Red Hat Promotes Its New Xen-Based Linux

As everyone might have already heard by now, Red Hat released RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 with Xen virtualization. The virtualization implies a complicated process mainly consisting of hiding the physical characteristics of the computing resources from the way other systems or applications interact with them. Red Hat considered that the new product needs some more promoting and thus, on Tuesday in Toronto, Canada, it organized an event, hosted by Scalar Decisions reseller where some IT managers and decision makers attended. Here, Joel Bergman, Red Hat product management director, shared some of the features provided by RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.

Among its capabilities, there are the built-in Red Hat Global File System and also a multipath IO capability. But the most exciting new feature would be the virtualization, which is said to be much more cost-effective than WMware. Xen new player, as it is named, is still in development and not yet commercial. During the past year, it suffered numerous improvements but it still needs a lot of work and change until it will become fully functional.

Even though some looked strange at Red Hat's initiative of entering the virtualization market, and were skeptical as regards the results, the Xen player managed to gain its fans, mostly due to its economical aspect. The virtualization market seems now to be dominated by VMware, which enjoys quite a history since it first appeared, but I am sure that alternatives, and especially the open source alternatives, are more than welcomed.