IBM & Red Hat announce Linux-On-Mainframe program

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IBM Corporation (NYSE:IBM) and Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced an initiative to encourage the dramatic growth of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM System z mainframes. The comprehensive program will further assist companies in the evaluation, deployment and support of this joint platform. It was created in response to the growing adoption of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on mainframes by governments and companies worldwide, who are taking advantage of the security, scalability and low operating costs of the joint platform.

 

Secure Platform

 

The companies today are highlighting the security advantages of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and System z. These include the superior physical security associated with a centralized mainframe server and storage installation, and the use of virtualization technologies such as logical partitions (LPARs), which divide the extensive resources of the mainframe between workloads, while securely isolating each application from the others. Any effective security regime requires comprehensive auditing, which both the System z hardware and Enterprise Linux 5 deliver so organizations can assess the efficacy of their security policies.

 

Unique among servers, the mainframe was designed from the beginning to incorporate processors that handle a variety of specialized tasks. For example, so-called specialty processors are designed for processing eligible Linux, Java and data workloads as well as encrypting and decrypting certain data. In addition, the mainframe can include up to 336 RISC processors to assist I/O.

 

System z also takes advantage of Red Hat's Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux). SELinux enables granular policy-based control over programs' access to data and kernel resources, preventing a compromised program from acting outside its policy. SELinux was developed in coordination with the open source community and the National Security Agency (NSA) to provide the highest levels of security for the Linux operating system. It is not a separate Linux distribution or code branch. Rather, it is a feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. By default, over 200 core system services in Enterprise Linux 5 are protected by targeted policies. This enables organizations to quickly benefit from the security provided by SELinux. As an added benefit, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 also includes enhanced SELinux management tools that simplify the process of creating, customizing, managing and troubleshooting SELinux policy.

 

The mainframe's fortress-like security is legendary. In the security certification known as the Common Criteria's Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL), the IBM mainframe achieved one of the highest levels of certification -- Level 5 -- for logical partitioning, IBM's premier virtualization technology.

 

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