Intel, Red Hat Hook Up For Virtualization, Enterprise-Grid

Intel Corp. and Red Hat have launched a global program to accelerate virtualization and enterprise-grid computing, the companies said Tuesday.

Open source company Red Hat will offer tools and facilities that help customers and partners plan, develop and deploy Linux-based projects, while Intel provides resources and equipment.

The program will operate online and at three hubs in Red Hat facilities – McLean, Va., Mumbai, India, and Munich, Germany. The McLean location became operational this month. The other two hubs, along with 14 satellite offices, will open during the second half of 2006.

All hubs are equipped with Intel Itanium 2 and Xeon processor-based servers, Pentium 4 processor-based corporate desktops, Centrino laptops, and Intel-based storage devices, including pre-production platforms. The sites will provide details on reference deployments tested on Red Hat and Intel technology.

Red Hat has begun certifying software solution stacks, and will work with Intel to expand the number of those available. It also plans to introduce a hardware component.The program will also combine support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Intel platforms, including virtualization and multicore. For example, using the centers are companies with pilot projects for Intel Virtualization technology on Fedora Core 5 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 using Xen hypervisor.