Top reasons To choose red haT enTerprise linux - CACI · Top reasons To choose red haT enTerprise linux 3 The Top 10 enTerprise applicaTions run on enTerprise linux 4 The mosT demanding

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Top reasons To choose red haT enTerprise linux

3 The Top 10 enTerprise applicaTions run on enTerprise linux

4 The mosT demanding applicaTions run beTTer on red haT enTerprise linux

5 enTerprise linux is robusT, scales well, and is more reliable

6 enTerprise linux is secure

7 red haT parTners wiTh hardware vendors

8 enTerprise linux supporTs sTandard daTacenTer managemenT Tools

9 everyone benefiTs from red haT’s sTraTegic parTnerships

10 red haT Training and supporT

11 enTerprise linux is ahead of The curve

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Top reasons to choose red hat enterprise linux

you probably already know that some of the largest and most demanding companies trust red hat to drive the iT infrastructure behind their successful businesses. it’s easy to see why: an enterprise linux-equipped, industry-standard x86 server was the first and only operating platform to exceed one million transactions per second in TPC-C benchmarks. We provide NSA-certified security that doesn’t require add-on tools. And enterprise linux meets the highest standards of reliability with scalable performance.

it’s not just that enterprise linux runs your applications faster and scales from small to very large systems. it is the backbone of a robust environment that powers the demanding applications you rely on to run your company. red hat has a mature software stack based on decades of technology collaboration that is tested and certified by a broad ecosystem of certified applications and delivered with enterprise-class support to customers. we have deep partnerships with major hardware vendors to ensure that new devices are certified and supported as soon as they enter the market so that customers get heightened performance results from their systems.

The industry evolves at a rapid rate. The flow of new hardware and applications is a major attraction for many companies, but that rate is difficult to manage directly. Red Hat acts as a buffer between technology changes and our customers, providing a stable platform with a long lifecycle, while allowing for rapid, non-disruptive updates and patches for security and serious bugs.1

All these benefits are available in one reliable package: Red Hat enterprise linux. one that is easy to purchase and deploy and backed by world-class training and support to ensure you extract the performance you need to outpace your competition. all this at a cost that is lower than our competition.

we’ve also been receiving accolades beyond our technology and products for our business successes. We’re a stable, profitable, publicly traded company with deep roots from our 15 years in operation. others are noticing too — forbes recently put us on its list of the 25 fastest-growing software companies in america.

we are invested in your success, now and into the future. because of our relationships and expertise, we’re ahead of the curve. we thrive on innovation and competition and use it to continually evolve into a better organization.

why red hat enterprise linux?

applications•

performance•

easy to deploy•

great support•

low cost•

strategic partners•

1 red hat linux life cycle: www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/


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2 worldwide software 2008–2012 forecast summary (www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerid=213259)

3 lotus on linux (www.lotusonredhat.com)

4 rhel 5 virtualization (www.redhat.com/rhel/virtualization)

5 running your applications on the red hat virtualized platform: what partners need to Know (www.redhat.com/f/pdf/isv/isv_virtualization_update.pdf)

The Top 10 enTerprise applicaTions run on enTerprise linux

over 85 percent of the top 50 isvs in idc’s recent forecast support enterprise linux,2 including oracle, sap, ibm websphere, ibm domino lotus, sas, db2, Jboss, vmware, apache, mysQl, and many others. They know enterprise linux offers the complementary applications companies rely on for their enterprise solutions, and that enterprise linux provides a high-performance, secure, and robust environment that will make their applications meet customer expectations.

for example, sap provides business integration and optimization for all sizes of enterprises, and sap is committed to providing its software on an open, standards-based platform–an ideal match for enterprise Linux. SAP is not just certified on Enterprise Linux but is also tightly aligned, with nightly system testing and collaborative technical support for joint customers. all of the components necessary for building integrated iT solutions are available and optimized in enterprise linux. from support of standardized encapsulation and access provided by enterprise services orchestrated by application servers such as sap’s netweaver and ibm’s websphere, to oracle in the data tier, industry leaders thrive in red hat enterprise linux.

building collaboration and cooperation within an enterprise requires a solution like ibm lotus domino, a reliable, security-rich messaging and collaboration environment that enhances productivity, streamlines business processes, and improves overall business responsiveness. Through the “lotus on red hat” initiative, the firms have teamed up to implement an open collaboration solution for some of the world’s largest and most demanding organizations.3

with red hat enterprise linux 5, featuring integrated virtualization technology,4 you can run any certified application and take advantage of the underlying Enterprise Linux performance, confident that your applications will run properly.5 of course, we enable you to run enterprise linux on other virtualization platforms such as vmware or microsoft hyper-v and still gain the enterprise linux performance edge because we are committed to providing interoperability for our customers.

many isvs are strong supporters of open standards and take pride in providing their solutions on enterprise Linux. Customers benefit from not only world-class solutions and the full complement of support and service, but cross-platform support that increases choice and lowers cost. These companies understand that their solutions are stronger by being available on the platforms their customers trust and demand.

APPLICATION PLATFORM

JBoss Seam JBoss Hibernate

JBoss Application Server

APACHE WEB SERVER

PHP

OPEN SOURCE DATABASE (MYSQL OR POSTGRESQL)

RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX

PERL

red hat appliCatiOn staCK

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The mosT demanding applicaTions run beTTer on red haT enTerprise linux

There’s no more challenging place to run applications than in an enterprise datacenter. from interfacing with the external world, to working with enormous sets of data, to running the business logic that is the engine of your company — application performance is critical. To compare enterprise linux-based performance to that of our competition, it’s useful to look at industry-standard benchmarks. here are two examples:

in august 2008, enterprise linux on an ibm standard server recently broke the barrier of one million •transactions per minute in a Tpc-c benchmark,6 the best performance ever recorded on an x86 server. (The Tpc-c benchmark is carefully crafted to model the activities of a business-to-business transactional application server operating in a 24x7 environment).

in february 2009, another record fell to a system using enterprise linux,• 7 this time running on vmware in a specweb2005 benchmark that models web server performance in response to standardized banking, ecommerce, and support workloads. looking closer into those results, out of the top 15 systems, only the fifth-place finisher was not running Enterprise Linux.

These benchmarks are used to compare different operating system and hardware platforms, and the leading results with enterprise linux prove that it provides better performance and will maximize the value of your hardware.

however, because these benchmarks use standardized workloads, it is possible your applications and workloads may provide somewhat different results. here, enterprise linux has an advantage that is not available from some of the competition: tuneability. The operational behavior of enterprise linux can be optimized across a very large set of parameters, including kernel operation, disk operation, which system processes run, etc.

The bottom line is that enterprise linux performance is excellent out-of-the-box, and with tuning can make that performance even better.

6 IBM—first to break the barrier of 1 million transactions per minute on TPC-C benchmark—achieves industry milestone for x86-64 performance (ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/eserver/benchmarks/news/newsblurb_x3950m2-8p_db2_tpcc_081908.pdf)

7 vmware sets performance record with specweb2005 result (blogs.vmware.com/performance/2009/02/vmware-sets-performance-record-with-specweb2005-result.html)

perfOrmanCe vs. priCe

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0 1,000,000 2,000,000 3,000,000 4,000,000 5,000,000 6,000,000 7,000,000

PERFORMANCE (tpmC)

PR

ICE

(U

SD

)


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enTerprise linux is robusT, scales well, and is more reliable

raw performance in a controlled environment is an important means of judging an operating system, but it doesn’t tell the whole story of how well an operating system behaves — particularly in the real world. Today’s critical business applications are expected to be available 24x7 and withstand bursts of unexpected activity. moreover, demand typically grows over time, and systems are upgraded and expanded to meet those needs. minimizing the disruption of that growth with designed-in scalability saves time and money.

enterprise linux scales on all levels: multi-core processors scale well with enterprise linux in sap benchmarks,8 and enterprise linux scales from laptop systems to blade and rack environments, to the largest smp servers, and to mainframes. hardware can be upgraded with additional processing and storage power and enterprise linux will scale along with that growth, automatically.

anecdotally, linux has always been known as a reliable system. stories of servers being up until power supply problems forced them down are common. but the yankee group’s second annual server operating system reliability survey9 provides objective documentation of the reliability of enterprise linux. it’s important to note that the yankee group survey polled 400 users from 27 countries worldwide—users in real-world data centers. while benchmarks give a normalized and repeatable view, real-world experiences expose robustness—how systems operate in difficult and unpredictable situations. it is here that the strongest distinction is drawn between red hat enterprise linux and microsoft windows.

robustness has been designed into enterprise linux. it is a result of its prime design principle, small is beautiful. it is more robust to build a set of cooperating small modules than one large monolith that must serve many masters. complexity increases with size, and complexity increases risk.

8 making multi-core performance Truely scalable (redhatonintel.com/technology/art_scalable_perf.htm)

9 2008 server os reliability survey (www.iaps.com/2008-server-reliability-survey.html)

OraCle 10g perfOrmanCe On rhel

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0 5 10 15 20 25 30

NUMBER of CORES

TH

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enTerprise linux is securered hat enterprise linux, and linux in general, has a strong security reputation, and for good reasons:

Enterprise Linux is NSA certified at the highest level.1. 10 it is engineered from the start for robustness and safety. and red hat continues to work closely with the cerT to stay aware of emerging threats.

because of the pervasive concern about security and solid engineering practices, enterprise linux 2. doesn’t require costly add-on third-party tools to patch holes in the security fabric.

rather than open source code being more vulnerable, many more critical eyes evaluate the code and 3. verify its robustness. This constant and wide review makes it almost impossible for “trap doors” or other coded-in flaws to be distributed into production.

in a world where new threats can emerge within minutes, the community approach to development and 4. the independence (and updatability) of individual components is a major benefit. Resolutions to new threats are developed, tested, and deployed to customers at internet speed.

some have argued that linux hasn’t had the same security problems as some of its competition because it isn’t as big a player, and as it continues to succeed it will show the same weaknesses. but red hat and linux aren’t new, hackers are attracted to challenges, and the nsa knows what it is doing. red has is more secure.

10 IBM and Red Hat Achieve highest Security Certification for Linux on IBM Servers (www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/21742.wss)


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11 Red Hat is a founding member of the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol Working Group (jira.amqp.org/confluence/ display/AMQP/Advanced+Message+Queuing+Protocol), which has defined the first open messaging standard.

12 red hat was a member of the open source development labs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ open_source_development_labs), which included hardware vendors such as ibm, hp, intel, and nec.

red haT parTners wiTh hardware vendors

when red hat works with hardware vendors, it’s not just to bring timely and thorough hardware support to our customers. These collaborations lead to synergistic and integrated hardware and software enterprise solutions in areas such as virtualization, real-time systems, and the highest performance servers available (and that doesn’t include the many software collaborations between red hat and those same vendors).

red hat works at several levels to stay ahead of the curve. most importantly, it drives industry initiatives to galvanize new technologies and participates in industry working groups11 and consortia12 to maintain its lead in awareness of standards and trends. Red Hat collaborates directly with specific hardware vendors to ensure that new hardware is supported upon introduction. This enables market-making hardware capabilities, such as virtualization, to be exploited fully by the operating system and the customer. These activities have built deep and long-standing relationships with the industry’s leading hardware vendors.

some examples of the results of these partnerships:

collaboration between intel and red hat led to developments •in red hat enterprise linux that provide a comprehensive virtualization environment at lower initial and operating costs, with low complexity and risk. red hat worked with intel to feed these next-generation technologies into the upstream open source community that feeds all server vendors, ensuring that it was broadly reviewed and tested. The resulting premium platform is a robust, high-performance solution that scales from mobile to desktop to server hardware from intel — all running the same enterprise linux platform.

The long-standing partnership between amd and red hat proved •critical to a smooth evolution from 32-bit to 64-bit computing for x86 processors. The results of this collaboration were also provided to the upstream community, benefiting all application vendors migrating to 64-bit support on linux. when coupled with enterprise linux, amd’s innovative processor technology provides high-performance and stability that is delivered with exceptional efficiency and low cost.

red hat enterprise linux balances innovative solutions with application stability by supporting the application binary interface (abi) and with product lifecycle management, allowing exploitation of new hardware while minimizing changes at the application level.

after this discussion of forward-looking hardware accommodation, it almost goes without saying that red hat has the broadest support of legacy hardware available.

hardware partners

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enTerprise linux supporTs sTandard daTacenTer managemenT Tools

From backups and disaster recovery to configuration and provisioning support, to more strategic business service management — the major suppliers of datacenter management tools make their products available under red hat enterprise linux. having the same solutions available in your heterogeneous datacenter allows you to leverage existing skill sets and maintain consistent management practices across all of your operating systems. To complement our own enterprise management products, you’ll be able to choose from the best-of-breed tool providers.

here’s a brief sampling of the companies and offerings that are available under enterprise linux:

iBm tivoli storage manager:• centralized, policy-based, enterprise-class, data backup and recovery software

symantec netBackup:• an enterprise-level heterogeneous backup and recovery suite

Ca: • a wide range of products that provide information technology management services

BmC:• Business Service Management BSM, a comprehensive approach and unified platform for running IT

hp Business technology Optimization (BtO):• a suite of software applications that allow large-scale system and network management of an organization’s iT infrastructure

emC:• a wide variety of storage management and datacenter operations tools

net app:• a range of solutions that include archive and compliance, backup and recovery, business continuity, and security.

you can trust that enterprise linux provides the rich management environment to which you are already accustomed.


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everyone benefiTs from red haT’s sTraTegic parTnerships

When you use Enterprise Linux, you receive the benefits of the most thorough and transparent testing and certification available. Red Hat partners with leading hardware manufacturers to ensure that on its first day of release, new hardware is certified and works as well as hardware that has been in use for years. And because platform testing requires thorough testing of applications, large and small, there is no better system integration testing anywhere.

To fully appreciate how thorough our testing is, one must understand red hat’s partnership model and the community that contributes to product quality. red hat has pioneered the on-site engineering program, where our partners place their employees inside our facilities to work with us every day. The flow of knowledge and collaboration between experts means systems are developed at the highest level of quality and problems are resolved efficiently.

our close integration with hardware vendors also provides access to test environments that are out of reach of most software companies. single systems with a terabyte or more of memory, clusters of 128 processors, 10GB ethernet or Infiniband, and large storage arrays and clusters are often needed to provide testing, debugging, and optimization of real-life systems.

one measure of quality is that red hat’s contributions to the open source kernel pool consistently exceed those of any other single organization. in the spirit of open source, the entire open source community has access to those improvements and can validate and test them. The combined size of the community, and the breadth of different perspectives that it provides, far exceeds what any single organization could achieve.

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red haT Training and supporT

enterprise linux is backed by industry-acclaimed training.13 Training on a new system starts in the red hat on-site engineering program, which distributes new product information through strategic partners to a broad reach of customers. Training programs are made available during beta-test as part of the collaborative community development process, fine-tuning its format and quality. By release, Red Hat Training has been proven to be accurate and effective.

hands-on training is backed by world-class enterprise support that is available 24x7, directly from red hat. red hat also maintains a comprehensive knowledgebase14 that includes linux tips, tutorials, and advice available from a rich web support portal. You will never feel you’re alone in finding the solutions you need, how to deploy them, or how to tailor and tune them for your specific requirements.

red hat takes responsibility for solving your problems. we eliminate “finger-pointing” in multiple vendor support situations with our cooperative resolution center, which includes Joint escalation labs with key ecosystem partners. in the unlikely case that you need it, we provide transparency in management contacts.15

for us, the bottom line is: “if we ship it, we support it.”

13 idc marketscape: worldwide iT education and Training 2009 vendor analysis (www.redhat.com/f/pdf/training/idcvendoranalysis2009.pdf)

14 red hat Knowledgebase (kbase.redhat.com/faq/en)

idC marKetsCape i.t. training line Of Business

+ RED HAT

+ LAWSON

+ SUN

+ SAP

- HP

+ MICROSOFT

+ SYMANTEC

+ CISCO

+ IBM

+ ORACLE

PARTICIPANTS CONTENDERS MAJOR PLAYERS

LEADERS

STRATEGIES

CA

PA

BIL

ITIE

S


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enTerprise linux is ahead of The curve

what does it mean to be ahead of the curve?

for red hat, it means anticipating the future of technology, and helping lead the way there — now. it means ensuring all the pieces of the puzzle are in place, and achieving that by cooperation among communities.

red hat has been a pioneer in helping the enterprise take advantage of the collaborative, open source model for developing technology. There is a tangible excitement to being a part of an open community comprised of committed individuals who thrive on cooperation, are producing work of enormous value, and are changing the world.

These philosophical and emotional themes provide practical benefits. The open process multiplies the efforts of the team. red hat contributes to and leverages the results of the work of the “upstream” open community that advances all linux software–a model that does not exist in the proprietary world. openness within the community encourages each contributor to work that much harder and reach for better solutions. The result is a product that is of higher quality from conception, therefore developed more quickly and supported more thoroughly.

The community involves so many people and disciplines that there is always cross-pollination of ideas and representatives of nascent technologies, leading to an inherent awareness of new directions and opportunities. for this reason and by virtue of red hat being so wired into the community, red hat has a distinct advantage.

It’s one thing for Red Hat to be confident about our role, our work, and our value to the enterprise, but the commitment of companies such as ibm, intel, amd, cisco, and many others to red hat and the open source model is a ringing endorsement.

© 2009 red hat, inc. all rights reserved. “red hat,” red hat linux, the red hat “shadowman” logo, and the products listed are trademarks or registered trademarks of red hat, inc. in the us and other countries. linux is a registered trademark of linus Torvalds.

red hat sales and inquiries norTh america

1-888-redhaT1 www.redhat.com

www.redhat.com #1130571_0609

in summary, while we build and support products, provide services, and create value — we have important differences and advantages over other, traditional technology companies.

we’re backed by a large community of external software developers, many of whom are professionals who work at competing companies. linux itself is fundamentally non-proprietary, allowing more cooperation between vendors and letting resources flow to applications that are of benefit to end-users.

red hat is a catalyst for collaboration among hardware, operating system, and applications developers, and red hat enterprise linux is the high-value result.

but one can simply consider enterprise linux on its pragmatic merits: a stable and full-functioned operating system with a diverse and complete complement of applications. scalable to hardware from laptops to the largest clusters. backed by deep relationships with hardware and software vendors. supported by the best training and support available.

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Top reasons To choose red haT enTerprise linux - CACI · Top reasons To choose red haT enTerprise linux 3 The Top 10 enTerprise applicaTions run on enTerprise linux 4 The mosT demanding