Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Microsoft Azure

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What is Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Azure?

Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® is the world’s leading commercial enterprise Linux platform and certified for use on Microsoft Azure. With Red Hat and Microsoft, you can quickly deploy a more secure, reliable, and flexible hybrid cloud environment that positions your organization for success in fast-changing, competitive markets.

Why choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Azure?

Control, confidence, and freedom

Standardizing on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for both datacenter and Microsoft Azure environments can help you improve productivity, security, and operations as you adapt to a more digital world. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the flexible operating system (OS) for your open hybrid cloud, offering control, confidence, and freedom to support business innovation, no matter where it occurs.

Discover the cost savings and benefits enabled By Red Hat Enterprise Linux On Microsoft Azure.

Connected cloud environment

Microsoft Azure is a public cloud platform that enables users to build, manage, and run applications in the cloud, and provide services on-premise and at the edge. When you run Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Microsoft Azure, you are extending your data center into a connected cloud environment.

Certified to work together

Red Hat and Microsoft work in close collaboration to help ensure solutions are optimized for cloud performance. You can quickly deploy a more secure, reliable, flexible hybrid cloud environment with interoperable cloud-native development capabilities that set you up for innovation and transformation, no matter where you are in your cloud journey.

Advance your cloud journey with a hybrid cloud environment from Red Hat and Microsoft

Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Azure

Features and benefits

Simplified migration and management

IT and development teams can continue to use their current skills, processes, and tools to administer and automate their environments across clouds and on premise–without extensive delays from retraining. Red Hat Insights (included in your Red Hat subscription) works across on-site and cloud environments, so you can manage all Red Hat Enterprise Linux instances from a single interface. Organizations can also use System Roles in concert with Red Hat Satellite or Ansible Automation Platform to augment the deployment and management of systems.

Flexibility

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Azure provide jointly engineered capabilities optimized for cloud use, giving enterprises the choice and flexibility they need to reach their goals and help ensure reliable, security-focused performance in the cloud. It also works with open source container tools Podman, Buildah, and Skopeo, to help easily spin up containers, manage deployment, and speed development of new applications in the cloud.

Integration

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is certified for use with hundreds of regional cloud and service providers, so you can choose the best IT infrastructure options for your business. Our large ecosystem of certified hardware, software, and cloud providers allows you to customize your hybrid cloud environments to meet your needs including ISV solutions like SAP and Microsoft SQL Server.

Image builder tool

Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes an image builder tool that lets you create customized Red Hat Enterprise Linux images based on your workload needs, save them as templates, and push them to cloud inventories. You can choose to provision your own Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machines (VMs) or download pre-provisioned images from Azure Marketplace. You also have the option to use ready-to-deploy Red Hat certified gold images.

Built-in security and compliance

Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes application streams and security controls, upgrades, and patches–all backed by a 10-year lifecycle. Microsoft Azure includes multi-layered security across physical data centers, infrastructure, and operations, while built-in operating security features help you meet today’s high security and compliance expectations. Azure users with a Red Hat subscription also receive ongoing support from the Red Hat Product Security team.

Portability

Red Hat Enterprise Linux allows you to place workloads and data where it makes the most sense at all times. Existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-premise customers can easily transfer their subscription to Azure with the Red Hat Cloud Access program.

Integrated support

Red Hat and Microsoft share an integrated, co-located support team, providing a unified contact point for Red Hat ecosystems running on the Azure platform. This gives you access to expertise, knowledge, and joint support models via Red Hat’s award-winning support organization or in coordination with the Azure support team.

Upgrades

In-place upgrades for Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the cloud are supported for on-demand, pay-as-you-go instances on major cloud providers.

Discover how Red Hat and Microsoft can help you gain control of hybrid cloud complexity

Get started

We’ve made it easy for you to securely use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Microsoft Azure. Red Hat and Microsoft Azure offer multiple purchasing options, giving you the flexibility to choose the one that best fits your organization’s needs and procurement processes.

New to Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Red Hat Hybrid Committed Spend

While cloud service providers offer commitment discounts on resources and consumption, Red Hat offers committed spend discounts on the procurement of Red Hat products. Red Hat’s Hybrid Committed Spend program offers you the flexibility to purchase and deploy Red Hat products when and where you need them. You can purchase from Red Hat directly or through the Azure marketplace and receive volume discounts based on your total Red Hat spend.

Pay as you go

Pay as you go can provide increased cost-efficiency and enhanced flexibility, and it qualifies for Microsoft’s committed spend agreement with Azure (known as the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment), which can be used for purchasing Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This usage-based approach ensures you only pay for the resources you use, allowing for rapid scaling in response to demand fluctuations. To further customize your environment, you can take advantage of Microsoft Azure Hybrid Benefit to enable switching between pay as you go and a Red Hat subscription.

Migrate from CentOS Linux

Updates and releases of CentOS Linux 7 will be discontinued on June 30, 2024. Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on Microsoft Azure delivers an intelligent, production-grade operating foundation for open hybrid cloud environments. Migrate to Red Hat Enterprise Linux to benefit from full life cycle support, a large partner ecosystem, and built-in security features.


New to Azure?

Red Hat Cloud Access

Migrate your existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription to Azure with Red Hat Cloud Access. You can keep all the benefits of your Red Hat subscription—including our award-winning support—while operating on Azure.

Get the most value out of your cloud budget with Red Hat Hybrid Committed Spend

Get more out of your Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC)

Migrate from CentOS Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Third Party Linux Migration with ELS offers users four years of extended life cycle support to help maintain business continuity now that CentOS Linux 7 has reached end of life (EOL). The offering also includes High Availability, Convert2RHEL tooling, and Red Hat Satellite

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Third Party Linux Migration with ELS is now available on Microsoft Azure.

Resources

The Total Economic Impact™
Red Hat Enterprise Linux On Microsoft Azure

The Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study, commissioned by Red Hat and Microsoft, delves into the financial and operational benefits of deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Microsoft Azure. Highlighting key aspects of cost savings and enhanced efficiency, the study provides insights into how enterprises can optimize their cloud strategy.

Need help getting started?

Talk to a Red Hatter in your region to develop an agreement tailored to your needs.