Updated features, provided to customers through subscription model, deliver enhanced virtualization scalability, OpenJDK functionality and Intel Nehalem processor support to enable customers to run the most demanding workloads on more affordable platforms
RALEIGH, NC – January 20, 2009 – Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the global availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, featuring the latest open source, commercial-strength technology innovations. In the third update to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, customers will receive a wide range of enhancements, including significantly increased virtualization scalability, expanded hardware platform support and incorporation of OpenJDK Java technologies. Customers with a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription will receive the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 update, which is available for immediate download from Red Hat Network.
The primary new features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 include:
- Increased scalability of virtualized x86-64 environments: This includes the industry-leading ability to support virtual servers with up to 32 virtual CPUs and 80GB of memory. Physical server limits have also been expanded to match the size of today’s latest hardware systems, with up to 126 CPUs and 1TB main memory. New features, such as support for Hugepage memory and Intel Extended Page Tables (EPT), dramatically improve the performance of virtual servers. For customers, these enhancements allow more and larger virtual systems to be configured on today’s powerful servers, thereby reducing costs. Additionally, more devices can be allocated to each virtual server (guest), enabling the virtualization of applications with heavy I/O requirements.
- Support for Intel Core i7 (Nehalem) processors: This quad-core, hyperthreaded 45nM processor is one of the most significant advances for Intel processor architecture since the Pentium Pro. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3. delivers exceptional performance with the new processor, and also supports features such as the power management and hyperthreading. In internal testing, the Red Hat Engineering Performance Group has measured exceptional gains with the new Nehalem processors, with unaudited results showing gains of 1.7x for commercial applications and gains up to 3.5x for high-performance technical computing applications compared to the previous generation of Intel processors.
- Inclusion of OpenJDK: OpenJDK is a high-performance, fully open source implementation of Java SE 6. OpenJDK is based on the same code base as Sun’s JDK, the most widely adopted Java implementation. OpenJDK in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 has passed the full Java SE 6 TCK and is compatible with all applications written for Java SE 6 and previous versions. OpenJDK is fully supported directly by Red Hat. With the integration of OpenJDK, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 is the the first enterprise-ready solution with a fully open source Java stack when combined with JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.
“Further strengthening our long-standing relationship with Red Hat, we have collaborated to make the newly available Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 operating platform run great on Intel® Xeon® processor-based platforms,” said Doug Fisher, vice president, Intel Software and Services Group, and general manager, Systems Software Division. “Together, the compelling combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 and Intel’s current and future Intel Xeon processor-based servers enable customers to run the most demanding, business-critical workloads on high-performance, cost-effective, reliable platforms.”
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 also includes enhancements spanning many other components of the leading open source operating system, with the solution’s Release Notes documenting over 150 additions and updates. These new features and improvements range from general kernel, device driver and architectural enhancements to simplified desktop networking and full support of the GFS2 file system. In combination, these many enhancements reinforce Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the industry’s leading commercial-strength open source operating system environment – from the desktop to the mainframe.
“With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, Red Hat has once again delivered a rich set of features, developed through rapid innovation with the open source community, that can increase the capability and drive down the cost of customers’ Information Technology,” said Scott Crenshaw, vice president, Platform Business Unit at Red Hat. “With the challenge to carve costs out of IT budgets, the flexibility, reliability and simplicity of an Enterprise Linux subscription has more value to customers than ever. Our customers have access to all the features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 today.”
For more information on the features and updates in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, read the blog on www.press.redhat.com. For more information about Red Hat Enterprise Linux, visit www.redhat.com/rhel.