Red Hat has released its latest version of its flagship operating system RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 5.4 and there’s a lot to like in this new business Linux.
I’ve been using RHEL, and its twins, CentOS and Oracle Unbreakable Linux since day one, and I like them a lot for business server use. Of all these releases, I think RHEL 5.4 is the most impressive of the lot. Why? Well, I’ll tell you.
1) Baked in virtualization. This edition of RHEL incorporates KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine). KVM, unlike VMware or Citrix Systems’ XenServer, isn’t an add-on virtualization program. It’s actually part of the operating system. Indeed, as the name suggests, it’s built right in the Linux kernel.
As Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat’s CEO told John Fontana of NetworkWorld, “KVM makes RHEL Linux deployments look the same whether they are virtual or physical.” So, “All of those thousands of man years of work put into processes and management for Linux can be applied to virtual instances.”