Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.5.0 RHF0374US Manuel D’Utilisation

Flexibility. Red Hat Enterprise Linux gives customers a 
wide range of features that can be selected to best suit 
their environment. For example, a web-serving environ-
ment may require a different feature set than a database 
or financial application environment. The same applies to 
running guest instances of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on 
common third-party hypervisors and hardware partition-
ing technologies. Customers can select the feature set for 
their targeted environment while still receiving the value 
and high quality of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. In addition, 
with Red Hat's unique subscription model, customers have 
the choice of any currently supported version of Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux. Visit redhat.com/rhel/server/advanced/
virt.html for details on the supported combinations.

Performance and scalability. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 
performance scales on all levels, from desktops to work-
stations, from blades to rack environments, from single 

CPU systems to the largest SMP servers and mainframes. 

As hardware upgrades deliver additional processing and 

storage, Red Hat Enterprise Linux scales with that growth. 
Red Hat continues to innovate and deliver advanced func-
tionality of the highest quality to its customers. Red Hat 
works continuously with hardware and software partners 
to enhance the performance of its platforms. For example, 
improvements in virtualization performance make it prac-
tical to deploy any application workload, even I/O-bound 
applications. 

The most dramatic improvements in recent virtual machine 

performance are made possible by I/O optimizations, 
including support for new hardware capabilities, such as 
10 Gigabit SR-IOV adapters, and NPIV. These have reduced 
overhead for I/O-bound environments to less than five per-
cent, which opens the door to a whole new class of applica-
tions, such as database, transaction, and file servers. Red 
Hat leads the industry with new capabilities that enable 
customers to fully utilize a virtualized environment.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in cooperation with Red Hat's 
hardware partners, is enabling RAS (reliability, availability, 
security) and scalability features that have been recently 
introduced to mainstream architectures. Operational cost 
savings and physical space considerations drive the need 
for these higher-efficiency systems. For example, a 64-CPU 

Red Hat

®

 Enterprise Linux

®

 is the operating system 

trusted by thousands of enterprises around the world to 
power their most mission-critical applications. Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux delivers performance, reliability, scalabil-
ity, and security for its customers. Certified by the leading 
hardware and software vendors, it is suitable for, and has 
been deployed on, desktops, servers, and mainframes. 

Engineered by Red Hat and backed by a powerful open 
source development model, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has 
proven performance and reliability. It has also completed 
the most stringent government security certifications, 
safeguarding your systems and your data. Key features 
that customers rely on are built into and fully integrated 
with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, including virtualization, 
mandatory access control (MAC) security, high-availability 
clustering, modularity, and extensive energy management 
capabilities. Operational ease-of-use is facilitated by allow-
ing customers the flexibility to select features and deploy-
ment methods that will enable them to manage thousands 
of servers as easily as one. 

KEY ATTRIBUTES

Stable, trusted platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the 
long-term, predictable operating platform that embraces 
open source software and delivers to customers an enter-
prise-ready solution that can handle any application work-
load. With a rigorous engineering process, Red Hat ensures 
long-term stability, embraces industry innovation, and puts 
customers in control of their environment.

Red Hat meets the challenge of maintaining a stable, 
trusted platform in many ways. Key partnerships across 
the industry allow Red Hat to test for the stability of their 
hardware, software, and management interfaces. Support 
for the latest hardware is included with service packs and 
is delivered through minor releases. Applications do not 
need to be re-built or re-certified with each release update 
because the application programming and binary inter-
faces (API/ABI) are held stable for the full life of a Red Hat  
Enterprise Linux release, regardless of the physical or vir-
tual deployment model. This means that Red Hat's rich 
ecosystem of thousands of applications are immediately 
available, avoiding delays that would otherwise occur with 
expensive and time-consuming re-testing efforts.