Red Hat today announced the availability of the fourth update to its Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 platform, providing the delivery of technology enhancements to customers via the company's subscription model. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 is the foundation of the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization portfolio of solutions and delivers expanded virtualization capabilities with the inclusion of kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) technology and Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (Intel VT-d) and PCI-SIG SR-IOV, allowing multiple virtual machines in an Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series-based platform to directly share I/O devices. While continuing to deliver a broad ecosystem of certified hardware and software to customers, the release also features improved I/O throughput and the inclusion of additional tools for developers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 provides the integrated platform foundation for the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization portfolio of solutions. With virtualization technology that is developed as an integral part of the Linux kernel, Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers the next generation of virtualization technology. Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers deploying Xen virtualization will continue to be supported through the full lifecycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, in combination with the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization portfolio of products, is intended to enhance Red Hat's leadership position in open virtualization as being the first Virtual Machine Vendor to support both Intel®VT-d and PCI-SIG SR-IOV, allowing customers to deploy virtualization pervasively.

“Red Hat Enterprise Linux plays a significant role in Red Hat's virtualization strategy, and the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 with the same virtualization technology base as Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization today is a significant step in our delivery of virtualization to the market,” said Scott Crenshaw, vice president, Platform Business Unit at Red Hat. “The release also features advances in performance, security and storage that span virtual and physical environments. With this update release, Red Hat Enterprise Linux aims to raise the bar once again, offering compelling software technologies with impressive quality and reliability.”

In addition to virtualization enhancements, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 also includes a broad set of hardware platform enhancements focusing on performance and scalability. At the processor chipset level, the release includes optimizations for Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series platforms as well as AMD Istanbul platforms. Network advancements include Generic Receive Offload (GRO) that utilizes new processing components in advanced network adapters to offload portions of the receive stack. Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) performance enhancements and hardware support are also included. The release additionally offers a large array of device driver enhancements ranging from disk, network, graphics to OFED InfiniBand drivers.

“Red Hat and Intel have long collaborated on technology advancements to provide joint customers with reliable, high-performance and cost-effective technology for their IT infrastructures that runs great on Intel® Xeon® processor based platforms,” said Doug Fisher, vice president, Intel Software and Service Group and general manager, System Software Division. “With today's update of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 operating platform, customers can take advantage of the latest Intel processor and chipset advances in physical and virtual environments. It's clear that the combination of Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series and Red Hat Enterprise Linux using Intel® VT-d and SR-IOV removes I/O virtualization bottlenecks to deliver increased performance, efficiency and scalability with high performance I/O devices.”

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 is certified on the Cisco Unified Computing System," said David Lawler, vice president of Product Management, Server Access and Virtualization Business Group for Cisco. "We continue to work closely with Red Hat to optimize both the Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization platforms for the scalable Cisco Unified Computing System to help enable our customers to grow their virtualized environments, improve business agility and provide coherent security and network policies."

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 also includes several key feature enhancements targeted at application developers and system administrators. Key to these features is enhancement to the Systemtap performance monitoring toolset, including support for profiling and monitoring C++ applications, as well as inclusion of a large number of static kernel tracepoints to simplify performance observation for the highest profile kernel subsystems. Providing a roadmap to future enhancements, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 includes a preview implementation of the highly used malloc memory allocation library, which is tuned for the latest, anticipated generation of multicore processors.

"IBM is pleased to support the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 with the inclusion of KVM technology for our clients,” said Daniel Frye, vice president, IBM Systems Software Development and Open Systems Development Executive. “KVM is an important emerging open virtualization environment that IBM has contributed to and will support.”

"As companies continue down a path of server consolidation, there is an increasing desire to derive cost savings from virtualization," said Paul Miller, vice president of Marketing, Enterprise Storage and Servers, HP. "The combination of HP BladeSystem and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, now with the performance of KVM virtualization, provides customers with the low-cost, high-performance combination customers demand, backed by two industry leaders."

"Red Hat and Dell continue to deliver joint solutions to reduce complexity and lower operational costs for enterprises," said Judy Chavis, Director of Business Development in the Enterprise Product Group. "With today's delivery of the foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, certified with Dell PowerEdge servers, joint Red Hat and Dell customers are offered expanded scalability and performance, as well as the next generation of virtualization technology."

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 is globally available today and is automatically delivered to customers with an active subscription.

To learn more about this announcement, join Red Hat for a webcast that will be broadcast live from the Red Hat Summit in Chicago at 12 pm ET on September 2, 2009. The webcast will also be available for replay. To join, visit http://www-waa-akam.thomson-webcast.net/us/dispatching/?event_id=a122ef329fb782203ed66b8a37143483&portal_id=af9b227bf07c733390c2738ee0330646.

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