Red Hat has announced a set of solutions for planning, building and managing Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service private and public clouds. The first series in its Red Hat Cloud Foundations line, dubbed Cloud Foundations: Edition One, targets private cloud efforts. Edition One bundles Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Network Satellite, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, JBoss Enterprise Middleware and Red Hat Enterprise MRG Grid. The solution also includes a "cookbook" implementation guide for cloud setup, as well as a detailed reference architecture providing step-by-step instructions, scripts and settings for creating and configuring private clouds. Red Hat is also providing consulting services and training to enable turnkey assessment, implementation and operational management of private clouds.
"Cloud is, by its very nature, something that is integrative," said Scott Crenshaw, vice president and general manager, Cloud Business Unit, at a press conference during last week's Red Hat Summit in Boston. Cloud Foundations: Edition One is "everything that a customer needs to successfully plan, deploy and manage a private cloud and it is the first in a family of Cloud Foundations that Red Hat will expand along with its partners to provide a complete set of cloud services."
In addition to the Cloud Foundations offering, Red Hat also introduced a range of new offerings, ecosystem infrastructure and services for cloud computing. This includes the expansion of Red Hat's Certified Cloud Provider Program to include IBM, as well as other new partners. The program, first announced in June 2009 with Amazon Web Services as its first member, certifies that vendors have validated cloud capabilities and support processes that provide rapid problem resolution. "Red Hat led the industry with Linux in making it a safe, credible, trustworthy destination for enterprise applications," causing Linux to move from the edge of the network into the core data center, said Crenshaw. "We are doing the same thing with cloud, by providing standard, reliable platform for customers to have when they want to use public cloud capacity."
Crenshaw said that Red Hat is one of only two vendors currently offering enterprise-scale cloud solutions. "The cloud is about everything that is needed to help enterprises re-architect their IT for the next generation, for the next five or 10 years," he explained. "To be able to do that effectively, you need virtualization but you also need an enterprise class operating system, enterprise class middleware, and the management tooling around that. The only two companies in the industry that can pull all of that together for the cloud are Red Hat and Microsoft."
Red Hat also announced a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) strategy, intended to open the cloud to a range of developers, from large enterprises and the ISVs who serve them, to emerging Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies. The company says its PaaS roadmap is designed to guide users to build and deploy applications within cloud environments while bridging their on-premise application environments. Red Hat's PaaS strategy is based upon its JBoss Enterprise Middleware product line, and will be part of the Red Hat Cloud Foundations family. The solution will also provide tools for easily developing, deploying and managing cloud-based applications.
Red Hat also announced Red Hat Enterprise Linux developer offerings, available exclusively through Red Hat Certified Cloud Providers. These offerings are designed to give SaaS developers an easier approach to the cloud, while providing a consistent environment for development and deployment.
In a separate announcement, Red Hat says Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 2.2 now provides the first release of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops, enabling customers to deploy Hosted Virtual Desktop (HVD) configurations, also known as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), for centralized provisioning and management of desktop systems. Enterprise Virtualization is capable of hosting and managing both Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines, provides a single infrastructure from which customers can manage their server and desktop virtualization deployments.
Red Hat and Cisco announced the expansion of their virtualization collaboration through the integration of Cisco Virtual Network Link (VN-Link) technology with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, designed to provide customers of both companies with greater network visibility and control, along with reduced TCO for their data center virtualization deployments.
For more information about Red Hat and cloud computing, go here. www.redhat.com/solutions/cloud