Red Hat, Inc. has announced the availability of Enterprise Linux 6.4. According to the company, this beta release includes updates to existing features and new functionality in the areas of identity management, filesystem, virtualization, and storage.

Many of the enhancements will allow improved operability with Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization environment. Specifically, version 6.4 includes the Microsoft Hyper-V Linux drivers and offers installation support for VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V para-virtualization drivers. And, the announcement states that new System Security Services Daemon enhancements improve interoperability with Microsoft Active Directory by providing centralized identity access control for Linux/Unix clients in a heterogeneous environment.

In a separate announcement, Red Hat, Inc. released Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.1. According to the company, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.1 enables increased scalability of guest virtual machines, now providing support for up to 160 logical CPUs and up to 2TB of memory per virtual machine. This version also updated its KVM hypervisor to support the latest industry-standard x86 processors.

Additionally, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.1 includes an updated user interface, improved cross-platform web administration portal, updated reporting dashboard, new networking capabilities, and enhanced disk storage. With 3.1, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization has expanded its localization support, now including English, French, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese. A 60-day trial of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.1 is available at http://www.redhat.com/promo/rhev3.