Slashdot Mirror
Compaq sells Linux Clusters
sumdumgai noted that Compaq is now selling preconfigured Linux Clusters if you happen to have any weather patterns sitting around needing to be analyzed or something. But this is a pretty substantial bit of heft behind Linux as a valid Clustering platform, as well as an easier way to get one.
The Linux virtual server project has open-source HA clustering. Good stuff.
Engineering and the Ultimate
I would never sell an x86 box with five nines guaranteed uptime (not that I sell these anyhow..)
Engineering and the Ultimate
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).
Try SGI's GPL'd FailSafe:
(I have not tried it - all I know is from what's on the website.)
---
I think these are aimed at the high availability, transparent failover, fault tolerant, load balancing type of clusters - not the supercomputer nuclear-blast weather simulating number crunching type clusters.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
True that.
But a 16 node ip failover turn key linux based web farm is still hotter than an over clocked P4 with a broken heat sink!
--
>How long would it take to get a replacement PS from Compaq?
Depending on your maintenance contract anywhere from 2 hours to 2 days. This is one of the reasons this isn't such a bad solution if you want a Linux cluster. Compaq has a excellent service unit. It's about the only thing left from Dec other than Storage works [now gutted, mostly], and the Alpha line [though nothing new has been released that wasn't already being designed at the time of the purchase]. Honestly I don't see VA Linux beating Compaq on this point.
Of course, I'd also like to see this product with Alphas, though that would never happen lest TruCluster sales would slip further.
While this is a good thing and all for Linux advocacy to the unwashed masses of PHBs, it really is only as good as the announcement.
I won't consider Compaq, Dell or any others to be truely supporting Linux until:
a. Linux is an option in paper catalogs.
b. A server w/Linux pre-installed costs less than the equivalent NT version.
I only say this because I would think PHBs and CTOs look more at paper catalogs than anything online (ooh - glossy paper)...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
If you have to ask, you can't afford it.
If anyone had actually taken the time to read the linked page at Compaq, they would have noticed that this is NOT a high-performance (beowulf) cluster.
:\
This is a high-availibility cluster, the idea being that one of the machines can die without losing anything. Kinda like RAID taken to the systems level.
That linux lacks this has been one of Microsoft's marketing points, so this is a really good thing. Unfortunately, the mirroring software is not open source or free software.
VA Linux.. They're 90% 'standard' hardware. (In some cases the mobo isn't exactly what you'd see on the component market)
Oh, and Compaq usually says 3-5 business days, unless you have one of the 'hella support' contracts.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Keep in mind, nothing (single system) based on the PC arch can claim five nines. As we move out of the PC realm to DEC/Compaq, SGI and Sun, well they can't do it in a single 'system' either. (although the issue is foggy on what a single system entails as you move up the product offerings, and they do come close) I think Sequent used to claim five nines for a few products, but then again they weren't *exactly* single systems.
In fact, the only current, conventionally single, 'system' I can think of that can claim five nines is the S/390.
And it runs Linux.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Nope. The best HP will guarantee with Win2K on a single server is 99.9, with a 24-hour on-site tech. That's THREE nines, not five. They will also be happy to sell you a Win2K HA cluster, but there again they will only guarantee you 99.99, once again with a 24-hour on-site tech. That's FOUR nines, not five. HP does sell a couple systems that claim five, but they're MPE/IX and don't exactly fit what one would call a 'single' system.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Yep, while this may seem like just one of many recent announcements of clustering products for Linux, LifeKeeper is a little different because it is based on proven high-availability (HA) technology that many Fortune 500 companies, including Chase Manhattan Bank and AT&T, use on a day-to-day basis to insure that business-critical applications keep running under any circumstances. LifeKeeper was originally developed by NCR for its MP-RAS UNIX, where it competed head-to-head with UNIX-based HA clustering products from heavy-weights such as IBM and HP. NCR later ported LifeKeeper to Windows NT and Solaris, and when the company got out of the general systems business to focus on the retail market, it sold the technology off to Steeleye, a start-up founded by a group of industry veterans which is now doing the port to Linux. Steeleye's functional overview of LifeKeeper for Linux is here, and NCR still maintains detailed documentation for LifeKeeper here.
The availability of LifeKeeper directly from Compaq is a big step forward for the deployment of Linux systems in enterprise environments because HA clusters need to be tested and supported on a system basis, i.e. HW and SW together.
I work for a company that had puchased several compaq DL580's and evaluated a few different cluster/failover/HA solutions. The decision to to with LifeKeeper was made just before I joined the company.
It has been part of my job to get the system implememted with RH6.2, Apache, Informix and a shared mass storage device.
A bit of background on LifeKeeper first. Lifekeeper is a process monitoring tool that monitors a number of services and its dependencies, and manages the re-start and failover of these services to a group of defined servers.
If you can imagine a stacks of servers with, for example, a firewall, a web server, and a db server as a unit, you can implement failover in a N+N configuration.
primary.......backup
firewall......firewall
apache........apache
informix......informix
Each layer has a virtual Ip that flips back and forth between primary and failover so that each layer knows how to talk up and down to the other layers blindly.
We found that we had to do a lot of custom work to get everything implemented the way we wanted it.
The Informix kit was a bit messy to failover, however apache and tomcat failed over very well. we had some issues with the NFS kit, as our Informix DB was mounted on the shared mass store.
We had and still have some issues with our firewalls. We are using gShield (ipchains) for our firewalls, and the gshieldconf tool allows for only one IP per box, and we had the real IP's plus a Virtual IP that floated between the firealls. (our production url resolves to this virtual IP). We loose connectivity to our primary firewall on its _real_ ip, and must access it from the VirtIP. It went on to cause us problems with routing mail up thru the stacks, with accessing customer sites from behind the firewalls, and a few other things. Bottom line, Lifekeeper doesnt work so well to fail firewalls over.
It is pretty neat to watch apache or informix or tomcat (or our firewalls for that matter) to flip over from the primary to failover box.
It ends up that all services that LifeKeeper Monitors need to be started by lifekeepr with some command such as: perfome_action -t apache -a restore, instead of apachecrl start.
we are putting ssl on the boxes right now and will see how Lifekeeper handles mod_ssl!
Neat product, would love to see it open.
Its also too bad, because the dl580's compaq sent us took about 3 weeks to get up and running, lots of wierd hardware problems with the pci bus.
I'd rather have off the shelf HW. Proliant servers are what I what call commodity HW. These things are a pain in the rear. Anyone offering pre-configged/built clusters using "standard HW"? I'm glad to see Compaq doing this, but I would like to see use of HW that if it takes a crap, I can run to the local Computer store and be back up before lunch. How long would it take to get a replacement PS from Compaq? (Yes, I realize they should be redeundant/hot-swappable)
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
It actually cost $300 more than the same hardware with NT (: But I did it to save dealing with drivers for state-of-art stuff which burned me in the past; saving a few days on company time is worth it.
The sad thing is that it had only the original obsolete 7.0 without security patches available 6 months ago. Last week, within hours of hooking it to the Internet to install security patches, it was wiped out by the Ramen worm. Chicken and egg problem: how do I get the security patches without hooking to the Internet, and how do I hook to the Internet without the security patches? (OK, I could have used another computer but you see my point...)
Anyway the OS is reinstalled, and it rocks... :)
Moral: If you get a preconfigured Linux, check the security updates status pronto.
... and so far I've been quite nicely surprised with the Proliants. I had one ML/370 that had problems with a power outage that fried the mainboard, but that was all that has gone wrong. We deal with about 50 or so of these beasties.
We do have one of those paranoid service contracts from hell where the Compaq paid technician will come out the next day and fix it...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Yet another step to getting Linux more mainstream. I'm glad to see that large companies like Dell, Compaq, etc. are finding that M$ Windows isn't the only solution for users needs these days.
True, but at least the media and every other lame brain out there will at least take note of the fact that 'Hey! Compaq is now selling Linux with its computers. Maybe that's a good operating system.'