• The service offers a top-tier Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstations environment for powering intensive workloads like animation rendering or data visualization without the associated hardware costs or administrative requirements.
• Red Hat’s dedication to providing technologies that more reliably span hybrid cloud environments—not just as platforms but also as services—is strengthened by Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstations on AWS.

The world’s largest provider of open-source solutions, Red Hat, Inc., declared the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstations on AWS, a cloud-based virtual workstation based on the hardened innovation foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Workstation-as-a-service provides the strength and adaptability of the world’s top enterprise Linux platform to tasks requiring a lot of computing power across a hybrid cloud, reducing hardware costs and administrative burdens.

The service offers a top-tier Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstation environment for powering intensive workloads like animation rendering or data visualization without the associated hardware costs or administrative requirements. It is accessible via a NICE DCV client provided by Amazon or standard web browsers.

Nearly every industry felt the effects of the global pandemic, which sparked an ongoing surge in remote work. This includes businesses built around a workstation-centric culture, such as animation studios, visual effects studios, industrial design firms, research institutions, and others, who are currently seeking ways to provide cutting-edge hardware capabilities to a distributed workforce. Failure to do so may cause projects to drag out, a talent drain, or even lost business.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstations on AWS offers a workstation-as-a-service solution developed to address these issues. It is delivered using NICE DCV, a high-performance remote display protocol, on AWS. It supports a range of GPU-accelerated hardware instances available on AWS while still delivering a fully-featured Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstations environment, offering a potent collection of capabilities, including:

• Optimization for high-performance workloads with a focus on graphically heavy tasks, limiting the need to tune performance or configure the operating system to fulfill user needs.
• Vast software support with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstations is preserving a similar certified ecosystem like the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, with thousands of Independent Software Vendor (ISV) programs available.
• Broad hardware support that works with a wide range of Amazon EC2 instances, including the G-family accelerated instance types best suited for remote workstations.
• Provides access everywhere by offering a web client and Windows, Mac, and Linux thin clients support.
• A well-known stack for developing software that supports the most recent stable versions of tools, databases, and languages.

Consistency is key for the hybrid cloud, from platform to cloud service

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstations on AWS is in line with Red Hat’s dedication to providing technologies that more reliably bridge hybrid cloud environments—not just as platforms but also as services. The new service enables enterprises to maintain workflows and operational consistency while processing even with a remote workforce and limited hardware alternatives since it supports the same skills, tools, and workloads that currently run-on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

• Project Amber functions as an independent trust authority in the form of an innovative service-based security implementation code.
• Intel aims to create a new multi-cloud, multi-trusted execution environment or TEE service for third-party attestation with this new project.

Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor chip manufacturer, recently announced Project Amber, a new service designed to unify and authenticate confidential computing across single, multi, and hybrid-cloud environments.

Project Amber aims to provide businesses with remote verification of the trustworthiness of a compute asset in the cloud, at the edge, or on-premises. It will function as a separate service from the infrastructure provider hosting confidential work.

Intel is currently working with independent software vendors to enable trust services, including Project Amber. Initially, the goal of Project Amber is to support confidential computational workloads as bare metal containers, virtual machines, and containers executing in virtual machines leveraging Intel trusted execution environments.

“As organizations continue to capitalize on the value of the cloud, security has never been more top of mind. Trust goes hand in hand with security, and it is what our customers expect and require when delivering on Intel technology,” said Greg Lavender, Chief Technology Officer, Senior Vice President, and General Manager of the Software and Advanced Technology Group at Intel. “With the introduction of Project Amber, Intel is taking confidential computing to the next level in our commitment to a zero-trust approach to attestation and the verification of computing assets at the network, edge, and the cloud.”

According to Intel, the core principle of trust behind a confidential computing environment is developed via a concept called attestation, which works toward testing workloads’ security.

Verification is an important process for organizations transitioning to hybrid and remote work environments; enterprises must know their employees are working on secure and confidential platforms.

With support from a hardware-based trusted execution environment (TEE), Intel believes Project Amber is a step toward creating a new multi-cloud, multi-TEE (trusted execution environment) service for third-party attestation.

Project Amber, for example, will act as an independent attestation service, guaranteeing that containers are not undertaking their verification process. This provides users with an additional level of security when they trust that the environment in which they are working is secure and authenticated.

Intel sees Project Amber as an independent trust authority in the form of innovative, service-based security implementation to reach the goal of increased trust assurance. This invention will provide organizations confidence that their compute assets are secure and have been independently verified to be secure. Using a third party for attestation aims to offer organizations peace of mind, ensuring that their environments are appropriately secured.

In the early rollout of Project Amber, Intel anticipates the service to run on various platforms, including bare metal containers, virtual machines, and containers operating in virtual machines using Intel TEEs. The initial version will only support Intel TEEs, with plans to expand coverage to platforms, devices, and other TEEs.

The service is designed to be cloud-independent, supporting confidential computing workloads in the public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, and edge computing. Trust has become essential in many industries today, preventing organizations from being exploited by different kinds of malware and ransomware.

According to Intel, a customer pilot of Project Amber will begin in the second half of this year, with wide availability for organizations in the first half of 2023.

Intel’s new solution announced at the Vision 2022 event would deliver attestation and assurance-as-a-service.