Each company will join the other's virtualisation validation/certification program and will provide co-ordinated technical support for their mutual server virtualisation customers.
The agreement will allow customers to deploy heterogeneous, virtualised Red Hat and Microsoft solutions.
"Red Hat is looking to help our customers extend more rapidly into virtualised environments, including mixed Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows Server environments," said Mike Evans, vice president, Corporate Development at Red Hat.
"Red Hat listened when our customers asked us to provide interoperability between our respective guest and host virtualisation solutions.
"We are excited to announce these agreements today as the result of our collaboration with Microsoft," he added.
The key components of the reciprocal agreements are:
Red Hat will validate Windows Server guests to be supported on Red Hat Enterprise virtualisation technologies.
Microsoft will validate Red Hat Enterprise Linux server guests to be supported on Windows Server Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.
Once each company completes testing, customers with valid support agreements will receive co-ordinated technical support for running Windows Server operating system virtualised on Red Hat Enterprise virtualisation, and for running Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualised on Windows Server Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.
"Customers are rapidly adopting Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and in doing so are interested in support for running more operating systems on Hyper-V in their virtualised environment, including those from Red Hat," said Mike Neil, general manager of Virtualisation Strategy at Microsoft.
"We welcome Red Hat's participation in our Server Virtualisation Validation Program and look forward to ongoing collaboration with them to bring the benefits of co-ordinated technical support to our customers for their heterogeneous IT environments."
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