Red Hat announced the global availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3.

In the third update to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, customers will receive a wide range of enhancements, including significantly increased virtualization scalability, expanded hardware platform support and incorporation of OpenJDK Java technologies. Customers with a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription will receive the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 update, which is available for download from Red Hat Network.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 increases scalability of virtualized x86-64 environments. This includes the ability to support virtual servers with up to 32 virtual CPUs and 80GB of memory. Physical server limits have also been expanded to match the size of today’s latest hardware systems, with up to 126 CPUs and 1TB main memory. New features, such as support for Hugepage memory and Intel Extended Page Tables (EPT), improve the performance of virtual servers. For customers, these enhancements allow more and larger virtual systems to be configured on powerful servers. Additionally, more devices can be allocated to each virtual server (guest), enabling the virtualization of applications with heavy I/O requirements.

It offers support for quad-core, hyperthreaded 45nm Intel Core i7 (Nehalem) processors. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 supports features such as the power management and hyperthreading.

With the integration of OpenJDK, high-performance, fully open source implementation of Java SE 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 is the the first enterprise-ready solution with a fully open source Java stack when combined with JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. OpenJDK is based on the same code base as Sun’s JDK, the most widely adopted Java implementation. OpenJDK in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 has passed the full Java SE 6 TCK and is compatible with all applications written for Java SE 6 and previous versions. OpenJDK is fully supported directly by Red Hat.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 also includes enhancements spanning many other components of the open source operating system. These new features and improvements range from general kernel, device driver and architectural enhancements to simplified desktop networking and full support of the GFS2 file system.

“With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, Red Hat has once again delivered a rich set of features, developed through rapid innovation with the open source community, that can increase the capability and drive down the cost of customers’ Information Technology,” said Scott Crenshaw, vice president, Platform Business Unit at Red Hat. “With the challenge to carve costs out of IT budgets, the flexibility, reliability and simplicity of an Enterprise Linux subscription has more value to customers than ever. Our customers have access to all the features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 today.”