| Virtualization on tap in SLES and RHEL upgrades |
May 21, 2008
Novell and Red Hat announced upgrades of their Linux-based enterprise distros, featuring improved virtualization and hardware support. In addition, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 SP2 adds a new subscription management tool, while Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.2 adds new security, clustering, desktop, and networking features.
A RHEL-ly big show
As reported in March with the release of the RHEL 5.2 beta, virtualization is the big story here. Red Hat has upgraded RHEL's core virtualization hypervisor, Xen, to version 3.1.2, and has improved its support for NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) architectures.
RHEL now supports virtualization of very large systems, says Red Hat, including systems with up to 64 CPUs and 512GB of memory. New CPU frequency scaling support is said to reduce power consumption for virtualized processes. RHEL also gains new clustering capabilities, including improved application failover support, which when combined with the virtualization enhancements, should lead to greater server farm stability.
RHEL 5.2 adds enhanced support for hardware architectures covering x86/x86-64, Itanium, IBM POWER, and IBM System z, says Red Hat, including Intel's Dynamic Acceleration Technology, which permits power saving by quiescing idle CPU cores. Other new features include a DHCPv6 (Dynamic Host Control Protocol) client and server, making it easier to deploy IPv6 network addressing across a WAN, and enhanced support for laptop suspend/hibernate and resume. Red Hat has also upgraded its major Linux desktop applications, including Evolution 2.12.3, Firefox 3, OpenOffice 2.3.0, and Thunderbird 2.0.
A Novell plan
Virtualization also leads the way with Novell SLES 10 Service Pack 2 enhancements, which support Xen 3.2 (compared to RHEL 5.2's Xen 3.1.2 support). Novell claims that with Xen 3.2, the new SLES is "the only Xen-based virtualization solution with full support from Microsoft for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003 guests, and live migration of those guests across physical machines." Novell and Microsoft went in on an interoperability lab last fall.
The new Subscription Management Tool (SMT) helps manage SLES software updates while maintaining corporate firewall policy and regulatory compliance requirements, says Novell. The SMT is a package proxy system that draws key information from the Novell Customer Center, providing a synchronized repository and registration target. The SMT is said to enable update distribution for all SLES devices, downloading updates only once and distributing them throughout the enterprise.
Other new features in SP2 include support for IPv6, and updates to the YaST management toolset to encompass first-boot enhancements and network module support for new devices. There are also enhancements to high availability and storage management features. On the desktop version, SP2 is said to offer improved interoperability with Microsoft Windows and Office, better integration with Microsoft Active Directory, and an upgraded OpenOffice.org 2.4 Novell Edition.
With SP2, SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time (SLERT) has further reduced latency and increased the predictability of time-sensitive applications, says the company. New features include adaptive locking, support for the Precise Timing Protocol, and OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) 1.3, which is said to enable high-speed interconnects using InfiniBand and 10-Gigabit Ethernet.
Meanwhile, Novell has been dropping hints about SLES 11, which is due in the first half of 2009. Novell hopes to make SLES 11 available as an appliance that will be supported by a new toolset designed to quickly build specialized images. Novell is planning versions optimized for specific ISV stacks, as well as a new embedded version to allow independent hardware vendors to embed virtualization and operating systems directly into the hardware. Other touted SLES 11 enhancements relate to "mission-critical data center technologies, Unix migration, virtualization, interoperability, green computing, and desktop Linux," says Novell.
Availability
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 is available today, says Red Hat. According to Novell, Service Pack 2 for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, and SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SDK are now available, except for the new SMT tool, which will be available in 90 days, along with the SLERT 10 upgrade. More information on Red Hat Enterprise Linux may be found here, and more on Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise may be found here.
-- Eric Brown
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