This week, Red Hat announced the next move in its long-term strategy of delivering an open-source architecture to the enterprise. Shipping now, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 package is designed to support an increased range of IT deployments spanning seven major hardware architectures.
“Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 marks a significant achievement in the maturation of open source,” said Paul Cormier, executive vice president of engineering at Red Hat. “This release will act as the unifying platform, and will support seven hardware architectures for both client and server deployments.”
Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux has become one of the de facto enterprise Linux standards. This second-generation package from Red Hat, Cormier hopes, will strengthen Red Hat’s foothold in the enterprise and “eliminate the need for proprietary Unix.”
Improving Scalability
Red Hat developed Enterprise Linux 3 in collaboration with its software partners to focus on improving performance and scalability.
The new package includes several features designed to enhance stability with commonly used enterprise software and hardware. Among these new features is the Posix threading library, a series of modules designed to provide performance improvement and stability in multithreading applications.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 is available as part of an annual subscription from Red Hat. Current Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscribers can upgrade now through Red Hat Network. Red Hat OEM partners will deliver Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 in preconfigured hardware in the next 30 to 60 days, according to the company.
Several independent applications are already available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, and other developers have committed to building applications for the platform.
Intel and AMD
Meanwhile, both Intel and AMD have come out in support of Red Hat’s new software.
“Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 takes advantage of the increased cache available on Intel Itanium-based servers to improve the performance of enterprise computing solutions,” said Richard Wirt, senior fellow and general manager in the software and solutions group at Intel.
IT departments, said Wirt, need performance but also want scalable and reliable enterprise solutions. “Intel Xeon processor and Itanium 2 processor-based servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 provide these capabilities,” he said.
AMD has been quick to show support as well. “Systems based on AMD Opteron and AMD Athlon processors running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 deliver high-performance computing to run mission-critical applications in the data center and on the desktop,” said Marty Seyer, vice president and general manager of AMD’s microprocessor business unit.
AMD and Red Hat, said Seyer, deliver performance, scalability and value to customers. “With AMD64 technology, AMD and Red Hat deliver a dynamic 64-bit computing environment that delivers native, high-performance 32-bit and powerful 64-bit applications,” said Seyer.
Dell and HP
Red Hat has achieved support on the hardware front as well, with Dell and HP serving as the most recent examples of major companies overtly supporting the new platform.
“Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 on Dell PowerEdge servers and Dell Precision workstations extends the performance, reliability and cost benefits of standardized, open architectures over proprietary platforms in the Datacenter,” said Pete Morowski, vice president of software in the Dell product group.
Meanwhile, HP has shown support for the software by announcing it will release Enterprise Linux 3 on HP hardware. “HP is delivering on its commitment to put customers first, offering them solutions with the best price and performance available on the market today,” said Martin Fink, vice president of Linux, HP enterprise storage and servers.
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