Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Certified Hypervisors

Updated -

Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions offer customers the flexibility to deploy on bare metal servers or within a virtual machine, either on-premises or on public cloud platforms. This provides customers the flexibility to take full advantage of the mission-critical Linux-based applications their business needs, by deploying them within the most suitable environment for their IT infrastructure.

As organizations work toward building a cloud environment, most have already invested in and are utilizing virtualization technology. This is typically a datacenter virtualization solution like Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, VMWare vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V. All of these solutions require the use of a hypervisor to host virtual machines. Since the hypervisor is the mechanism running the virtual machine, Red Hat invests heavily in certifying on hypervisors, not solutions that control or manage hypervisors.

For example, OpenStack is a control layer that can manage multiple different hypervisors. These hypervisors could be KVM, ESXi, Xen, or a variety of others. Regardless of which hypervisor is being used, the OpenStack control and management of the virtual machines does not change. Thus, in order to maintain the functionality and support the integrity of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat invests significantly in certifying functionality and quality on specific hypervisors. This provides a trusted enterprise-ready operating environment our customers have come to depend on, regardless of the solution they choose to manage it.

By this definition, customers are fully supported by Red Hat when running Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a guest or host platform for other vendors' OpenStack and virtualization solutions, provided they're running as a guest on a certified hypervisor or as a host on a certified hardware platform.

Today, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is certified on hypervisors from vendors that we have committed, enterprise-level, joint engineering and support arrangements with. Today, this includes VMware and Microsoft. In addition, Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests are also fully certified on Amazon and Google public clouds. Finally, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is also a certified guest on the KVM hypervisor from Red Hat, which is utilized in such products as Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

To learn more about Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform and how it is engineered for the enterprise, visit Engineered for the Enterprise.

To learn more about Red Hat Enterprise Linux and certified platforms, visit Certified Platforms

For more detailed information on certified hypervisors, please visit the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Certified Hypervisor matrix.

Close

Welcome! Check out the Getting Started with Red Hat page for quick tours and guides for common tasks.