"Red Hat today released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5, featuring a 2.6.9-55.EL kernel paravirtualized for i686 and x86_64 machines. RHEL 4.5 also provides NFS performance metrics and updated kernel support for Infiniband connectivity, according to the release announcement."
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Member since:2006-03-22
Redhat couldn't have made a much smarter move than updating RHEL4 with a paravirtualized kernel. This will allow businesses using RHEL4 to seamlessly upgrade to RHEL5 by hosting RHEL4 virtual machines under RHEL5.
Erm, no. You could always run RHEL 4.4 as a virtual machine under RHEL5, the virtualised kernel means you could run RHEL5 as a virtual machine under RHEL4.5
4.5 is really so people who have a real need to stick to RHEL4 can gain some features of RHEL5.
My understanding is that, although you could run RHEL 4.x within a fully virtualized environment, it was not possible to run it within a paravertualized environment.
Paravirtualization comes with numerous advantages, including but not limited to.
1) Significant speed boost (at least that's my understanding).
2) Support for giving dedicated access to specific hardware (e.g. network cards)
With RHEL 4.5, it is now possible to run it within a paravirtualized environment, as such taking advantage of the above to features and what ever else comes with para-virtualization.
So now admins can look to set up RHEL 5 virtualization infrastructure and migrate RHEL 4.x servers across by upgrading to 4.5 and installing the required xen modules.
re-write to try and make more sense
Edited 2007-05-04 10:55
Member since:2005-11-05
Wrong... this is PARAVIRTUALIZATION.
If you don't understand paravirtualization, wikipedia it. With older versions of redhat, you could run them fully virtualized, but that never runs as fast or well as when paravirtualized.
By that note, you can run RHEL3 "virtualized", but not paravirtualized. Please read my post and teach yourself about the benefits of paravirtualization. Then you might understand why this is exciting news.
Member since:2006-01-09
I know what para vs. full virtualisation is, but you seem to be hinting that these guest OSes have been modified to enable that.....?
As far as I know, only non-VT/Pacifica hosts would need a guest to run a modified kernel (the old Windows on Xen problem).
So has 4.5 been modified such that your could paravirtualise them on old processors, is that your point or am I missing something?
Member since:
2006-01-09
Erm, no. You could always run RHEL 4.4 as a virtual machine under RHEL5, the virtualised kernel means you could run RHEL5 as a virtual machine under RHEL4.5
4.5 is really so people who have a real need to stick to RHEL4 can gain some features of RHEL5.