Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 17 | Page 88

t cht lk infrastructure,” said Gunnar Hellekson, Director, Product Management, Linux and Virtualization, Red Hat. “With enhancements in Red Hat Virtualization 4.2, including improved user interface, user-managed networking, disaster recovery features and tighter integration with the rest of Red Hat’s portfolio, we expect organisations to find it even easier to use and manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux hypervisor.” The latest version of Red Hat Virtualisation builds on Red Hat’s recognised leadership for high performing, highly-available and more easily scalable virtual machine (VM) workloads. Specifically, Red Hat Virtualization 4.2 introduces new and enhanced capabilities around: • User Interface (UI): Red Hat Virtualization 4.2 delivers an easier-to-use and more intuitive user interface. Using the open source PatternFly project, the Red Hat Virtualization UI now provides a cohesive look and feel to other Red Hat offerings, including Red Hat CloudForms. This is designed to help increase productivity for IT operations, as users can more comfortably move between management tools without having to relearn basic functions • Disaster Recovery (DR): New disaster recovery capabilities within Red Hat Virtualization 4.2 deliver a native site- to-site failover capability. Instead of depending on integration with a specific storage vendor, Red Hat Virtualization can use storage at both primary and failover sites with more reliable and consistent data replication. Adding to this functionality are Red Hat Ansible Playbooks and Roles that better enable automated failover and failback of DR processes, which limits the potential for human error to cause data and operational losses • Software-Defined Networking (SDN): Open Virtual Network (OVN) has been integrated with Red Hat Virtualization 4.2 to deliver a native SDN solution through Open vSwitch. This is designed to provide automated management of network infrastructure and a Neutron compatible API for external network providers, as well as network self-service for users, which helps to free up network 88 INTELLIGENTCIO “ RED HAT VIRTUALIZATION ALLOWS OUR CUSTOMERS TO ACCESS THE ECONOMICS, PERFORMANCE AND AGILITY THEY NEED FROM THEIR VIRTUALISED INFRASTRUCTURE. Gunnar Hellekson, Director, Product Management, Linux and Virtualization, Red Hat administrators from user requests for additional infrastructure • Metrics and Logging: The new metrics and logging features of Red Hat Virtualization 4.2 deliver enhanced real-time reporting and visualisation capabilities built around the Elasticsearch, Fluentd and Kibana (EFK), which help to drive increased operational efficiency • High Performance VM: Red Hat Virtualization 4.2 provides a new high performance VM option, which is designed to streamline the process of configuring a high-performing VM, a necessity for extreme workloads like big data analysis or AI. This makes it possible for VMs running on Red Hat Virtualization 4.2 to run at nearly bare metal speeds, offering additional performance and efficiency for demanding applications • GPU Virtualization: With support for NVIDIA virtual GPU solutions, Red Hat Virtualization environments have the power to support more graphics and compute-intensive applications in a virtual environment in an organization’s preferred location and connected device Cross-portfolio integration and Red Hat Virtualization Suite Open integration is a key tenet of Red Hat Virtualization. The latest release delivers deeper integration across the Red Hat portfolio, including Red Hat Ansible Automation, Red Hat Gluster Storage, Red Hat CloudForms, Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat Satellite. Additionally, Red Hat Virtualization 4.2 introduces Red Hat Virtualization Suite. Comprised of Red Hat Virtualization and Red Hat CloudForms, the suite manages heterogeneous environments across multiple clouds, www.intelligentcio.com