machines are also certified when run in virtual machines. The portfolio of thousands of certified enterprise-grade applications for Red Hat Enterprise Linux applies to both environments.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization supports the same hardware as Red Hat Enterprise Linux: With Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, you only have one hardware compatibility list. If your hardware is ready for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and it supports Intel VT or AMD-V technology, it is ready for Enterprise Virtualization. It's that simple, and includes industry-leading hardware vendors such as IBM, HP, Dell, Cisco, and more.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization has "ecosystem velocity": Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization may be a new product offering, but it inherits the broad hardware and software support that Red Hat has delivered to Enterprise Linux customers for over 15 years.

Learn more about the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization ecosystem:

• Red Hat's ABI commitment
• Hardware and software compatibility list