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IBM (Offically) Launches Linux Box Clustering
Neumsy writes " IBM has offically announced that it is releasing Linux-Based Server, Software Packages. Yahoo! News has the story . According to IBM, this will expand the use of Linux. It's a good overview article. Not too much in depth, but still nice to see Linux getting out there more and more."
The commercials weren't lying about IBM selling Linux servers?!?!?!?!
;-)
Maybe I outta start believing marketing people? Nahh....
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Since Quake III Arena is multi-threaded, would it be possible to run it on some sort of cluster? If not, or if there is, is there any other game that is capable of playing on a cluster?
Mind you, it would need a fair bit of bandwidth I'd bet.
...this business move won't put IBM too much into "debth."
daed si luap
A lot of people seem to confuse what the posters say (which is in quotes btw) and what the Slashdot crew says. Of course, either is just as likely to be spelled incorrectly :).
Interestingly enough, just this morning I saw a two-page ad for IBM servers running linux. I haven't found the actual ad online, but it showed the famous "bigfoot" photo, labeled as fake, and then a penguin walking through the server room in the same pose, labeled as real. The other page of the ad was an abbreviated list of the usual Linux myths that we all know and love, with IBM-specific arguments as to why these were no longer true. This is the real fruit of the $1 billion campaign from IBM, and a great answer for your hesitant management.
IBM's main page for this, aimed at upper brass rather than engineering, is at http://www.ibm.com/linux/cio2, and the myths seemed to come from this brochure: http://www.ibm.com/linux/Demystifying_Linux_Brochu re.pdf.
Maybe this isn't entirely on-topic, but I thought it was a great example of some more of that good mindshare. And this time IBM isn't going to have to scrub off any sidewalk paint :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
"Linux is appealing because of its price and performance, which can be less than with a comparable Unix-based system, Quandt said."
Sounds great...oh, wait, no it doesn't.
IBM has a winner. For organizations which can use more computing muscle, particularly in scientific computing, clustering is true blessing. The real beauty is that an organization can "test the waters" without an outrageous investment in hardware. When budgets are thin, clustering allows you to start small, and then ramp up as the benefits warrant it financially. Here is a lucrative niche for which IBM's expertise is ideally suited.
http://www.ibm.com/news/us/2001/11/13.html
It's good to see more linux successes. MS has really been perking up though. Take, for example, the recent link here to the leaked memo to theregister where linux is stated to be the threat. http://slashdot.org/articles/01/11/12/136243.shtml MS has really been perking up. Check out this little tidbit; looks like MS is now dumping copies of winxp at universities to try and combat the fact that intelligent people are using other systems. http://www.browndailyherald.com/stories.cfm?S=0&ID =5668 The MS drones are already out in force; you should leave a little feedback...
Boy, I'd really like to see a Beowulf cluster of those!
What? Oh, okay - never mind...
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
In the corporate market, most Linux installations are going to come in as X servers and thin clients (see ltsp). This has huge advantages for maintenance and support, as well as hardware upgrade paths.
In this case, wine, or other emulators, are not necessarily the best solution for legacy windows apps. Look at using windows 2000 terminal server to host the windows apps and rdesktop to access them from the clients. Very simple to integrate and maintain. The drawback is the cost of the seats on windows 2000 terminal server - but that cost will certainly be offset by the cost orf managing and debugging an emulator.
Of course, terminal server / emulator is to be thought of as a temporary solution until the legacy app is ported to something which is client independent.
What's even more fun is that Linux has now received some serious television advertising. Up until now (at least in my area) the only "advertising" Linux has received has been the mention of Linux as a possible training route at the computer schools popping up all over the place, as well as being lumped in with all the "UNIX systems that will crash at Y2K because it's so old, but you don't have to worry because nobody uses UNIX any more." -- that was said on one of the news stations here. I sent an e-mail to the channel's producers explaining to them that the use UNIX every day to run their servers (they were running Solaris), produce their graphics (they were running IRIX), and so on. I never heard back from them.
Anyway, this advertising thing is something I've been wishing I could do for a long time. It's one of the few things still really holding Linux back. I've just never had enough money to put together a campaign, and that's the major shortcoming of Linux: lack of awareness due to lack of significant cash flow. This, together with the DoJ statement that Microsoft can no longer use boot loader restrictions to leverage its monopoly position, will lead to a truly competitive desktop OS market in the near future (I say desktop OS because Linux is already taking over the servers, as evidenced by this commercial).
A solution to the problem with music today
http://access.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Releases/011018.Titan
Top500 org (http://www.top500.org) has the latest rankings out and Platinum is ranked #41 in the world with a 594 rating and Titan is at #34 with a 677 rating. These are not slow systems, but they do require a knowledgeable support staff. Both systems are IBM "out-of-the-box" clusters, running RedHat Linux versions.
I'm just glad to see linux advertised in the mainstream media. Name recognition helps.
More information is available at the main website: http://ncsa.uiuc.edu
The Internet has no garbage collection
I wouldn't say that Linux was a direct competitor against MS. Instead, I'd say it was an alternative.
Competitor implies that they're working towards a common goal, just using different methods.
What most people fail to understand about this type of cluster (high-performance, rather than high-availability) is that your apps don't *magically* become faster because you have N more nodes to run them on. Cluster applications require coding to an interface such as MPI or PVM to reap the benefits of the hardware. I don't know of any MPI-aware Quake or Apache servers though ;-)
Linux is appealing because of its price and performance, which can be less than with a comparable Unix-based system, Quandt said.
;)
Then Windows NT must be the IDEAL choice. Less expensive with less performance... No wonder Linux is having a hard time
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
IBM has a mature Beowulf program. I am being groomed to join the people deploying in the northeast. Check out this Redbook:
Linux HPC Clusters
Intelligent Life on Earth
... I'd like to see them run an ad featuring French-speaking nuns.
Competitor implies that they're working towards a common goal, just using different methods
But isn't that exactly the case? MS just doesn't actually say their goal is world domination. Both camps are "working towards the same common goal, just using different methods".
Intelligent Life on Earth
Hey everyone, check out this Redbook, published by IBM. I've loved their Redbooks for years, and now that I work for IBM e-business, I've been asked to study this guide before I start deploying HPC clusters.
Intelligent Life on Earth
The announcement may make it 'official', but IBM has been selling turn-key style clusters for over a year now.
How do I know, and why do I care? 'Cause I work for IBM, and design and build Linux clusters for a living.
We rack purpose-built 1U's (x330's) built for easy large-scale mangement (built-in daisy-chain KVM capabilities, integrated service processor network, cool blinky lights, etc, etc), have internally developed mangement software and system imaging solutions, and ship them to customers at a point where all they need to do is plug them in and log on.
The only real issue is almost no one has a 'standard' cluster application. Almost every one uses a different IPC mechanism, and usually an app is only validated against one very specific software image. So to get the most out of a cluster, customers still need to spend time tweaking.
Maybe someday soon, we'll all be able to 'apt-get install damned_big_cluster', but until then... <shameless>just call IBM.</shameless>
--Matthew
slashdot at sigalrm dot com
Compare this with Microsoft's advertising, which is sometimes grossly misleading, occasionally even other-worldly. I feel good about IBM being on our side. Let's hope lots of Slashdot'ers forward this to their top IT management.
If they keep promoting these servers as in this commercial then at least we'll get a couple of good laughs out of it :)
karma capped
Clusters are clusters, but not all clusters are equal.
You have high speed compute clusters like Beowulf.
Then there's the first type of High Availability clusters -- the hot standby/failover configuration, where services and storage on one system are reassigned and restarted by another if the first goes away. Most Unix and Linux implementations haven't got beyond this yet.
Then there's the more grown up version of High Availability clusters, where all the clustered systems have concurrent access to the same storage, cluster wide lock management, and can run multiple cooperating instances of the same application on all systems. Like Oracle Parallel Server. VMS pioneered this ; Tru64 Unix has it now, and Linux is working towards it with GFS (the Global FileSystem).
GFS has got to be one of the most exciting current Linux developments in my book. I've had a taste of this kind of clustering on Tru64 Unix, and believe me, once you've experienced it you don't want to go back.
I am looking for a 3d Rendering farm using clusters any idea ?
Sure. In France : Artabel. I don't know any other company doing the same.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.