RHEV 3.0 is based on the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor, which brings the performance seen in recent SPECvirt benchmarks and Linux kernel security features.  KVM benefits from the expanding presence of the Open Virtualization Alliance, a consortium established to foster the adoption of open virtualization alternatives, specifically KVM.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 includes the following updates:

• Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager is now a Java application running on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform on Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• A power user portal that provides end users with a self-service interface to provision virtual machines, define templates and administer their own environments
• A RESTful API that allows complete configuration and management of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for use by customers or a rich ecosystem of management partners
• Extended multi-level administrative capabilities, allowing fine-grained resource control, role based access control, delegation and hierarchical management
• New local storage capabilities
• An integrated and embedded reporting engine allowing for analysis of historic usage trends and utilization reports
• SPICE WAN optimization and enhanced performance including dynamic compression and automatic tuning of desktop effects and color depth. The new version of SPICE also features enhanced support for Linux desktops

An updated KVM hypervisor also features new capabilities. These include the ability to scale hosts and guests. RHEV 3.0 supports up to 160 cores and 2 TB of memory on a host system and up to 64 virtual CPUs per guest, and 512 GB of memory. Performance has also been improved in the latest KVM version, and the networking stack has been moved from userspace into the Linux kernel using vhost-net, improving performance and reducing latency. The transparent huge pages feature is also integrated, reducing the number of times memory is accessed, which improves performance for most workloads. A paravirtualized interrupt controller, x2paic, is used in the virtual machine, reducing guest overhead and improving performance in interrupt-heavy workloads. And Async-IO is used for block I/O operations. The use of SELinux-based sVirt infrastructure has strengthened the security capabilities of KVM as well.

1: Red Hat is pitching itself hard as the “open” cloud player. It’s new CloudForms Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering promises to let users (buzzword alert) “leverage” existing technologies–virtual servers from Red Hat or VMware, public clouds by Amazon, IBM, and others; and on-premises or hosted physical servers.

Then there’s Red Hat OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) which, Red Hat said, will support Java, Python,  PHP and Ruby languages and Spring, Seam, Weld, CDI, Rails, Zend, Django, Java EE and other frameworks.

Isaac Roth, Red Hat’s PaaS Master, said developers just want to develop. Figuring out infrastructure, platform basics, servers, and fundamentals is not how developers should be spending their time. 

“God it’s awful,” Roth told reporters on Wednesday. “I just want to write Angry Birds.”  His claim is that OpenShift Express will ease their pain.

OpenShift Express, a free set of client development tools, is available now. Two other, higher-end versions, OpenShift Flex and OpenShift Power add more capabilities.

2: Last year, Summit attendees were busy weighing Red Hat’s Xen-for-KVM virtualization switch and what issues they might experience in a Xen-to-KVM migration of their own. Flash forward to this year, Red Hat appears to embrace the idea of multiple hypervisors. It must be that whole “openness” thing. VMware doesn’t share that philosophy, according to Red Hat exec VP Paul Cormier who charged that VMware  ”is trying to take the entire world back to the 1980s by locking you into the hardware level with ESX.”

3: Perhaps Red Hat is getting all kumbaya about virtualization because it has no choice. Judging from another Summit session, there’s a heckuva a lot RHEL shops running (gasp!) VMware. Even RHEL shops that would love to go with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) aren’t gonna go there until they no longer have to run RHEV management on a Windows (yes, Windows!) server. That hated Windows requirement will finally go away with the upcoming RHEV 3 release.

4: Judging from the packed session on running high-availability Oracle databases on RHEL, Oracle’s efforts to supplant RHEL with Oracle Unbreakable Linux are falling woefully short.

5: Opinions on Red Hat support remain mixed. Some RHEL customers  privately say companies deploy RHEL because they have to prove they’re running a supported OS. But the problem is, when they actually call for support, the results are wildly inconsistent. Two Summit attendees — who work for different government agencies — said they are very happy with RHEL support, although they both also noted that they never, ever use it. Many techie-heavy Linux shops may be in the same boat. (If a support call is never dialed, does support really happen?)

Here’s more cloud news from Red Hat Summit/JBoss World.

Let us know what you think about the story; email Barbara Darrow, Senior News Director at bdarrow@techtarget.com.