Red Hat Moves Into Desktop Virtualization
Open source enterprise software company Red Hat has updated its virtualization platform, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (REV), to include support for desktop virtualization, the company announced Monday. The beta version of REV 2.2 will include a number of new programs that will allows customers to run a virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI).
"It will allow you to deploy a RHEL [Red Hat Enterprise Linux] desktop, or Windows XP, or Windows 7, on a secure high-performance hypervisor platform," said Andrew Cathrow, who is a Red Hat senior product marketing manager. "By using a VDI, you are moving the [operating system] from the end user's device into the data center, where it is easier to manage and maintain."
REV is a package of a number of different Red Hat applications integrated for offering virtualization capabilities to the enterprise. It comes with a virtualization management console, as well as a bare-metal hypervisor, the Kernel-Based Virtual Machine (KVM). KVM is also included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). REV can run hosted versions of either Linux or Windows.