Munich Trade Fair Chooses Red Hat Global File System to Manage Web Services; Red Hat GFS at the Heart of a Modern Cluster Solution with Virtualized Storage.

MUNICH -- Red Hat (NASDAQ: RHAT), the world's leading provider of open source to the enterprise, today announced that Messe Munchen International (Munich International Trade Fair - MMI), one of the world's leading trade fair companies, has deployed Red Hat Global File System (GFS) as its cluster file system for its web services. Red Hat GFS runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and will enable MMI to realize high-performance and scalability for the future, which were the main deciding factors for the trade fair company.

Red Hat brought on board ATIX, its Advanced Partner for clustering and storage, for this deployment. ATIX developed a highly sophisticated cluster solution with virtualized storage based on Red Hat Global File System. The new system, based entirely on open source software, has already passed its first tests.

As MMI's business continues to expand worldwide by the middle of 2005 it was apparent that its existing infrastructure for providing web services was no longer fully able to cope with the increased requirements, but any further scaling of the system would have involved great expense. As MMI had great experience with Linux before using the NFS file system for Linux clustering running on Debian for its previous system, it wanted to continue to benefit from the flexibility and vendor- independence of Linux and it turned to Red Hat.

"With the new cluster system, we have an extremely high-performance solution which offers us maximum scalability for the future," says Martina Ritzer, head of the web service department for MMI, with satisfaction. "We run MySQL, Tomcat PHP and email services in the cluster as well as FTP, CVS and our staging front-end software. All the systems are performing brilliantly with the new operating system and the new architecture using Red Hat Global File System. We are also really well equipped for future growth. Resource scaling using the plug & play principle is a whole new experience for us."

Previously, MMI had used a traditional file server approach for its shared data storage. However, this would either have resulted in potential bottlenecks and a single point of failure, or required every server in the cluster to have direct access to the storage devices and be able to both read them and write to them concurrently. The diskless shared root cluster developed by ATIX for MMI overcame this problem by removing the need to have hard disks in the cluster nodes.

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform is centrally installed on the storage system, enabling "plug-and-play" hardware additions and easier system management. Most of the functionality of this system is provided by the Red Hat Global File System, together with Red Hat Cluster Suite and, for remote monitoring and administration, the ATIX solution com.oonics GrayHead.

"Our requirements for the new cluster system were very demanding. Our initial experience with the new solution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Global File System proves conclusively that it is possible to realize even high-end projects successfully using open source software," declares Martina Ritzer, head of the web service department at MMI.

For more information on Red Hat GFS, please visit http://www.europe.redhat.com/software/rha/gfs/

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the worlds leading open source and Linux provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with satellite offices spanning the globe. Red Hat is leading Linux and open source solutions into the mainstream by making high quality, low cost technology accessible. Red Hat provides operating system software along with middleware, applications and management solutions. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide and through top-tier partnerships. Red Hats Open Source strategy offers customers a long term plan for building infrastructures that are based on and leverage open source technologies with focus on security and ease of management. Learn more: http://www.europe.redhat.com

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