Red Hat and Cisco Expand Relationship with Virtualization Technology Integration

Companies working together to integrate Cisco VN-Link and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization to deliver datacenter customers reduced total cost of ownership, higher performance and greater return on investment

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Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, and Cisco, the worldwide leader in networking, today announced the expansion of their virtualization collaboration with the integration of Cisco Virtual Network Link (VN-Link) technology with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. With this integration, Red Hat and Cisco customers will have an opportunity to achieve higher performance, greater network visibility and control and a reduced total cost of ownership for their datacenter virtualization deployments.

Bringing the network and virtualization domains closer to simplify datacenter deployments, Red Hat and Cisco are integrating the Cisco Unified Computing System Virtual Interface Card with the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor included in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. This combination creates a logical network infrastructure that will help to provide full visibility, control and consistency of the network for virtualization without sacrificing performance. VN-Link automates the movement of network and storage services so they can follow virtual machines as they are moved around the datacenter, helping to ensure consistent policy-driven network capabilities across all servers, physical or virtual, in a customer's datacenter. With this combination:

  • Virtual machines can directly access dedicated physical I/O resources, improving network throughput and freeing CPU cycles to deliver greater application density and improved virtual machine density for greater performance.
  • Customers will be able to more easily manage and secure virtual environments with the higher visibility and network control provided by VN-Link on a per-virtual-machine basis for applications running under Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.
  • Application deployment will be faster with the automation of virtual machine creation with policy-based network configurations that are jointly supported by both companies' virtualization management tools.
  • Large-scale cloud deployment with more consistent network management, security and isolation is achievable.
  • Customers have the opportunity to lower their acquisition costs by up to 20 to 40 percent compared to traditional virtualization solutions. Utilizing the benefits of the Cisco Unified Computing System's simplified architecture and Red Hat's centralized virtualization management, customers can reduce both the cost and time to deploy their business applications, resulting in lower total cost of ownership.

"At Travelport, we have deployed the Cisco Unified Computing System to reduce our IT footprint and deploy both virtualized and non-virtualized applications more quickly, which is essential in the dynamic travel industry," said Steven Senecal, manager, global server engineering at Travelport, a broad-based business services company and a leading provider of critical transaction processing solutions to companies operating in the global travel industry. "As the Linux market grows, the integration between Cisco's VN-Link technology and Red Hat's KVM hypervisor represents a high-performance virtualization offering for the open source market from two industry leaders, and expands the choices for deploying virtualization on Linux platforms while enabling the same level of security and policy for virtual machines that exists for physical servers."

"With the tight integration between the Cisco Unified Computing System and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, we are offering our joint customers significantly enhanced virtualization performance capabilities," said Brian Stevens, chief technology officer and vice president, Engineering at Red Hat. "Today, Red Hat becomes the first Linux vendor to offer an integrated VN-Link virtualization solution with Cisco, marking another important step forward in Red Hat's virtualization and Linux technology leadership."

"The growth of virtualization in the datacenter and cloud computing, coupled with the adoption of Linux-based server infrastructures, has created a need for a simplified solution for virtualized server I/O," said Ed Bugnion, chief technology officer, Server Access and Virtualization business unit at Cisco. "The combination of the Cisco Unified Computing System and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization means that organizations can take advantage of Cisco innovation backed by the momentum of the open source community, resulting in an open, integrated and tuned environment for virtual infrastructure deployment."

The integrated solution is expected to be available from Red Hat and Cisco later this year in line with the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, including the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor.

To learn more about this announcement, join Red Hat for a webcast that will be broadcast live from the Red Hat Summit in Boston at 12:30 pm ET on June 23, 2010. The webcast will also be available for replay. To join, visit http://www-waa-akam.thomson-webcast.net/us/dispatching/?event_id=20f5425fcb4a6cbb8136d0918bf9e9f2&portal_id=af9b227bf07c733390c2738ee0330646.

For more information about Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, visit www.redhat.com/rhev. For more information about Cisco VN-Link, visit www.cisco.com/go/vnlink.

For more news about Red Hat, visit www.redhat.com. For more news, more often, visit www.press.redhat.com.

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions and an S&P 500 company, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 65 offices spanning the globe. CIOs ranked Red Hat as one of the top vendors delivering value in Enterprise Software for six consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value survey. Red Hat provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with virtualization, applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate, this year celebrates 25 years of technology innovation, operational excellence and corporate social responsibility. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

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©2010 Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat, the Shadowman logo and JBoss are registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Cisco, the Cisco logo, Cisco Systems and Cisco Unified Computing System are registered trademarks, trademarks or service marks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship.

  • About Red Hat
  • Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more at http://www.redhat.com.



  • Forward-Looking Statements
  • Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to delays or reductions in information technology spending; the effects of industry consolidation; the ability of the Company to compete effectively; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; the ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company’s growth and international operations; fluctuations in exchange rates; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions, governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company’s views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company’s views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.