Linux server users won’t have to wait long to benefit from the new Intel Xeon E5 processor, announced earlier this week. Hardware vendors and Linux operating system vendors alike are ready to leverage Intel’s latest server chip architecture.
“The latest Intel server is significant in that it delivers higher density with low power consumption,” Jim Totton, GM and VP, Platform Business Unit at Red Hat told InternetNews.com. “In addition, the plans to support PCI-e 3.0 is important future-proofing so that customers will be able to take advantage of and fully realize the benefits of direct I/O with the data intensive workloads that are rapidly being deployed.”
Both Red Hat and SUSE are certified on multiple hardware vendor platform for the Intel E5, including servers from HP and Dell.
Jeff Carlat, director of Marketing, Industry Standard Servers and Software at HP, told InternetNews.com that HP has already added ProLiant Gen8 severs (BL460c Gen8, DL360p Gen8, DL380p Gen8, ML350p Gen8, SL230s Gen8, and SL250s Gen8) into its supported server lists for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11.
Kevin Noreen, director of Dell Systems Management Marketing also told InternetNews.com that Dell has been working closely with Red Hat and SUSE in the ramp-up for certifications for Dell’s 12G Intel E5 platform.
“Because of our tight collaboration with Red Hat, SUSE and Intel, all shipping device drivers on 12G are native to both RHEL and SLES,” Noreen said. “That has always allowed Dell to maintain a simplified approach to deployment and implementation of Linux on x86 architectures, including the E5 platforms.”
The road toward Intel E5 support is one that started long before last week’s official announcement from Intel.
Read the full story at ServerWatch:
Intel Xeon E5 Heads to Linux
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.