Red Hat has announced an agreement with Microsoft to support each other’s guests on their virtualization servers including coordinated technical support.
Mike Evans, Vice President at Red Hat, recognized that today’s enterprises tend to deploy real and virtual solutions in a heterogeneous environment “including mixed Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows Server environments”. This fact prompted Red Hat to strike a deal with Microsoft. The agreement means that:
- Red Hat will validate Windows Server guests to be supported on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization technologies.
- Microsoft will validate Red Hat Enterprise Linux server guests to be supported on Windows Server Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.
- Once each company completes testing, customers with valid support agreements will receive coordinated technical support for running Windows Server operating system virtualized on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization, and for running Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualized on Windows Server Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.
Microsoft also admitted their customers are interested in Linux, according to Mike Neil, General Manager of Virtualization Strategy:
Customers are rapidly adopting Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and in doing so are interested in support for running more operating systems on Hyper-V in their virtualized environment, including those from Red Hat.
The agreement will certainly have a major impact on customers because an “IDC research shows that Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are two of the main operating environments deployed by enterprises, accounting for 80% of the x86 operating systems running on hypervisors”, according to Gary Chen, Research Manager at IDC.