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IBM

IBM Buying Mylex 35

Posted by justin++ from the linux-support? dept.
subfarm writes "IBM is picking up Mylex for $240 million. Press release is here. " I hope IBM continues Linux support for the Mylex cards - from what I've been told, they worked extremely well under Linux. In fact, Mylex even has a Linux CD offer on their home page...
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IBM Buying Mylex More

IBM Buying Mylex

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  • I don't know about anybody else, but here are two things IBM can do to make me feel better about their purchase of Mylex:
    1. Increase retail distribution of the Flashpoint series cards (my local dealer can't get them anymore) and
    2. Restore the use of the name "buslogic" - surely one of the coolest monikers in all computerdom


  • IBM & Storage (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This must be completely related to this [slashdot.org], right?
  • Well, Adaptec owns most of the SCSI card market, with the former NCR/Symbios having a bit, and Mylex/Buslogic having yet another chunk. I do wory about the fate of the cheap end of the Mylex line, IBM knows how to sell the super high end, but not the in a box on the store shelf stuff. Adaptec is stupid (hidden revs on the 2940 meant that at one point not even NT could install with out a suplimental driver disk, let alone Linux) and greedy (like not even ASPI[basic dos scsi drivers] for free if your driver disk went bad for free. Free drivers for every other OS under the sun, but not dos). And of course it took them for ever to get with Linux.

    I do not like the looks of this. IBM is still rather dumb, how ever pro Linux they may be.
  • Anyone besides me hoping for something similar to SGI going on here? (If I were to wish for IRIX-Highend->Linux-Lowend vs. AIX-Highend->Linux-Lowend, I think I'd pick IBM before SGI, given the service I have seen both show thier users in the past).

    Not to underplay the importance of OpenGL or anything, but it sure looks like thier is a chance they could be positioning themselfs for the same market... Unix from lowend desktop scaling smoothly up to industrial strength servers...

    Ok, I am going back to sleep and continue to dream now...

  • You neglect the other two marketroid prefixes, i and v!

    eGarbage! vCrap! iGibberish!
  • I guess then that IBM is buying Buslogic, or what is left of Buslogic after Mylex moved them.

    They used to be in the S.F. Bay area, and they had such great Linux support becuase they worked with Leonard Zuberoff (I might have spelled that wrong) who wrote the Linux drivers. Back when no other hardware manufacturer wanted to hear about Linux, Buslogic hardware people helped Leonard find problems in their hardware and our drivers, doing such things as connecting up SCSI analyzers and monitoring the bus while he debugged a driver in the presence of the hardware engineer who designed it. Leonard was then running "Dandelion Digital", a company that published Filksong CDs (science-fiction fan music), he now works for VA Research. I don't know if any of the Buslogic folks who helped us out in the early days are still there.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • Buslogic(Mylex),

    Has always had great support for Linux. They released a Linux Support statement a couple of years back (Linux SCSI HOWTO I Think). I personally think the Adaptec Cards are horribly overpriced(hyped).

    It will be interesting to see what IBM does with Mylex.

  • IBM is a good company when it comes to buyouts. I see this as a great step forward for Mylex. Basically IBM will not borgify Mylex, but will leave them a pretty much independent part of IBM. The reason they bought Mylex is because they have money to burn. Of course they will immediatly start incorperating Mylex scsi/raid into thier systems like RS/6000 and even some of their pcs.

    My only concern is that the low end may get discontinued or get a price hike. I love my mylex card, great under linux and very cheap.

  • Maybe if Mylex didn't proclaim themselves the eRaid company, IBM wouldn't have bought them.

    I wish companies would eStop that already. It's eAnnoying.

  • Or another way, "[Big blue] is like a dinosaur kicked in the ass. It takes fifteen years for the experience to reach its brain."

    IBM is useful for the OSS community, though; they have tons of money and power of various sorts. They don't maneuver worth a damn, and their response time is pretty poor, but that the OSS people can do -- and do better than most anyone. IBM gets the benefit of our software, which lends our speed to their lumbering power blocs.

    Mylex' RAID units have, in my limited experience with them, quite satisfied my expectations, especially for the price. While I don't in general like mergers, if Mylex manages to turn into a wholly-owned company with some degree of autonomy, it will likely avoid getting sucked into IBM's plodding.

  • Send this to the marketing director:
    Dear Sir,
    I've noticed that you have been appending vowels to the beginning of a lot of words that don't strictly need said prefixes. I can only assume that you are a-Moron. e-Nough allready. i-Can't take it anymore. o-Nly brain damage can explain this. I doubt u-Bastards reallize how irritating this has become. y-MustYouDoThis?
    --Shoeboy

  • Symbios cards work well with Linux. Both my Alpha and my P-II Linux boxen have 53C875-based controllers, and both perform outstandingly. So even if Mylex/BusLogic were to go over to The Dark Side, there is still a good alternative to Adaptec.

    You'll note that IBM has become a pretty big player in commodity disk drives. This acquisition gives them one more piece of the low-end server.

    -Ed
  • They might have supported Linux in the past, but here [mylex.com] it says the "The Linux Installable CD offer has been discontinued".Hmmm...Doesnt look good to me.

    L8r...
    Corrado

  • I bought a BT-958 and it was great. It even had "Solaris" support on the box. However, the driver broke in Solaris 7 and Mylex owns the driver.

    Why won't they open source the sucker!

    Praise be to me!
  • Now that was one of the funniest posts I have read in a long time...

  • ...from the contacts I have within big blue, Linux has seemed to reach strategic level with the result that the attitude has become: _everything_ must be ported to Linux. Most hardware*1 shall be certified to be able to run Linux. The attitude I've been seing is not one of "we kinda support it...sometimes" but rather, in management'ese, "an embracing of Linux as an important strategic platform". This is the reason why so much stuff (software) has been ported in so little time ( Visual Age, Web sphere etc.). Another indication of their commitment is that they are partnering with not only RedHat but also with SuSe, Caldera and Pacific HiTech. If they were doing it just to show that they weren't "missing the train" they probably would have chosen one partner.
    Big Blue is like a tanker...it takes a long time to change course - but when it does, nothing stops it in its way.

    *1: Netfinity servers, Thinkpad Laptops, Intellistation workstations, Commercial Desktops, RS6000 43P Models 150, 260, RS6000 F50.
  • My mother was the head lawyer behind the deal. Nice job.
  • AdvanSys have been making decent SCSI controllers for
    a while. More importantly, they've been providing official
    GPLed drivers for Linux for years. I bought mine
    solely on the grounds of their Linux support (at the
    time, the Adaptec cards weren't well supported), and
    I've never regretted it. I'd recommend them to anyone.
  • Or maybe he means that IBM's next purchase will be SGI. There are rumors about...but there are always rumors...

    Now that would be something!

  • The Linux Installable CD offer has been discontinued. The DAC960 driver is now included in these commercial distributions: Red Hat 6.0 SuSE 6.1 Caldera Open Linux 2.2 All requests for CDs as of 5-12-99 have been received and will be shipped. For international orders, please allow 3-4 weeks for customs and delivery.
  • The CD was a (bootable) Redhat 5.2 Installation Cd with the Mylex driver included to ease installation on new systems.

    Since the driver is now included in Redhat 6.0 (as well as a few other distributions) the cd is no longer required or usefull.

    BTW, the driver for the mylex controllers is not yet part of the stanard linux kernel, it can be downloaded as a kernel patch from http://www.dandelion.com/Linux/DAC960.ht ml [dandelion.com].

  • It seems like more than a dream though. IBM's got a buzz about Linux now. Our Infrastructure Group may be installing Linux for dual boot NT/Linux which I am very happy about. It seems that they will be porting most of their software, Lotus Notes/Domino, DB2, and the such, to Linux as well. I know one of these links was posted a while back, not sure which, but the other one is something I found a while ago. Both discuss Linux and IBM's plans for it which include hardware and software development. The second link even has a link to Slashdot....


    developerWorks: Linux [ibm.com]


    Linux at IBM [ibm.com]
  • Guess HP wont be using mylex cards in theyre netservers anymore. =)
  • Dang man, I thought IBM was going to stay out of feminine itching products, but now that they've bought Mycelex (the 3 day cure for yeast infections) what does this mean for the rest of us? I expect to see an ad with Kim Alexis selling us an RS/6000 along with other feminine products. Whats next? A joint Tampax/Adaptec venture with new USB enabled feminine hygiene products? What are the implications for plug and play with this stuff? It's all just so confusing!

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