DUAL PLATFORM STRATEGIES FOR THE MODERN DATACENTER TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW Red Hat Enterprise Linux protects and extends Microsoft Windows investments Introduction Red Hat Enterprise Linux easily integrates with existing Windows infrastructure, allowing customers to protect and extend their Microsoft assets. IT organizations are under intense pressure to improve service levels and contain expenses in today s challenging economic climate. Forward-looking organizations are upgrading IT infrastructure and implementing virtualization and cloud computing solutions to improve business agility and drive down costs. Many enterprises are adopting a dual platform approach, retaining Microsoft Windows for office productivity and collaboration applications, and deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux for infrastructure and datacenter modernization initiatives. By adopting standards-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux, businesses can enjoy high performance, reliability, and security, with a lower overall TCO 1. Intended for Microsoft Windows IT managers, solution architects, and technical decision makers, this whitepaper reviews the functional and business advantages of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for virtualization, cloud computing, and other new business workloads. It explains how Windows customers can take advantage of standards-based services and open source economics with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, while maintaining key Windows infrastructure investments and administrative practices. Exchange Directory (LDAP) Analytics Sharepoint Authentication (Kerberos) Line of business SQL server Naming (DNS) Database Active directory Microsoft Windows Server Collaboration and productivity services Time (NTP) Administration and management Shared services Web File/Print Core applications and services RHEL0037 Figure 1: Red Hat Enterprise Linux protects and extends Windows investments facebook.com/redhatinc @redhatnews linkedin.com/company/red-hat 1 Migrate to Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Lower the Total Cost of Ownership, Alinean, December 2011.
Business drivers: Datacenter modernization IT organizations are updating IT infrastructure, creating dynamic computing environments to optimize server and storage economics, and improving IT service agility. Virtualization and cloud computing Use virtualization to create a dynamic, services-based infrastructure to support legacy migration projects and big data programs. The worldwide economic downturn has forced many businesses to contain expenses and improve operational efficiency. Many organizations are instituting cloud computing and virtualization initiatives to enhance business agility and to curtail capital equipment and operating expenditures. By consolidating workloads and virtualizing resources, businesses can reduce operational costs, while creating a more dynamic, services-based infrastructure to support IT initiatives such as legacy UNIX and RISC migration projects, and big data and analytics programs. Legacy UNIX and RISC migration Many organizations operate mixed IT environments, using Windows platforms for office productivity applications, Linux systems for web and IT infrastructure (DNS, file and print services, etc.), and UNIX platforms for line-of-business applications. As UNIX and RISC systems approach end of life, many enterprises are migrating legacy workloads to standards-based Linux platforms to reduce cost, enhance performance, and improve scalability. Big data and analytics Enterprises are kicking off big data projects to gain better insight into their customers and businesses. Collecting and analyzing massive volumes of unstructured data blogs, email, social networking, and multimedia content helps organizations gain a deeper understanding of the marketplace. Many businesses are choosing Linux for high-performance computing initiatives and next-generation non-relational database implementations (Mongo, Couch, Hadoop, etc.) in order to enable high scalability and performance. Linux is emerging as the platform of choice for the extract, transform, and load (ETL) phases in data warehousing, business intelligence, and analytics. Red Hat Enterprise Linux satisfies key business requirements The world s leading open source Linux distribution meets demanding performance and reliability requirements at a significantly lower cost than proprietary operating systems. Many organizations are turning to Red Hat Enterprise Linux to support virtualization, cloud computing, big data, and other new business workloads. The world s leading open source Linux distribution meets demanding performance and reliability requirements at a significantly lower cost than proprietary operating systems such as Windows 2 or UNIX 3. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, IT organizations can address stringent performance, scalability, reliability, and security requirements, while managing expenses and ensuring coexistence with established Windows-based infrastructure. 2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Compared with Microsoft Windows, Red Hat Executive Brief, 2013 3 Migrate to Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Lower the Total Cost of Ownership, Alinean, December 2011. 2
High performance and scalability Performance and scalability are critical to optimizing the user experience and maximizing datacenter economics. To compete in today s 7x24 global economy, information workers need rapid and predictable access to all of their business data, applications, and services. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is field-proven to meet the demands of mission-critical enterprise applications. The platform offers outstanding performance in both scale-out and scale-up deployments. With the ability to scale to up to 4,096 CPUs and 64 terabytes of RAM, 4 Red Hat Enterprise Linux can handle data-intensive workloads. Red Hat Enterprise Linux-powered systems have achieved leading results on industry-standard benchmarks as diverse as SPECweb2009, which measures the performance of web servers; TPC-H for large scale data warehouses; and SPECvirt_sc2010 for server consolidation and virtualization 5. High reliability and availability Application and system availability are also critical for maintaining user satisfaction and optimizing worker productivity. System downtime can lead to idle workers, lost revenue, and dissatisfied customers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux takes advantage of the advanced reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) capabilities found in Intel and AMD x86 processors, which leads to extremely high system uptime. In addition, Red Hat offers the High Availability Add-On, Resilient Storage Add-On, and Load Balancer Add-On to extend RAS even further. Strong security IT infrastructure is susceptible to a variety of denial of service attacks, viruses, and other threats from inside and outside the enterprise. Security breaches can tarnish a company s reputation and result in loss of business, litigation, or regulatory fines. Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides comprehensive standards-based identity management, encryption, authentication, auditing, and access control features to secure IT infrastructure and safeguard data. Security-enhanced Linux delivers a strong and flexible framework for enforcing role-based access control and multi-level security. Security for Red Hat Enterprise Linux begins with a core feature known as Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux). SELinux was collaboratively developed with the U.S. Government s National Security Agency, Red Hat, and other community and enterprise contributors. SELinux delivers a strong and flexible framework for enforcing role-based access control and multi-level security, and is woven throughout the platform. For instance, for virtualization, it provides critical guest separation regardless of the guest operating system. In addition to SELinux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes system firewalls, audit capabilities, and system package and file integrity verification tools. Together, these features provide a robust security architecture that covers deployment models that range from Internet-facing servers to trusted computers. 4 Based on 64-bit x86 architecture. 5 TPC Benchmark C and TPC-C are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). For more information, visit www.tpc.org. SPEC and the benchmark names SPECweb and SPECvirt_sc are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. For more information visit www.spec.org. 3
Red Hat complements the Microsoft operating environment Red Hat Enterprise Linux integrates with the Microsoft operating environment, while providing a scalable and cost-effective framework for virtualization and cloud computing. The platform readily supports new and re-hosted workloads such as big data, mission-critical ERP and CRM, as well as directory and file-and-print services. And because Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses resources that are already in place (server, networking, and storage), interoperates seamlessly with existing IT infrastructure, and exploits established hardware procurement, administration, and support procedures, it can be deployed with minimal changes to IT operations. Protects and extends previous IT investments Red Hat Enterprise Linux integrates easily into the existing datacenter environment, protecting and extending previous technology investments. Microsoft customers are free to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux on their x86 platform of choice, using spare hardware inventories, and existing hardware maintenance operations and procedures. And since many important enterprise applications (Oracle, SAP, etc.) are available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, customers can readily re-host their line-of-business applications. Red Hat Enterprise Linux also integrates seamlessly with existing storage and networking infrastructure. The platform supports a variety of standards-based networking infrastructures such as Infiniband and Ethernet, and storage infrastructures such as FCoE and iscsi, as well as traditional NAS, SAN, and DAS devices. Red Hat Enterprise Linux also supports a wide variety of flash memory cards and memory arrays for low-latency storage. Organizations can contain costs by creating a unified IT infrastructure with common compute, storage, and networking resources for both Windows and Linux workloads. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is readily integrated into existing Microsoft system management solutions and practices. Microsoft System Center customers can use the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Management Pack from Microsoft to perform diagnostics on and to monitor the status, health, and performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux processes and resources. Equivalent functionality at comparable cost Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a stable and feature-rich platform that delivers the complete set of functional capabilities required by demanding IT organizations (see Table 1). The open source model enables Red Hat to bring new capabilities to the market at an accelerated pace. Microsoft customers can confidently implement new workloads on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, enjoying equivalent or greater functionality, at comparable or sometimes lower cost 6. 6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux: A Higher Value and Lower-cost Alternative to Microsoft Windows Server 2008. http://www./resourcelibrary/whitepapers/rhel-microsoft-pricing-comparison. 4
Table 1: Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers comparable functionality to Windows Server Function Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Windows Server 2008 R2 Shared standards or toolsets Backup Directory services Basic Linux commands, open source solutions, ISV solutions Both Windows and Linux are supported by cross-platform backup products Red Hat Directory Server Backup and recovery; additional ISV solutions Active Directory File and print sharing SQL databases Web server Alternate technologies (LDAP) Samba, NFS, Line Printer Daemon (LPD) Protocol/Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) PostgresSQL, MySQL, SQLite, ISV add-ons Apache HTTP server, Squid web proxy, Postfix (LDAP) File and print services SQL server Internet Information Services (IIS) Distributed caching JBoss jbpm caching AppFabric High availability clustering Networking functions Remote desktop access Software update and life cycle management Virtualization High Availability Add-On, Load Balancer Add-On, Resilient Storage Add-on High Performance Network Add-On Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops Red Hat Network Satellite Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) Failover clustering and network load balancing Basic operating system functions Remote desktop services Windows Server Update Services System Center Hyper-V Virtual private networking IPsec VPN DirectAccess Web caching Squid BranchCache 5
Advantages of standards-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux Standards-based and field-proven, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the ideal datacenter modernization platform. IT organizations using open source Red Hat solutions can eliminate vendor lock-in and gain access to a vast technology community. Standards-based interoperability Red Hat is committed to and contributes to the definition of open standards to promote multi-vendor interoperability. Red Hat Enterprise Linux works well in heterogeneous environments, including established Windows datacenters. Red Hat is committed to and contributes to the definition of open standards to promote multi-vendor interoperability. Occasionally, Red Hat also supports non-standard interfaces in order to enable integration with proprietary systems. Key areas of interoperability include: Identity management: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Identity Management integrates with Microsoft Active Directory, allowing user information to be synchronized from Active Directory. This creates a single authoritative user data store for mixed Windows and Linux environments. This is essential for cost-effective single sign on (SSO) and two-factor authentication (TFA) as well as for federated authentication environments. File systems: Samba enables file sharing between Windows and Linux environments, making existing Windows file systems accessible on Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. Print services: Samba also enables print sharing between Windows and Linux environments, making existing Windows print services available to Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. As an alternative, enterprises can replace Windows print servers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux print servers to simplify printer driver administration and queue management. Integrated virtualization Red Hat delivers rich virtualization capabilities as an integral component of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform. Based on kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) technology, Red Hat s virtualization functions are integrated into Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and take advantage of the latest hardware virtualization capabilities provided by Intel and AMD processors. For additional flexibility, customers can deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a supported guest in virtualized environments, including Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, Microsoft Hyper-V, and VMware. Red Hat Enterprise Linux also supports multiple virtualization use cases, from hardware abstraction for existing software stacks, to datacenter consolidation, to virtualized clusters and private clouds. Comprehensive functionality Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes a rich set of core functionality: web infrastructure such as an Apache HTTP server and Squid web proxy, MySQL, the world s most popular open source database, and PostgresSQL and SQLite. These databases are all covered by the Red Hat Enterprise Linux software subscription model, so IT organizations don t have to worry about the costly or complex licensing schemes that accompany proprietary databases such as Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle Database. 6
Proven technology Red Hat Enterprise Linux is field-proven to meet the most demanding enterprise workloads. For nearly a decade, businesses all over the world have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux for fundamental web and IT infrastructure. In recent years, many of the world s largest organizations such as NYSE Euronext 7 have successfully migrated mission-critical line-of-business applications from proprietary UNIX and RISC systems to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With its proven track record, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the platform of choice for business-critical datacenter modernization initiatives. Cloud ready Portable, scalable, and flexible, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has emerged as the platform of choice for the cloud 8. In fact Red Hat Enterprise Linux powers some of the world s largest clouds, including salesforce.com. Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers a consistent and stable environment across physical and virtual deployments, making it the ideal platform for on-premise, hosted, or open hybrid cloud environments. Red Hat Enterprise Linux delivers high performance and reliability alongside rich features and functions that meet stringent workload demands while providing all the advantages of an open source solution better technology, greater choice, and lower costs. Choice and flexibility are what the cloud demands, and that s why Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the clear choice for the cloud. Ecosystem of solutions and support Red Hat Enterprise Linux is backed by a global community of the world s leading hardware, software, and solution providers. Red Hat products and solutions are certified for integration with top hardware vendors including HP, IBM, Dell, and Cisco. Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers can choose from thousands of software applications. From database and ERP solutions to financial applications and CRM systems, many leading enterprise software vendors support Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Conclusion: Red Hat Enterprise Linux the ideal platform for the modern datacenter In today s challenging business climate, IT planners and managers are continuously seeking creative ways to enhance service levels and drive cost reductions. Forward-looking organizations are revamping IT infrastructure and deploying virtualization solutions and private cloud services to improve business agility and reduce expenses. Many Windows customers are turning to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for datacenter modernization initiatives. Standards-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux meets stringent performance and reliability demands at significantly lower cost than a proprietary operating system such as Windows. And since Red Hat Enterprise Linux readily integrates with existing Microsoft infrastructure and established operational practices, it can be introduced with minimal impact to the organization. Reliable, open, scalable, and affordable, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the ideal platform for datacenter modernization initiatives. 7 https://www./resourcelibrary/case-studies/nyse 8 http://www./about/news/archive/2012/11/red-hat-enterprise-linux-the-original-cloud-operating-syste 7
TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW Dual platform strategies for the modern datacenter Next steps For technical details about how Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports a dual platform strategy, see Integrating Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Microsoft Windows in the Datacenter. To learn how Red Hat can help you take advantage of standards-based services and open source economics for new business workloads, while also protecting and extending your Windows infrastructure, visit https://www./contact/sales.html to contact a Red Hat sales representative. For more information Red Hat Reference Architecture Library Red Hat Enterprise Linux reference architectures provide instructions for implementing best practices when provisioning, managing, configuring, and performance tuning various solutions. /rhel/resource_center/reference_architecture.html Red Hat Consulting Red Hat Consulting will maximize cost savings and return on investment (ROI) and help you plan and execute successful IT initiatives. /consulting Red Hat Training Red Hat offers a variety of learning styles, delivery methods, certifications, savings programs, and customized solutions to help you get the most out of your Red Hat Enterprise Linux investment. /training Red Hat products /products Red Hat solutions /solutions Red Hat Migration Center /solutions/migration Red Hat Partner Network /partners ABOUT RED HAT Red Hat is the world s leading provider of open source solutions, using a community-powered approach to provide reliable and high-performing cloud, virtualization, storage, Linux, and middleware technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. Red Hat is an S&P company with more than 70 offices spanning the globe, empowering its customers businesses. facebook.com/redhatinc @redhatnews linkedin.com/company/red-hat NORTH AMERICA 1 888 REDHAT1 EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 00800 7334 2835 europe@ ASIA PACIFIC +65 6490 4200 apac@ LATIN AMERICA +54 11 4329 7300 latammktg@ #10862247_v1_0413 Copyright 2013 Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Shadowman logo, and JBoss are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.