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We've been waiting for this release as the version to start replacing Windows servers with. We'd like to build the farm clustered, however. From our research, it looks like clustering Samba can only be done with Mission Critical Linux' products. Anyone seen anything else out there that can also do the job?

There's also the LKCD (Linux Kernel Crash Dumps) package:

KCD contains kernel and user level code designed to:

• Save the kernel memory image when the system dies due to a software failure;
• Recover the kernel memory image when the system is rebooted;
• Analyze the memory image to determine what happened when the failure occurred.

Caldera Employee Was Key Linux Kernel Contributor

Christoph Hellwig has been, according to this web page, "in the top-ten list of commits to both the Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.5 tree". The page also mentions another fascinating piece of news, that he worked for Caldera for at least part of the time he was making those kernel contributions:

"After a number of smaller network administration and programming contracts he worked for Caldera's German development subsidiary on various kernel and userlevel aspects of the OpenLinux distribution."

In 2002, he offered a paper on "Linux-ABI: Support for Non-native Applications" which is described like this:

"The Linux-ABI project is a modification to the Linux 2.4 kernel that allows Linux to support binaries compiled for non-Linux operating systems such as SCO OpenServer or Sun Solaris."

Back in 2002, he was described, in connection with his appearance at the Ottawa 2002 Linux Symposium, like this:

"Christoph Hellwig
"Reverse engineering an advanced filesystem
"Christoph Hellwig is employed by Caldera, working on the Linux-ABI binary emulation modules. In his spare time he cares for other parts of the kernel, often involving filesystem-related activities."

So, in short, he was contributing to the kernel and working for Caldera on Linux/UNIX integration at the same time. His work for Caldera was on the Linux kernel ("he worked for Caldera's German development subsidiary on various kernel and userlevel aspects of the OpenLinux distribution"), and he also did work on his own on the kernel. Did Caldera know about his freelance contributions, in addition to knowing about his work for them? What do you think? He used his hch at caldera.de email address when doing it. All contributions to the kernel are publicly available anyway. They certainly could have known. As for his job, his signature on his emails back in 2001 was:

"Christoph Hellwig
Kernel Engineer Unix/Linux Integration
Caldera Deutschland GmbH".

He used the email address hch at bsdonline.org sometimes too, and here you can see some of his Linux-abi contributions. Here are some of his contributions to JFS, Journaled File System. Yes, that JFS. Here he is credited as sysvfs maintainer, and he confirms it in this email, writing, "I've run native sysvfs tools under linux, but as now that I'm Linux sysvfs maintainer I'm looking into implementing free versions of it."

Here is a list of the operating systems that use or can handle the file system sysvfs:

"sysvfs: UNIX System V; SCO, Xenix, Coherent e21
"operating systems that can handle sysvfs: FreeBSD (rw), LINUX (R), SCO (NRWF)"

Here's a page listing by author (alphabetically by first name), with his emails to linux-kernel in June 2003, so he is still contributing.

Here he is listed on the Change log for patch v2.4.17. Here he tells Andrew Morton in 2002 that he will

I guess this is a good spot for a plug...

Though you wouldn't know it from our horribly out-of-date website, our primary product at the company I work for (Mission Critical Linux) is a high availability middleware product that can be tightly integrated with custom software so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to HA clustering services. I'm talking about things like inter-node communications, distributed lock management, heartbeating, service location management... If you have a tight schedule or budget, or you just don't know if you know that the problems that need to be solved are (Hint: you haven't thought of everything until it's done) we'll help. We don't just hand you the tools and libraries and leave you on your own. We'll hook you up with an experienced HA engineer and hold your hand as necissary. (The more hand holding required the higher the price, but what do you expect...) If you're concerned about performance (you obvoiusly are) we can help there too. Our stuff is 10 times faster than any other HA middleware vendor out there right now. Really. It's not necissarily just for linux, either.

We got one of those too. I haven't been able to come up with a way to get them to waste their money actually auditing us, but I'm working on it. Except for the single windows machine and my Mac, all of our machines run either free software, or software we wrote ourselves. It would be fun to have them come in and waste their time.

i think you meant to link to here

It's interesting that RHAS got best of show for clusters. It's verbatim the same code we showed at linuxworld in 2001. They just put it in a box and slapped the redhat name on it two years later and all of a sudden it's award worthy. I guess we didn't give IDG enough money.

You can use mcore instead. (If you're running linux, that is.) That'll save your dump even if the crash made the hard drive unaccessable, and it doesn't require swap.

Good luck. My company just spent 150k+ on a sun/veritas solution to do exactly this. Our storage is all SAN.

No offence, but your company spent too much. Your typical off the shelf PCI scsi adapter, in fact ANY scsi adapter that can set it's own ID works in a multi-host setup. If somebody from Sun or Veritas told you otherwise, they were lying. There are multiple companies (including the one I work for) that make software to manage the setup under linux. In fact our software is included in Debian 3.0 and RedHat advanced server, so you don't even need to spend any money on software unless you want bells and whistles (Graphical setup, support, NFS lock maintanance across failover...). It even comes with scripts to interoperate with your favorite database server.

Yikes! Links make it a lot easier for people to figure out what's going on!

"A year ago, there seemed to be two promising Linux HA [high availability] frameworks--along with lots and lots of experimental things: SGI's FailSafe, and Kimberlite from Mission Critical Linux. The FailSafe software website now seems very out of date, although the mailing list remains active, and there seems to be forward momentum. On the other hand, Redhat seems to have forked the development of Kimberlite, calling the fork Redhat Cluster Manager. They don't seem to be making development source available, at least to the public. Are these two projects still relevant? What's the current status of Open Source HA?"

Try also linux-ha.org and open cluster

Yikes! Links make it a lot easier for people to figure out what's going on!

"A year ago, there seemed to be two promising Linux HA [high availability] frameworks--along with lots and lots of experimental things: SGI's FailSafe, and Kimberlite from Mission Critical Linux. The FailSafe software website now seems very out of date, although the mailing list remains active, and there seems to be forward momentum. On the other hand, Redhat seems to have forked the development of Kimberlite, calling the fork Redhat Cluster Manager. They don't seem to be making development source available, at least to the public. Are these two projects still relevant? What's the current status of Open Source HA?"

Try also linux-ha.org and open cluster

As far as people getting screwed, how about I add to every mailing list on the planet, and see how well you deal when your email is effectively destroyed.

Letters != email.
Bill paying services can't be changed in a week
You're a fucking retard.

I've run into guys from an company called mission-critical linux www.missioncriticallinux.com at the local LUG meetings. I know that they do custom clusters. Perhaps they can help?

Corrected URL: http://www.missioncriticallinux.com
(or as a link)

sorry.

Note to self: check links before posting!

Convolo addresses some of these concerns.

Their overview shows the original scenario he asked about, but with a SCSI bus or FC. All their downloads are for IA-32 Linux.

A few options:
Open Source: Kimberlite from Mission Critical Linux, Inc
With Support & FULL NFS (not fully Open Source: Convolo.

Kimberlite is the underlying technology, working today, designed from the ground up for HA on Linux (including some extremely robust data integrity capabilities). Convolo builds on it, adding full NFS support (state failover, host & netgroup failover, etc), and comes with 90 days support.

They also sell support contracts for Linux and Convolo (platinum, "we need a kernel fix now" type contracts, not just "buy a bundle of calls" type).

A few options:
Open Source: Kimberlite from Mission Critical Linux, Inc
With Support & FULL NFS (not fully Open Source: Convolo.

Kimberlite is the underlying technology, working today, designed from the ground up for HA on Linux (including some extremely robust data integrity capabilities). Convolo builds on it, adding full NFS support (state failover, host & netgroup failover, etc), and comes with 90 days support.

They also sell support contracts for Linux and Convolo (platinum, "we need a kernel fix now" type contracts, not just "buy a bundle of calls" type).

A few options:
Open Source: Kimberlite from Mission Critical Linux, Inc
With Support & FULL NFS (not fully Open Source: Convolo.

Kimberlite is the underlying technology, working today, designed from the ground up for HA on Linux (including some extremely robust data integrity capabilities). Convolo builds on it, adding full NFS support (state failover, host & netgroup failover, etc), and comes with 90 days support.

They also sell support contracts for Linux and Convolo (platinum, "we need a kernel fix now" type contracts, not just "buy a bundle of calls" type).

A few options:
Open Source: Kimberlite from Mission Critical Linux, Inc
With Support & FULL NFS (not fully Open Source: Convolo.

Kimberlite is the underlying technology, working today, designed from the ground up for HA on Linux (including some extremely robust data integrity capabilities). Convolo builds on it, adding full NFS support (state failover, host & netgroup failover, etc), and comes with 90 days support.

They also sell support contracts for Linux and Convolo (platinum, "we need a kernel fix now" type contracts, not just "buy a bundle of calls" type).

For Extremely good performance, and many features at a high price, the EMC Symmetrix is definatly the way to go.

RAID 1 is NOT the fastest, RAID 1 is mirroring. It is slow. RAID 0 is the fastest, but has no redundancy. RAID 0+1 is the way to go for speed/redundancy.

Have you tried Mission Critical Linux?

And above all, companies that are willing to provide paid for support for it so that other large companies will accept it as an alternative OS.

For High availability, I can name 2 products off the top of my head that are available now, work, and provide HA on Linux: Kimberlite (Open Source) and Convolo (Productized), both by Mission Critical LInux. Both enable you to build a cluster system that allows one node to take over the tasks of another node. Also, because it works in active-active mode, you can have both nodes working on different tasks (say database & NFS, or NFS & Samba), and the system will continue to work after failover, although at reduced performance.

For High availability, I can name 2 products off the top of my head that are available now, work, and provide HA on Linux: Kimberlite (Open Source) and Convolo (Productized), both by Mission Critical LInux. Both enable you to build a cluster system that allows one node to take over the tasks of another node. Also, because it works in active-active mode, you can have both nodes working on different tasks (say database & NFS, or NFS & Samba), and the system will continue to work after failover, although at reduced performance.

For High availability, I can name 2 products off the top of my head that are available now, work, and provide HA on Linux: Kimberlite (Open Source) and Convolo (Productized), both by Mission Critical LInux. Both enable you to build a cluster system that allows one node to take over the tasks of another node. Also, because it works in active-active mode, you can have both nodes working on different tasks (say database & NFS, or NFS & Samba), and the system will continue to work after failover, although at reduced performance.

but there are a lot more available options for support (well-documented, as well as "speaking to a human" options) for Microsoft products than Open Source stuff.

Here are three Linux companies that can do that:

• Mission Critical Linux
  
• Red Hat Software
  
• TurboLinux
  
• Debian (non-profit)
  
• 
  

  
  Plus, you can hire whomever you want (including that really great programmer you know) to fix Linux for you.
  
  

In open source, who do you sue when the bug loses you money? There isn't just "one place" you can aim your lawyers to recoup the lost revenue when something goes very wrong. Even Red Hat isn't a very good target, because they just package Linux, they don't take responsibility for bugs in the kernel.

To correct you: Mission Critical Linux is a professional services company focusing on the development, management, integration, support, and enhancement of Linux in the enterprise. I know, because I work there. We've release our Kimberlite High Availability Clustering software to the open source world, along with our crash analysis suite. However, we work with all the distributions, we don't do one of our own.

To correct you: Mission Critical Linux is a professional services company focusing on the development, management, integration, support, and enhancement of Linux in the enterprise. I know, because I work there. We've release our Kimberlite High Availability Clustering software to the open source world, along with our crash analysis suite. However, we work with all the distributions, we don't do one of our own.

Well, since I work at Mission Critical Linux, I've heard of it. We're a professional services company specializing in installation and support of Linux in the enterprise environment. We have released to the open source community some great clustering software (Kimberlite). However, we don't do a distribution, we work with all of them. His thinking that somehow we do is just one more indication of his cluelessness.

jeff

Well, since I work at Mission Critical Linux, I've heard of it. We're a professional services company specializing in installation and support of Linux in the enterprise environment. We have released to the open source community some great clustering software (Kimberlite). However, we don't do a distribution, we work with all of them. His thinking that somehow we do is just one more indication of his cluelessness.

jeff

Just a thought - you could deploy something that is, in-fact, mission critical on Linux/ix86 - and it wouldn't even cost an arm and a leg. (Just a leg, perhaps.)

See:
Mission Critical Linux
Oracle

First, check Eric Raymond's the Magic Cauldron, pointers given by others.

Second, you state:

We're also doing development in a CMM-3+ environment, so there is no need for someone to buy support unless we purposely start adding "features" (i.e. bugs) or make it so complex no one can use it without calling us on the phone. That's just not an acceptable option since our product needs to operate in a five-9's environment, where if it doesn't work right it's never even allowed in the building.

Having worked in these environments, they want a support contract. I don't care what CMM level you work at, if something goes wrong, they want to call someone, NOW (especially if you literally mean 99.999% uptime, which is 5 minutes of downtime a year). More importantly, they want the assurance that they CAN call someone NOW.

Also, how much customizing is needed to get your product working in an environment? Unless it is a drop-in widget, they're going to want your expertise in configuring it to work in their environment.

Sure, they could do it themselves, but why pay their employees to learn the system, when they can hire your expertise whe needed?

You also state:

We realize that if we do keep the source closed, but open the API or docs, someone will clone it because they don't want to pay for our work. Even with the typical no-quality clone, this makes the product life too short and the market too small to justify the large development costs.

So, you will be facing open source at some point - better start now thinking about how you will make money when this does happen - it's not an if, it's a when. If you can make money then, why not now?

BTW: for a look at a company that has open-sourced a HA solution, visit Mission Critical Linux who are giving away (GPL) their Kimberlite clustering solution, but also selling services and support around high-availability linux environments (as well as other mission-crtical linux environments).

First, check Eric Raymond's the Magic Cauldron, pointers given by others.

Second, you state:

We're also doing development in a CMM-3+ environment, so there is no need for someone to buy support unless we purposely start adding "features" (i.e. bugs) or make it so complex no one can use it without calling us on the phone. That's just not an acceptable option since our product needs to operate in a five-9's environment, where if it doesn't work right it's never even allowed in the building.

Having worked in these environments, they want a support contract. I don't care what CMM level you work at, if something goes wrong, they want to call someone, NOW (especially if you literally mean 99.999% uptime, which is 5 minutes of downtime a year). More importantly, they want the assurance that they CAN call someone NOW.

Also, how much customizing is needed to get your product working in an environment? Unless it is a drop-in widget, they're going to want your expertise in configuring it to work in their environment.

Sure, they could do it themselves, but why pay their employees to learn the system, when they can hire your expertise whe needed?

You also state:

We realize that if we do keep the source closed, but open the API or docs, someone will clone it because they don't want to pay for our work. Even with the typical no-quality clone, this makes the product life too short and the market too small to justify the large development costs.

So, you will be facing open source at some point - better start now thinking about how you will make money when this does happen - it's not an if, it's a when. If you can make money then, why not now?

BTW: for a look at a company that has open-sourced a HA solution, visit Mission Critical Linux who are giving away (GPL) their Kimberlite clustering solution, but also selling services and support around high-availability linux environments (as well as other mission-crtical linux environments).

Earlier this week Mission Critical Linux open-sourced their High-availability cluster technology called Kimberlite. I've seen this on lwn and linuxtoday, but it was notably absent from slashdot.

From what I've seen, it's better than LVS and Pirhanna because it gives you higher levels of data integrity. For example, when a node hangs, but doesn't die, the other node kills it, so that the first can't recover and suddenly you have 2 nodes serving inconsistent data. It also works with shared SCSI storage between two nodes, which I don't think the others do....

If you're interested in High Availability computing, this is definitely worth checking out. The kimberlite homepage is at http://oss.missioncriticallinux.com on your radio dial... :)

Check out the OSS linux clustering technology called

In addition to linux-ha, which includes links to Linux Virtual Server, Piranha, Ultramonkey, you can also find organizations that do this for a living. One (the company I work for, to be honest) is Mission Critical Linux. Specify what your needs are, exactly (web service, database failover, file system, etc), then look around.

By the way, is your consultant a reseller of Solaris (since I see he suggested that)?

jeff