Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization RHEV 3.1 (KVM based) added to feature comparison matrix

I had recently a significant amount of requests to add Red Hat’s KVM-based Redhat Enterprise Virtualization to the Virtualization Matrix. After several long flights and weekends … here it is.

With the RHEV 3.x release Red Hat had created an offering that by many of my clients is perceived to be a cost-effective “good enough” (open-source based) alternative to e.g. VMware for many use cases and has further improved on this with its 3.1 release.
Red Hat is up against strong competition for the coveted “alternative virtualization vendor” spot. While Microsoft has released the “all inclusive” Windows Server / System Center 2012 release (already added to the Virtualization Matrix) with greatly improved virtualization and included private cloud capabilities, Citrix is starting to carve out a niche for the desktop virtualization and cloud service provider market with XenServer and its (Apache CloudStack based) CloudPlatform suite.

What’s new with RHEV 3.1?

So what’s new with 3.1 – one of the most anticipated feature was the ability to perform live snapshots (now possible) and the ability to perform live storage migration (now a Technology Preview) but there is far more in this release:

Admin Portal:

Cross-platform User Interface – the new web admin portal interface introduced as a (technology preview in RHEV 3.0) is now fully supported
Windows independent – it is now provided as a complete replacement of the Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) interface used in previous releases, including internationalization and improved user experience
Reporting – reporting functionality is now exposed from within the Administration Portal itself (standalone Reporting Portal is still available). Reporting dashboards for the system, specific data centers, or specific clusters, are now available from the Dashboard tab.
Tasks – a “Tasks”tab has been added to the Admin Portal, to monitor of long running operations and tasks
Quotas (Tech Preview) – enable quota mode for a data center – ability to define per-user quotas for storage resources (disk space) and run-time resources (CPU usage and memory).

Back-end:

Database – Support for remote PostgreSQL database (previously only supported the use of a local PostgreSQL database)
JBoss Update – Updated with JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) 6
Red Hat Directory Server (RHDS) support – user authentication using RHDS domains is now supported (in addition to Identity, Policy, Audit (IPA) and Active Directory (AD) domains)
Default HTTP and HTTPS Ports (previously RHEV listened on port 8080 and 8843) – changed to standard HTTP and HTTPS ports (80 and 443)

Guests:

Support for 160 logical CPUs per host
Up to 2 terabytes of memory for vms
Windows drivers – virtio-win drivers for Windows guests are now available as inf and ini files on the guest tools ISO (in addition to virtual floppy)
CPU Pinning – it’s now possible to pin the virtual CPUs (vCPUs) of a guest virtual machine to specific physical CPU cores on the host from the UI to control performance aspects
P2V – new physical-to-virtual machine tool (previously only V2V) – providing an ISO image to boot from a CD or USB, select the disks on the physical machine and then export the disk to convert it to a vm

Network:

Hot Plug for vNICs – Hot plugging and unplugging of vNICs attached to a vm is now supported (without stopping the vm)
Bridge-less Network Support – it’s now possible to define logical networks on a virtualization host without requiring a bridge to support that network (except if the logical network is marked as a “virtual machine network”)
New Network Setup Dialog – add or remove networks, add or remove bonds, and attach networks to bonds or detach networks from bonds in a single transaction.
Port Mirroring – configure the virtual Network Interface Card (vNIC) of a virtual machine to run in promiscuous mode, allowing the vm to monitor all traffic to other vNICs (e.g. useful for intrusion detection)
Configurable Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) – configure the MTU of a logical network from the UI
Default Network Filter – rules are now defined for all virtual machines, enhancing security

Storage:

Live Snapshots – Snapshots of a vm can now be created without first having to stop it
Clone Virtual Machine from Snapshot – support for creating vms from snapshots
Floating Disks and Shared Disks – Floating Disks can be attached, and detached, from virtual machines throughout the data center as required; Shared Disks are disks that are attached to multiple virtual machines at the same time.
Hot Plug of Disks – attach disks to, and detach disks from vms without first having to stop the virtual machine
Direct LUN Support – attach any block device to a virtual machine as a disk by specifying the block device’s GUID (without VDSM hook script)
Cross Storage Domain Virtual Machines – create a vm which has disks on multiple different storage domains (previously all disks for a virtual machine had to be stored on the same storage domain)
POSIX Compliant Filesystems (POSIXFS) – support for storage domains backed by POSIX compliant file systems.
NFS Version 4 Support
Automatic Storage Domain Recovery – when a storage domain becomes temporarily inactive or non-operational RHEV-M will now automatically recover and update the status of the storage domain when it becomes available again.
Configurable Storage Pool Manager (SPM) Priority – allow admins to control the SPM selection process using SPM priorities for hosts
Storage Live Migration (Tech Preview) – allows migration of vm disks to different storage devices without first shutting the vm down.
Integrated Red Hat Storage Management (Tech Preview) – initial support for managing Red Hat Storage volumes and bricks using RHEV-M.

VDI:

Pre-started desktops – configure a queue of vms from a pool to be running without having been assigned to a user (shortening login times)
Enhanced SPICE client – native USB 2.0 support and USB support for Linux guests
Multiple Monitor Support
Additional WAN Configuration Options – providing improved performance in WAN environments

Developers:

Linux Command Line Interface – a CLI for interacting with the RHEV-M (manager) using the REST API, is now available.
Python Software Development Kit (SDK) – a Python SDK for interacting with RHEV-M using the REST API, is now available.
Session Support, non-administrative User API Access

As I said before, interest in RHEV is great, actual adoption will be determined by Red Hat’s ability to expand the ecosystem around RHEV (competing with the massive ecosystem around VMware and Microsoft’s naturally extensive ecosystem around the Windows platform).
Enhancements in the management of peripheral and operational aspects will be key (beyond the fundamental virtualization platform management). In addition Red Hat will be keen to create a well articulated cloud strategy, positioning it’s current CloudForms (IaaS) and OpenShift (PaaS) platforms, specifically in the context of OpenStack.

The recently announced acquisition of ManageIQ (Cloud Management and Automation) could provide the needed arsenal to bolster its capabilities in these areas …

### Archived Article – thanks to Andreas Groth – WhatMatrix Community Affiliate (originally published on Virtualizationmatrix.com) ###

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