Red Hat has announced details of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.4, which the company is pitching firmly at growing virtualised environments.

RHEL 5.4 is the foundation of the firm's portfolio of virtualisation solutions, and Red Hat said that the update supports a broad ecosystem of hardware and software.

Red Hat executives discussed during a webcast how the release fitted into the company's vision for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation, which it first began talking about in June.

Paul Cormier, president of products and technologies at Red Hat, said that RHEL 5.4 includes support for the kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) and Xen hypervisors, and gives customers an increased choice depending on personal requirements.

"We are very proud to get this out on time and to our customers' quality expectations. In 2009 we will fill out the rest of the portfolio," he said, adding that a separate standalone hypervisor will also be released.

The firm has chosen to include the newer KVM along with Xen in order to provide customers with a cross-over period. Executives said that, because RHEL 5 has a 10-year lifecycle, Red Hat has decided to stick with Zen, which has been a feature for only two years, at least for the near future.

Navin Thadani, senior director for Red Hat's virtualisation business, explained that this announcement is just the first element of the firm's plans.

"RHEL 5.4 sees us integrate with KVM for the first time and support a broad eco-system. This is the foundation for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation," he said.

RHEL 5.4 is globally available now and will be automatically delivered to customers with the appropriate subscription.

Further tools, including server and desktop management applications, will be released later this year, Thadini added.