Red Hat and Microsoft sort server interoperability

Red Hat and Microsoft have followed up on their February deal and released interoperability software for their virtual servers.

The two have new deployed software that lets Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V host with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4 guests.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, using the Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor can now work with Windows Server 2003, 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 guests.

"IT administrators supporting heterogeneous infrastructures certainly understand the pain of having to deal with multiple independent technical support organizations,” said Steve Brasen, principle analyst at Enterprise Management Associates.

“With this announcement, Red Hat and Microsoft are ensuring their customers can resolve any issues related to Microsoft Windows on Red Hat Enterprise virtualisations, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating on Microsoft Hyper-V, regardless of whether the problem is related to the operating system or the virtualisation implementation."

In addition, Microsoft products certified on Windows Server and Red Hat products certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux are also supported. The two companies are going to be running a joint support operation as of today.

“We are happy to offer our customers added choice and interoperability in virtualisation – the ability to deploy mixed virtualisation environments with Red Hat and Microsoft platforms -- with coordinated support by both companies,” said Mike Evans, vice president of Corporate Development at Red Hat.