Red Hat Ties KVM Virtualization To RHEL 7
Days after releasing the latest version of its flagship open source operating system, Red Hat announced the latest release of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization suite, its commercial implementation of the KVM hypervisor that is more tightly integrated with the OpenStack cloud controller.
The release comes as datacenters are steadily switching from physical to virtual servers. The RHEV 3.4 update delivers guest support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, which was unveiled by the company on June 10. It also promises enhancements to traditional virtualization infrastructure along with support for OpenStack across computing, storage and networking, the company said.
Red Hat said RHEV 3.4 is targeted at organizations seeking to scale their current virtualization workloads to enterprise levels while providing them an "on-ramp" to deploy more workloads on a cloud infrastructure based on OpenStack.
The company added that the latest version of RHEV could help optimize current virtual infrastructure while laying the groundwork for private cloud capabilities.
The update is intended to deliver updates to customers that would expand functionality in traditional virtualization schemes, Radhesh Balakrishnan, Red Hat's general manager for virtualization and OpenStack, said in a statement. Adoption of RHEV has helped Red Hat develop new tools designed to promote OpenStack adoption, Balakrishnan added.
Among the new features incorporated into RHEV 3.4 are mixed storage domains that allow for the existence of shared or different protocols within the same datacenter. Among the storage domains handled by the upgrade are iSCSI, Fibre Channel, NFS, POSIX interfaces plus support for Red Hat’s own Gluster parallel file system.
Another new feature is upgraded "affinity/anti-infinity groups" that enable gangs of virtual machines to run either together on a single host or independently across alternative hosts. Red Hat said the option allows the setting of service levels for workload-balanced applications.
Red Hat also said RHEV 3.4 provides a simpler way to update and synchronize network configurations across multiple hosts. The upgrade configuration is also said to simplify provisioning and management of a large number of virtual LANs within a datacenter.
The new version also includes "template versioning," allowing customers to update templates with minor revisions. The feature also enables the use of a parent template to provision a new virtual machine.
As more virtualization users shift workloads to the cloud and eye OpenStack deployments, Red Hat also said it would offer more previews of OpenStack features. The goal is to hasten the shift to the private cloud.
To that end, RHEV 3.4 includes several features aimed at "future proofing" virtual infrastructures. Red Hat said it is including enhancements to the OpenStack imaging service called Glance that would allow importing a Glance image as a template for use in provisioning new virtual machines.
Another enhancement focuses on the Neutron OpenStack networking-as-a-service. The upgrades focus on extending Neutron capabilities to allow users to create and delete networks on an external Neutron provider.
The company also stressed that the new version of RHEV supports new and earlier versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux as guests.
RHEV 3.4 is available immediately.
