Calling it the “operating system designed for the next-generation data center,” Novell on Tuesday released SUSE Linux Enterprise 11.
Novell CTO Jeff Jaffe said a recent survey found that about 50 percent of IT executives plan to increase the adoption of Linux technologies this year because of the economic downturn. SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, he said, can help IT departments save money while addressing “interoperability, support for mission-critical computing, and the flexibility to deploy Linux in a wide range of environments.”
Mono and High Availability
The new platform contains a number of enhancements, including two new extensions — Mono and High Availability. Novell said Mono is the only product that lets customers run .NET applications on Linux, and the High Availability extension is a clustering product that supports greater uptime while reducing the cost of ownership.
SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 also offers extended support for the various computing models used in modern data centers — virtual, appliance and cloud computing.
In the physical world, Enterprise 11 runs on major hardware platforms, including IBM POWER and System z, x86-32 and x86-64 machines, and Itanium. In a virtual deployment, it will also run on the major hypervisors, including VMware ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Xen.
For cloud computing, Enterprise 11 is being certified for use in Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2. And Novell said it is working with IBM to deliver Enterprise 11-based instances of IBM DB2, Informix Dynamic Server, WebSphere sMash, IBM Lotus Web Content Management, and IBM WebSphere Portal for cloud-computing environments.
For appliance workstations, which feature preconfigured packages containing application, middleware and OS software, Novell is providing its JeOS, or Just enough Operating System version.
The company also reiterated its support for deploying Linux PC platforms, including on desktops, notebooks, netbooks and thin clients.
‘Terra Firma’ To ‘Highest Interoperability’
Novell is also promoting new levels of interoperability for…