Red Hat announced its virtualization agenda and roadmap for 2009, including confirmation that its ecosystem of applications tested and certified to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux are also certified to run in a Red Hat virtualized platform with no modifications.
With this news, Red Hat ISV partners are ensured through an Application Binary Interface (ABI) guarantee that their certified applications are capable of running under Red Hat virtualization technology as a result of Red Hat's ability to couple the open source operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux and hypervisor layers.
Red Hat provides assurance that the kernel-level ABI won't change with major platform releases, allowing software and device drivers to continue running unchanged. Once certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, an application is also compatible from a user-space ABI perspective.
Red Hat provides assurance that if an ISV or customer experiences any issues specific to virtualization, Red Hat will work to ensure compatibility with both the hypervisor and operating system layers.