Maximizing the Value of Data Center Virtualization

for enterprise data centers. The ability to consolidate infrastructure and dynamically manage workloads delivers high value, both through cost savings and increased business agility. However, not all virtualization solutions are created equal. Performance, scalability, security, and cost can vary significantly between competing solutions. The degree of openness and standards-adherence also varies, which can affect the flexibility of IT organizations looking to evolve their IT infrastructure into cloud computing environments. Intel and Red Hat are breaking new ground across key parameters of virtualization, delivering significantly higher performance than alternative solutions,1 in addition to the scalability, reliability, manageability, and security needed to support the full range of enterprise applications. Intel and Red Hat provide these capabilities on one of the industry’s most open computing architectures with cost models that make end-to-end virtualization truly affordable. Two recent advances by Intel and Red Hat are particularly important. • Scalable Intel® Xeon® processor E7-based servers enable end-to-end data center virtualization. Foursocket, eight-socket and larger servers based on the Intel Xeon processor E7 family deliver the scalable performance needed to support large enterprise workloads in virtual environments, including demanding transactional, database, and analytics applications. These servers also provide a foundation for high-availability and advanced security, enabling IT organizations to extend virtualization into the heart of their data centers with confidence. • Red Hat® Enterprise Virtualization erases traditional boundaries. Because the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor is integrated into the Linux kernel, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization automatically inherits the advanced capabilities of Red Hat’s enterprise-proven Linux operating system. This mechanism has helped Intel and Red Hat deliver leadership performance, scalability, and security in virtualized environments in less than a year after the initial release of KVM. It also allows Red Hat to maintain consistent application binary interfaces across bare-metal, virtual, and cloud environments, so IT organizations can move applications with confidence across all three environments, with no need for modification or recertification.