qumranet

Red Hat testing virtualization lineup

Red Hat has begun beta-testing its new line of virtualization products based on Qumranet's KVM hypervisor.

The tests are the next stage in development of the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) lineup, which was announced by the company in February. The RHEV portfolio includes a standalone hypervisor, RHEV-H, as well as virtualization managers for servers and desktops. In its announcement earlier this year, Red Hat said the products would be made available within the following 18 months, which sets a deadline of August 2010.

"We are in a unique position to deliver a comprehensive portfolio of virtualization solutions, … Read more

VMware VCloud: Channel conflict on the horizon?

VMware's announcement Monday of its new VCloud initiative is an early attempt to offer a more "enterprise-class" cloud offering. Considering that most cloud offerings are based on virtual machine images, it's a smart (and obvious) move by VMware to stake its claim.

To date, the majority of cloud offerings have lacked certain enterprise fundamentals--things like security models, licensing agreements, and so on that are requirements, not accessories. By aligning with hosting providers like Rackspace, VMware starts to offer show some of the enterprise type of attributes we'll eventually see from companies like IBM and … Read more

Red Hat to VMware: Our virtualization rocks, yours stinks

As if VMware didn't already have enough problems, Red Hat has gone on the offensive, claiming that its new Qumranet virtualization software outperforms VMware's ESX in a number of key areas, as The Register reports. Specifically, Red Hat claims that its KVM software:

Runs five virtual machines (VMs) for every three that VMware's ESX can run on the same physical hardware; Tops out at 52 VMs on a physical server while ESX can only manage 35, and Citrix gives in at 30.

I haven't seen any independent benchmarks, but if these claims are true than proprietary … Read more

Red Hat makes buy for KVM--but VDI too

Last week's big virtualization news was Red Hat's purchase of Qumranet for $107 million.

By way of brief background, Qumranet has two overlapping, but somewhat independent, technology sets. The first--for which it is probably best known--is KVM, an open-source hypervisor that is in the process of being added to the Linux kernel. The other is its SolidICE virtual desktop solution that uses a back-end Linux server (virtualized with KVM) connecting to clients with the company's own Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments (SPICE) protocol. The virtual desktops themselves can be Windows, as well as Linux.

Some aspects … Read more

An insider's view on Red Hat's Qumranet acquisition

If you want an insider's view on Red Hat's acquisition of Qumranet, you could hardly do better than to read Billy Marshall's commentary. Billy used to run North America sales for Red Hat and competes with Red Hat today from his perch at virtualization vendor rPath.

Billy writes:

With this acquisition, Red Hat is escalating the already fierce battle that is raging for control of the software layer that is rapidly replacing the general purpose OS as the access layer for hardware infrastructure. Qumranet is a very savvy acquisition by Red Hat because it plays to their … Read more

Red Hat acquires way into Windows game

Just four days after Red Hat closed its second quarter, the company has announced the acquisition of Qumranet, an open-source virtualization company, positioning the open-source leader to close many more successful quarters to come.

Red Hat acquired Qumranet for $107 million in cash, according to the company, which is surprising, given Qumranet's comparative lack of revenue, having only released its product in September of 2007.

Such is the importance of virtualization. I'd argue that Qumranet was worth the hefty multiple.

In a statement, Red Hat claims that it "can now deliver what virtualization-only vendors cannot: a comprehensive … Read more