Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Microsoft Azure

IT and development teams can continue to use their current skills, processes, and tools to administer and automate their environments across clouds and on premise–without extensive delays from retraining. Red Hat Insights (included in your Red Hat subscription) works across on-site and cloud environments, so you can manage all Red Hat Enterprise Linux instances from a single interface. Organizations can also use System Roles in concert with Red Hat Satellite or Ansible Automation Platform to augment the deployment and management of systems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Azure provide jointly engineered capabilities optimized for cloud use, giving enterprises the choice and flexibility they need to reach their goals and help ensure reliable, security-focused performance in the cloud. It also works with open source container tools Podman, Buildah, and Skopeo, to help easily spin up containers, manage deployment, and speed development of new applications in the cloud.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is certified for use with hundreds of regional cloud and service providers, so you can choose the best IT infrastructure options for your business. Our large ecosystem of certified hardware, software, and cloud providers allows you to customize your hybrid cloud environments to meet your needs including ISV solutions like SAP and Microsoft SQL Server.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes an image builder tool that lets you create customized Red Hat Enterprise Linux images based on your workload needs, save them as templates, and push them to cloud inventories. You can choose to provision your own Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machines (VMs) or download pre-provisioned images from Azure Marketplace. You also have the option to use ready-to-deploy Red Hat certified gold images.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes application streams and security controls, upgrades, and patches–all backed by a 10-year lifecycle. Microsoft Azure includes multi-layered security across physical data centers, infrastructure, and operations, while built-in operating security features help you meet today’s high security and compliance expectations. Azure users with a Red Hat subscription also receive ongoing support from the Red Hat Product Security team.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux allows you to place workloads and data where it makes the most sense at all times. Existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-premise customers can easily transfer their subscription to Azure with the Red Hat Cloud Access program.

Red Hat and Microsoft share an integrated, co-located support team, providing a unified contact point for Red Hat ecosystems running on the Azure platform. This gives you access to expertise, knowledge, and joint support models via Red Hat’s award-winning support organization or in coordination with the Azure support team.

In-place upgrades for Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud are supported for on-demand, pay-as-you-go instances on major cloud providers.

While cloud service providers offer commitment discounts on resources and consumption, Red Hat offers committed spend discounts on the procurement of Red Hat products. Red Hat’s Hybrid Committed Spend program offers you the flexibility to purchase and deploy Red Hat products when and where you need them. You can purchase from Red Hat directly or through the Azure marketplace and receive volume discounts based on your total Red Hat spend.

Pay as you go can provide increased cost-efficiency and enhanced flexibility, and it qualifies for Microsoft’s committed spend agreement with Azure (known as the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment), which can be used for purchasing Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This usage-based approach ensures you only pay for the resources you use, allowing for rapid scaling in response to demand fluctuations. To further customize your environment, you can take advantage of Microsoft Azure Hybrid Benefit to enable switching between pay as you go and a Red Hat subscription.

Updates and releases of CentOS Linux 7 will be discontinued on June 30, 2024. Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on Microsoft Azure delivers an intelligent, production-grade operating foundation for open hybrid cloud environments. Migrate to Red Hat Enterprise Linux to benefit from full life cycle support, a large partner ecosystem, and built-in security features.