Windows and Linux Marriage with Cooperative Technical Support Dowry

The level of interoperability between Windows and Linux was kicked up a notch as Microsoft and Red Hat have wrapped up Cooperative Technical Support for virtualized environments. On October 7th, 2009, the Redmond company announced that it had wrapped up the work debuted in February of this year, together withRed Hat, focused on supporting customers running mixed source environments. Because of Cooperative Technical Support, companies with heterogeneous IT infrastructures featuring virtualization solutions and both Windows Server and Red Hat Linux platforms will be able to enjoy windows server support from both the otherwise rival operating system vendors.

Here are the details: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 have passed cert tests when running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. Windows Server 2003/ Windows Server 2008 / Windows Server 2008 R2 are validated to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, using their KVM-based hypervisor,” revealed Mike Neil, general manager of Windows Server and Server Virtualization.

Because Microsoft and Red Hat are done with the certification efforts in each other’s programs, customers will be able to not only take advantage of supported heterogeneous deployments of Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but also embrace an array of select applications. The Windows and Linux vendors have also focused on offering support for various apps virtualized on Red Hat and Microsoft virtualization solutions.

“On the Red Hat side, you can now run JBoss Enterprise Middleware within a virtual machine guest on Hyper-V and receive coordinated technical support. This is a step forward for enterprise customers, hosting providers, systems integrators, and those who want to offer their customers the top x86 operating systems to run applications,” Neil added.

As far as Microsoft is concerned, the list of server software and supported virtualization environments is a tad longer, and customers will be able to access it via this KB article.