Red Hat certifies AMD's Seamicro SM10000-XE for RHEL

ENTERPRISE LINUX VENDOR Red Hat has certified AMD's Seamicro SM10000-SE server for its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system.

AMD's acquisition of Seamicro was all about the firm's interconnect technology, however AMD also got Seamicro's much talked about SM10000-XE server as part of the deal. Now Red Hat has announced that Seamicro's top-end server kit is certified for RHEL.

Red Hat's certification of the Seamicro SM10000-XE doesn't mean that the server didn't support Linux before but it does mean that customers can now get support contracts from Red Hat. For AMD, the ability to say its server is supported by Red Hat is a major selling point when flogging kit to enterprises.

Andrew Feldman, GM of AMD's Data Center Server Solutions Group said, "Customers can now be assured they will receive the best available support for their Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment running on the certified Seamicro SM10000-XE server. This certification is yet another example of how we are working closely with technology partners to provide the highest quality experience for our customers."

Seamicro's SM10000-XE has been one of the reasons why the firm became such a hot commodity before AMD's surprise purchase of the firm. The irony for AMD is that the server features Intel's Xeon processors, a fact that AMD managed to avoid in its press release except for its mention of energy efficiency.

Intel processors aside, AMD is likely to use Red Hat's certification of Seamicro's SM10000-EX server as the foundation to sell its Opteron chips in the growing microserver market. µ