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SGI and SuSE Team Up on FailSafe for Linux
Posted by
Roblimo
on Sat Feb 26, 2000 01:24 PM
from the another-tool-for-corporate-users dept.
from the another-tool-for-corporate-users dept.
Syn Ack writes, "SGI and SuSE announced at CEBIT that they are going to team up to bring Iris FailSafe to Linux. Linus is quoted as saying that this is a "piece of the puzzle" that Linux is missing. Here is SGI's press release." The press release says FailSafe for Linux will be open source, but doesn't say under what license.
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SGI and SuSE Team Up on FailSafe for Linux
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This will do wonders (Score:3)
That however is just touching on the obvious part. Less obvious is that this will let stuff written for Linux scale to the upper limits of business computing in very short order.
How is that you ask ?
Linux has been ported to the IBM Mainframe in such a way that a single s390 Box can run thousands of copies of Linux each doing dedicated tasks. The resources available to each can be adjusted to whatever the Kernel supports ( I.e. 64 GB or RAM, 2 TB of Storage etc... ) or what's needed for that particular operation ( 1 mips on the image server, 3 on the Web servers and 20 on the Database server ).
Add this in and you start to see a really terrifying scenario where Linux is able to scale to tomorrow's web service tasks and very little else can. By that I mean when Computing takes off in the 3rd world the way TV has. When Bandwidth becomes cheaper and more abundant. You are talking about 20 Million 800x600 two way Videophone conversations at the same time.
Nobody has the horsepower to play traffic cop in that situation now. But a Linux mainframe scaled to beyond today's limit will. Being Linux will simplify the development process since the developers can all have it on the desktop too.
As for the Licensing. SGI isn't completely cluless. They put XFS under the GPL to get it into the Kernel and avoid a fuss. This ccNUMA stuff will be at least partially in Kernel space so you can once again expect it to be GPLed.
High-Availability Linux Project (Score:3)
Wouldn't it be better to put more community effort into a "real" OpenSource (GPL'ed) solution instead of trying to port Irix's existing product and possibly getting a half-baked license?
FailSafe will be GPL'ed (Score:4)
Re:bah. (Score:3)
I specialize in High Availability for a consulting firm here in Toronto so I am as close to an expert on these topics as you can get. I use MC/ServiceGuard when protecting databases, backup programs or anything that isn't network based. I use hardware load balancers like ArrowPoint, Big/IP, or Cisco LocalDirector when I have to cluster and load balance Web servers or mail servers.
If you had read the information about failsafe you would have figured this out.
It pays to inform yourself before opening your mouth.
:)
Paul
---
Syn Ack.
Great news; the community can't do it fast enough. (Score:3)
The capabilities of SGI's stuff aren't in any of the current Linux offerings. It has complete N-node cluster quorum, application monitoring and failover-restart capabilities. It also has the nice GUI that is necessary to make it look real. This is completely comparable to the Win NT/2k Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS).
The people who have made whinny comments here really don't get it. It would have taken a year or 18 months for the community to come up with something flakey that would approach the capabilities that have just been dropped in our laps by the grace of [deity of your choice]. Adoption and exploitation of Linux/Failsafe, and getting it all going on IA64 this year is critical to smacking Redmond around while they fumble with Win2k.
I would hope more and more companies with locked in proprietary software would release it like SGI, making it usefull and acceptable to people who won't go down the proprietary road. We could still use some better storage solutions.
I just came out of the SGI booth... (Score:3)
I was just visiting the SGI booth here at Cebit and I must say that I am very impressed with those guys. I was talking to one of the engineers that have worked on the XFS port to linux, and it was interesting to hear the "Engineers" point of view on the entire release scenerio of XFS into the GPL
They previewed for me the XFS actually working on one of there linux boxes running at the show.. (I must say, the new rack mount cases they have are SOOO sexy!!)
But most importantly , I spent a bit of time talking to the engineers and I was very impressed with how they want to help the community. I felt like they where members of the community themselves, just getting paid for it.
Has anyone had a chance to see the new Octane product they have under a NDA? (I am going to sign it just to get into the "Closed doors" and play with it...)
Re:bogus, SGI can shove it linux doesnt need them (Score:4)
a) SGI can do nothing right: so I guess switching to Linux is wrong? Making a very high percentage of the machines on the Top500 list is wrong? Um, ok...
b) They have crappy unscalable hardware: So I guess Onyx II Infinite Reality Graphics are crappy? Hate to break it to you, but, while they may be a bit pricey, there ain't nothin' much faster. As for unscalable, 512 processors isn't scalable? Please. I run Irix on a machine with 512 processors and 196 gigs of RAM. Can Linux do that? Other than Cray, and Intel's one-off for ASCI, does anyone make anything bigger? Granted we (I work for SGI, in case you couldn't tell) are selling Cray, but the T3E has been sold in configurations of 1800 processors and the architecture scales even further. I think that qualifies as "scalable".
c) Inferior OS with no features Linux doesn't have: Pass me whatever *you're* smoking please. How about a journaling file system that is production ready? Scalable to 512 processors? ccNUMA support? Runs Alias|Wavefront applications that produce probably at least half the special effects you see on TV/movies? I'm sure there are more, but I don't feel like coming up with them. Now don't get me wrong - Linux is a great OS, but that doesn't mean that Linux lacks no feature found in Irix.
d) Public commercial company: RedHat. VA Reasearch. Need I go on?
e) Secret motives to steal the genious from Linux: And just how would we do that even if we wanted to??? All we would succeed in doing is getting everyone upset with us and ending up with a propietary version of Linux. Where, exactly, would that get us besides bankruptcy court? If it were up to us, we'd probably insert massive scalability features into Linux like, say, support for 512 processor SSI's. But, the Linux community would never accept those changes so we simply won't make them until the community will. Trust me, SGI is far more interested in playing by the rules than I'll bet most "Linux companies" out there.
If you want a company that keeps mumbling about contributions to Linux/Open Source and doesn't deliver, think of Sun, not SGI.