Slashdot Mirror
IBM and Red Hat Sign Major Support Agreement
gnudot writes: "Red Hat announced this morning that they have entered into an agreement with IBM to provide support services for the entire eServer product line. This includes zSeries, iSeries pSeries in addition to the xSeries (What no qSeries? or 7Series?) which is already supported. Here is the story on Yahoo."
That press release is humorless
except after cServer
this sent RedHat shares flying, as well as some other Linux stocks, such as Caldera and VA Systems.
I was thinking of how to intentionally fail my drug test... It would make a good memoir story someday.
The press release at Red Hat also mentions software solutions.
I'm not sure what to make of this exactly. How many of these servers does IBM sell? If the services market here is lucrative, then why doesn't IBM keep it for itself? Still, it seems like it might be a nice little revenue stream for Red Hat.
Tim
Look at how much the stock went up according to Yahoo!
(http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=rhat&d=c)
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
IBM is doing what they do best... making damn good hardware.
Redhat is doing what they do best... making a damn good server OS. Apparently, it's better than AIX. At least it's costing IBM less, which is a good goal as well. IBM gets Free software to run on its high price enterprise-class servers. Redhat gets paid a lot by a huge company for support, and incidentally for further development. They also get a lot of prestige... and more penguins spraypainted on sidewalks, I'd imagine.
Everyone else gets the fruits of IBM's and Redhat's labors in the form of GPL and other open-license software. Win-Win-Win
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Redhat will also be responsible for cleaning up the linux graffiti ads that IBM did in SF. That's not my definition of "linux support"
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
What the hell happened to SUSE? IBM was cozily in bed with them; then, whammo!
The Gardener
--
actually, there is a qseries, check here IBM qseries
Congradulations, never have liked the distro, but it is always good to see a linux company do well.
Lets just hope this isn't one of those support deals where RedHat pays IBM to support IBMs software. Never did understand that.
You should abstract this concept into a general theory, you could name it like comparative advantage, that sounds cool. Add some other stuff, and make a whole college major out of it, we could call it...i don't know....economics??
How could that get moderated as flamebait? It's insightful +3!
Bullshit. RedHat tacks on bloat to a half-baked science experiment. They make a mediocre server OS. RedHat is garbage.
For those of us still not comfortable with IBM's new eServer marketspeak, here's a simple conversion chart:
eServer Name == Real Name
iSeries == AS/400
pSeries == RS/6000
xSeries == Netfinity/PC server
zSeries == System/390 mainframe
--Mythos
I wrote those covered calls a bit too early. Serves my lack of faith right :)
You're lying. An MCSE wouldn't have been able to spell 'incompetent' correctly.
IBM's support of Linux has been great, and I realize they've said they won't do their own distro, but I STILL say they should! They could probably buy RedHat outright, which already seems to have close ties to IBM at RTP.
:) This already happened with IBM's name on small PC's which were seen as curiosities by management types when they first appeared years ago. Linux is in a similar place that the small computers like Apple and RadioShack were in then. Once you get this kind of corporate and overall acceptance, the momentum builds, more folks get involved, and things get even better.
An IBM Linux distro would become sorta like the "IBM PC" in that it would be a quasi-standard that everyone rallies around, but IBM doesn't really control. This already happened with the PC. The GPL would ensure it further. (IBM's hardware-centricity would also help ensure impartiality for software) In other words, it would create a sort of "majority-defacto" Linux API that developers could at least shoot for instead of the current bit of fragmentation. A (relatively) standard API has worked to M$ advantage for attracting developers.
IBM's good name would help Linux acceptance with the PHB's
"Apparently, it's better than AIX"
No.
AIX will still run on clients high-end mission critical servers. Linux will run on small to midrange servers.
If you think that a Fortune 100 company like the one I work for is going to switch >1000 AIX servers to Linux, You Are Nuts. We want IBM reliability, IBM support, and IBM accountability.
This is precisely the sort of thing that will help ALL Linux-related companies. IBM wants to dethrone Microsoft. IBM still supports NT/2k/whatever for their customer base, but they increasingly recognize they can't win at this alone. RedHat wants to sell software - not just RedHat Linux, but things like Interchange and Stronghold. Being able to sell hardware with packages like Stronghold ready to roll right out of the box is a major boon for IBM and RedHat. It also helps IBM because they don't have to roll their own Linux distribution to sell their hardware. Big Blue has finally seen the light.
Whatever happened to IBM's statement that they will support any Linux distro on the planet on an IBM eServer?
I was just about to order a whole set of those little guys and was planning on running Debian GNU/Linux on them. If it won't be supported, I'll have to buy something else, or dog forbid build them myself.
Damn you! Get the hot bullets out of the shotgun to die!
Large companies exist to make money as unethically as possible. This is not win-win-win. It is a win for us and a loss for companies. Proletariat of the world unite!
While this deal is a BIG deal for RedHat, it probably isn't exactly a huge thing for IBM. I doubt that the $2 drop in IBM's stock price had anything to do with this deal. It is more likely related to the fact that blue-chips in general fell today due to weak consumer confidence numbers that came out today.
Lasers Controlled Games!
What this does buy the linux community is the fact that Linux has support by a big name, rich company. IT managers should feel more comfortable with this knowledge.
In the past I've seen IT departments lean toward Microsoft in their solutions, even knowing the product was defective, because they honestly thought they could get individual attention and support.
IBM certainly knows how to deliver better support than Microsoft, especially since IBM will come on site.
I get all my porn at the goodwill, too. My sexual preferences are 80's neon tinted.
Nothing like a lady in legwarmers to get your motor running.
One might be able to argue that IBM has been doing things just to piss-off and beat Microsoft. Open-source labs, linux for iPaq, and their whole jump behind Java...
IBM seems to have gotten into a situation where they can benefit the public while at the same time take a swipe at a long-time 'enemy' (remember IBM getting the short in with DOS, OS/2, etc.). Seems like a win for consumers, and an example of open-source and the free market together benefiting consumers.
AIX will still run on clients high-end mission critical servers. Linux will run on small to midrange servers.
Yeah, those 360/mainframe boxes (zSeries) certainly qualify as small to midrange...
How can I keep from soiling myself in indignation every time I hear the French referred to as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys"?
Signed,
Francois P.
P.S. Quebec is WAY more annoying than France, NOT the other way around!
Look at the full picture
p =s &t=5y&l=on&z=l&q=l
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=RHAT&d=c&k=c1&a=v&
The stock has fallen like a rock.
Went up $1.61. Whoopie fucking do.
It was at close to $150 a while back!
I don't see any details here..
If I buy tommorow a pSeries machine (I wish!), where is Red Hat coming? do I sign a support contract with them or with IBM? and who do I turn if I have a question? to Red Hat or to IBM?
Lots of details missing........
Hetz (Heunique)
Is Linux kernel-level stuff (threads, forking, etc) sufficient to the realtime needs of larger IBM apps now? Or, perhaps these machines wont be used for those type of apps when running RH?
I am quite curious what folks do with this sort of a configuration in the real world.
Sidebar, I heard Sun converted all of their acctng apps to Solaris awhile (96?) back too. But I never heard much more about it.
make an IBM branded linux for these...
Then the could call it:
The seriesOS
(insert rimshot)
Actually it is not a bad idea..."the seriesOS, when you are seriOuS.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
big purple!
"7) Proper office programs. If you want Linux to be used in offices, you need decent applications. These programs should be able to import all MS formats, past and present. Microsoft is still light years ahead when it comes to their office programs. " star office? duh
Me lose brain? Uh, oh! (laughter) Why I laugh? -Homer Simpson
It also doesn't help that IBM is going to be laying off LOTS of people tomorrow... Believe me, I work in the BTV plant, and we've all been told that MANY people are being let go tomorrow.
Posted anonymously to preserve the small chance I have of keeping my job...
should this thread be considered the slashdot daily "bash microsoft" offering?
Apparently, it's better than AIX.
I doubt that it's better then AIX (technicaly) all around, but what it is an OS with growing marketshare and way better compatablity, which means more software. AIX is never going to do anything to microsoft, Linux is.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Really. If IBM started their own distro, or purchaced redhat, they would own the distro market flat out. Everyone in bussness would go for "IBM stablity" over anything else (hell, I would to unless I knew for sure it sucked).
And I doubt that many of the 'hard core' would be very happy about seeing companies like redhat, SUSE, etc get the smackdown. IBM would kill its karma with the community.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I would have to say redhat is what you make it. You can strip out the packages you dont want and
install the ones you do? Hell if you want you can
just load the kernel, a shell, and a few other basic packages and make it what you want. When you get right down to it Redhat is just the same
as debian, slack, suse, or what ever you use.
I have left redhat a dozen times or more for a cool new feature in another distro, but I always come back home. It works for me, if it does not work for you maybe you are the problem. Lack of knowledge on you side is hard for Redhat to work around. In short FU!
I am a republican not by choice, but rather by lack there of.
We want IBM reliability, IBM support, and IBM accountability.
And you can get it, with IBM eServers running Linux.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
the abcdefghjklmnoqrstu and v Series?????
They don't get linux?
--
Garett
Luckily, there are bunches of John Harrisons in IBM, so I don't need to post anonymously. I get calls/emails all the time for other John Harrisons. :)
Ok, if you bother to look up some of my posts it becomes obvious which one I am, but I don't see my boss reading much /.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Thanks. Thought of it all by myself.
Well that is the problem with Gnu linuxblows it is not very easy to use. It is a motley crew of different parts.
The high end of the IBM pSeries line has 8 - 32 way CPU scalability.
I'm sorry, but unfortunately Linux doesn't scale that well. YET.
Now, in a few years will it? With this kind of backing from both IBM and Red Hat will we see it? I'd bet so...
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I've always wondered about Star Office fans. Is it just because it's free?
Star Office is inferior to Office 95+ as far as stability, ease of use, and features go. Its interface is unpolished and extraordinarily confusing. Two "start" buttons. What?
I'm not an ms fan, it's just the facts. I don't like ms office much, either, but it's pretty clear which is the better product.
It makes the entire platform look bad when you guys run around touting crap software.
I seem to recall that Caldera and TurboLinux have the same agreement with IBM.
IBM has been looking for Linux partners to support all of their hardware since they got into Linux, and Turbo and Caldera were the first to step up to the plate. Bear in mind also that AIX/5L is the outcome of the "Monterey Project" between IBM and SCO, which Caldera acquired.
I think this indicates that Red Hat and IBM are starting to work more closely together after IBM was unable to create a fragmented Linux vendor market, rather than one dominated by Red Hat (at least in the US).
DaBuddha
AIX must be really bad if this sort of thing makes Linux and IBM stocks rise.
Linux is good and all, but ?
Please enlighten me as to what is going on.
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
...is how bad are large corporations, and how complacent did they get, that something done by a handfull of volunteers outsmarted them. That is what they are admitting.
Is this a sign of the times (please, no cheesey Price references, I already had Bobby Brown [not as in Goes Down] at my fitness class today)?
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
"Apparently, it's better than AIX"
"No."
Not yet.
Thus IBM marketed the 360 series as the "all-around" computer. Which is why its logo was a compass rose. And, of course, the punny name...
"Apparently, it's better than AIX"
No.
In 5 years? In 10 years?
Current Linux might be rock-solid, but there is not yet the years of field experience to know. I suspect that in this environment, one unknown bug is worth about ten known bugs.
We want IBM reliability, IBM support, and IBM accountability.
When and if you want or need to switch, your odds just improved. The irony is that all this makes your not switching a more viable position. It also makes it more likely that you're actually getting your money's worth.
Rather, the needs of the Linux user is secondary to the needs of IBM's R&D. File systems that most Linux users have never heard of such as GPFS and Episode are accepted as valid file systems for IBM backup while more frequently used file systems such as Ext3 and xfs are ignored. Even more common true blue file systems such as jfs and AFS are skipped by the IBM backup "solution."
So... IBM is now enlisting the help of Red hat? So what?! At the end of the day, will I be able to restore the latest files from my Red hat v7.2 Ext3 fs which *should* have been backed up to TSM? Will Red hat be able to assist me in getting TSM running on a pSeries F50 running Linux?
The bottom line is that several departments of IBM such as Tivoli are still treating Linux as an expiermental operating system (not production) and treating IBM R&D as the only supported users. Real users, production users of ext3, xfs, jfs and afs as opposed to users of expiermental file systems are finding that True Blue does not care about the integratity of their daily incremental backups. Those that listen to Red hat about the advantages for a non-destructive upgrade to Ext3 during an upgrade to v7.2 will still find that the same file systems that used to back up fine before the upgrade are now being purposily ignored. Users that listen to IBM DeveloperWorks that JFS is now at v1.0 and is production ready are also stuck in the same sinking ship. And while YellowDog Linux runs fine on some pSeries RS/6000s, Tivoli has yet to provide a single client for Linux PPC.
So, now that Red hat is contracted with IBM, what type of improvement in support for IBM departments such as Tivoli should we expect? NONE. True Blue PATHETIC support. It isn't up to Red hat to get Tivoli support into shape, it is up to IBM and they continue to do a half ass job of it. I'm putting in just as much work, if not more, in monitoring TSM failling backups as I did when running ADSM v2 under Linux emulation of SCO. Nothing has changed and it is still up to the individual Linux users to make choosen true blue "solutions" truely "work."
Give me the source code to the TSM client. Then we can discuss your "support" options. Until then, IBM is the last company you want to do business with for Linux. "LOVE-PIECE-LINUX" isn't going to get your files back when you figure out that your Red hat v7.2 server was never backed up since you upgraded! "eServers from IBM running Linux" will NOT save you a bundle of money when you need to recreate all your lost work that wasn't backed up since you upgraded to Red hat v7.2.
Backups are a *BASIC* part of supporting a Linux server. Until you get that part right, all that is being done is hot-word compliant marketting, not *support*.
Large companies exist to make money as unethically as possible.
I haven't fed any trolls for a while. Y'all're probably getting hungry, so...
Bullshit. Large companies exist to make money in whatever way their management decides they can. Those managers are people, and, by and large, fairly decent people who prefer to compete honestly. And IBM and many other large companies that have been around for a while understand that the way to ensure that they can continue to make money for a long time is to offer good value to their customers and play by the rules.
Consider also that some things can really only be done by large institutions, and we'd all be worse off if they weren't around to do them. As a relevant example, consider the computer you're reading this on: it exists only because of large companies. There is no way a mom & pop can build a multi billion-dollar chip fab, or afford the kind of money that IBM, for example, has sunk into research on hard drives.
Okay, so all of this stuff could be done by government or university research, but we'd still all be worse off, because those kinds of institutions aren't good at getting products on the shelves, and they're really lousy at focusing their R&D dollars towards stuff that people actually want. And insofar as they get good at it, they'll become a much nastier form of big business (having lived in both academia and corporate america, I can tell you that ethics are at least as big a problem in academia, there are fewer checks on academics and academic politics are downright vicious -- *much* worse than corporate politics).
Proletariat of the world unite!
No thanks. Every time that happens they seem to end up killing everyone with an education and smashing civilization backward 50 years.
SIGH Two years ago, I could have worked at either Red Hat or VA. I chose VA because they had a proven business model: selling computers. Too bad VA couldn't make money on them! Now VA is just Red Hat without the name recognition.
...and you know it. And your website sucks. And so does your country.
a y. ..
goddamnbullshitusofawannabecheeseheadmoronsanyw
Canada #2 The Greatest Imitation of the USA in the world
Huh? Star office only has one start button (and none in the 6.0 betas). What on earth are you talking about?
now, fuck off!
Big blue and red hat: that make big violet hat ?
Will it fit on the head of the men in grey ?
It's an ironic situation that the people (myself included) who are cheering any success Linux has with IBM, also cheered the past day the micro-computer came home to hopefully free us from the tyranny and centralized power of the main-frames from IBM, and the blue suits, the corporate mentality, and the whole IBM philosophy.
It's incredible that Microsoft has fowled up things so badly that it causes us to cheer the success of our former adversary.
Long live IBM and Linux!!
Damn. This old hippie can't believe he just said that.
i can still get first post with your balls in my mouth.
>Everyone else gets the fruits of IBM's and Redhat's labors in the form of GPL and other open-license software. Win-Win-Win
:)
Win WIn WIn... think about it...
IBM sells those 390 Linux clusters to customers who would normally run racks of 'small to midrange' Sun or Intel equipment. All of the big iron heavy lifting is done by the underlying VM OS, and Linux just hums along thinking it's one CPU and one disk.
Use ApplixWare.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I'm curious as to why the iSeries was listed as only have a 32 bit kernel... it's a 64 bit system.
mr
the fact that it has that one start button is what i'm on about.
you've got one in your gui (kde, win32, whatever) and then another in the application.
craziness
Does this mean they'll have red ibm logos or blue redhat logos' on them?
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
it's nice to see great companies such as IBM and RedHat cooperating together to bring linux to the masses. Finally our vision of Linux on every desktop is getting closer and closer.
With latest release of 2.5 kernels, Linux is the best choice for both desktop and server.
You of course realize that you are running the Tivoli Storage Manager under a version of Linux that is not officially supported yet....
www.tivoli.com/support/storage_mgr/adcllin.htm
Bleeding edge is hell...
I don't use RedHat, but I'm glad they're doing good! This benefits everyone who uses/promotes Linux.
IBM makes great hardware, RedHat is a nicely packaged OS based off of Linux. I think the two will get along just great!
Congrats to IBM and RedHat.
Indeed. In the early 90s I cheered for MS and laughed at the way they took IBM to the cleaners.
Now, I look in awe at IBM; they are the most clueful company out there (Sun, Apple, Corel, Borland, . . . ; nobody gets it like IBM.
Go Big Blue!
And, Thanks!
(OT) In 95 my sig was:
A two step program to end the drug war:
1. Make drugs legal.
2. Put IBM in charge of marketing.
1000 SlashDot sigs
It wasn't just IBM with all the centralized computing tyranny -- Those DEC bastards and their UNIX sucked pretty hard too.
Guess you'll just have to use one of the other million or so backup systems available for Linux.
apply IBM methodology
rinse, lather, repeat
Both of these companies pay heavy homage to Intel, and Redhat didn't really do anything impressive except collate existing s/w, fudge it ala M$, and write a feature-obsessed package manager.
when will ppl stop drinking the kool-aid here?
Hee! Good one, limey! You think that one up yourself? Yer mum must be real proud, eh?
Sorry to break it to ya, but you fools simply misspell aluminum. And as for us being "hillbillies" (do you even really know what a hillbilly is?), well, if it weren't for us, all you gap-toothed, mutton-chewing buggers would be speaking German.
Cheerio!
sure 9/10 geeks agree that it beats M$ in stability, but who doesn't?
now why .. ever so why .. would a large corporation like IBM want to jump on such a popular bandwagon like linux .. oh yeah - cheap marketing! In other words "we're cool - we get it - we use linux" - sounds too much like a slimy politician targeting a growing influential population to me
now if most of the geeks here would stop smoking the blue crack and get over their self-esteem issues they might actually wake up to what's going on here
At my workplace sit 6 RS6000 beasts with similarly beastly IBM support contracts handling essencially every aspect of a small college network (1,200 students & 500 faculty/staff/administration). My desktop and personal webserver are both linux (RedHat) machines. I see advantages to both systems. Red Hat has a great diversity of applications to run on servers, while AIX has tight security and time-tested server utilities (i.e. SMIT). Hopefully this merger will not just bring Red Hat onto IBM hardware, but it might also promote development of those server utilities for Linux. Advanced serving utilities would help diminish the idea that "AIX will still run on clients high-end mission critical servers. Linux will run on small to midrange servers." (RobL3)
The road runs both ways, and hopefully we will see some Red Hat/open source applications becoming more AIX-friendly. (Tried installing Python on an AIX machine?)
But the best part - My stock in RedHat jumped 1.61 points today.
"One touch of Darwin makes the whole world kin." George Bernard Shaw
Backups are a *BASIC* part of supporting a Linux server
This really is a problem of your own devising.
Why did you upgrade to Redhat 7.2, using ext3, when that configuration is *not* on the list of supported clients? I suspect you've stuffed up and are attempting to shift the blame onto Tivoli.
Tivoli supply a *fully supported* TSM client for Linux, heck they even supply TDPs for Oracle and SAP API backups running on Linux.
Of course, you could stop complaining and just *fix*the*problem*. Have you considered mounting your ext3 filesystems as ext2? Or doing the backup from another system via NFS (ick). At least then you'll have a backup and a (mostly) supported system...
Now that ext3 is available in a major distribution, you can be sure the TSM client for Linux will soon support it.
And next time - plan before you upgrade.
Steven "did that sound harsh?" P.
AIX isn't bad at all. Its just cheaper for IBM to share the development costs of Linux with the world, rather than to continue to pay personally for in house development of AIX. And its not like AIX is gonna disappear anytime soon. Thats still years and years away.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
We want IBM reliability, IBM support, and IBM accountability.
But in the long run, aren't we looking at a situation where the niche currently covered by unices like Solaris and AIX to be taken over by Linux?
I think this is a valid question, and we all should be working towards that as our goal for developing GNU/Linux going forward.
But RH should open an R+D in Germany called B...... or something where the original IBM port was done on a wing and hope. Then RH can eliminate all memory leaks in linux using Hardware assist PER and SLIP traps, and profile the code. IBM is years ahead, because the boys in Germany are compiler nutter, and assembler heads. Then RH can say their version has seamless scalability, and enhanced security.
Besides - AIX is already leaking into linux.Much work remains, and driver issues , hyper channel TCP/IP stack. AFAIK, Itanium will not have VM, so IBM has to come first in the redbook stakes. The claim on the best security, bar none, and HTTPR are powerful marketing edges.
I don't see anyone running Linux on huge hardware. They're all converting to farms of tiny, redundant, replacable, damn-near-disposable servers. Of course, in our case tiny means dual-processor boxes with 4GB of RAM, but for our customers that is tiny.
So, as with the mainframe vs. mini and mini vs. midrange arguments of yesteryear, you will begin to see a new trend in corporate computing: the micro-farm. It will not simply replace larger systems. It will become the standard by which the next stage of hardware downsizing (remember when that didn't mean layoffs?) will be judged.
A couple of years ago an acquaintance who just happens to be a vice president at IBM remarked that they were really, really impressed with Linux (due to the fixing of a major security problem within 24 hours!!!) He also indicated that in the fullness of time they would like to migrate AIX to Linux.
IBM is putting a lot of money into the Pacific Rim to subsidize the writing of Linux applications. They probably see the appeal of low cost software to the developing nations, plus the paranoia of China (and France) towards windoze, and anticipate (1) the growing appeal of Linux to these markets and (2) in the future, there will be a large base of programmers familiar with Linux who have no experience whatsoever with Windows (i.e., a large and growing future market for IBM products if IBM has Linux). The threat to Microsoft is not in the US and Europe, but that it will become marginalized in 80% of the world as the developing nations grow up on Linux, etc.
SUSE had major contracts with IBM, but SUSE has problems. Red Hat does not share those problems, and has shown the ability to grow both in size, in capabilities with respect to a support infrastructure, and in profitability. Red Hat looks like a good candidate for a survivor for the ineveitable ups and downs of the business of software and services. They are also the de facto standard for much of the world.
IBM is not going to go out and hire a couple of thousand support people, developers, etc., for the transistion from AIX to Linux (and is having trouble getting Linus take the kernel in the directions which would really make this possible quickly anyway). They keep their AIX support operations, Linux grows (I seriously doubt if there is a single piece of IBM big iron which doesn't have Linux on it somewhere), Linux applications start to come in (and this is where the real value of Linux will lie!!!), IBM learns how to support it (through surrogates like RedHat) according to big time commercial standards (i.e., IBM standards of support will emerge over time), and everybody lives happily ever after.
Few years from now, when the big become bigger there will be IBM Linux left competing and few years past that - only Microsoft Internet.
Over the long run much of the cost of machines is in support. The cost of support of micro-farms is much higher then what it would cost to support one or two machines. I still don't see how it is cost effective to have a micro-farm.
So much for your rules!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Also, don't forget that IBM was on the receiving end of a long and painful trial over anticompetitive practices. And THEY got punished over it. My, my, could it be what made them a friendlier company now? :)
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Yes, I planned ahead. I have been using a self modified version of TSM since RH v7.2 beta back in August. TSM can backup ext3 fine, it just chooses not too. And where is this behavior documented? Where is it documented that an episode file system WILL be backed up but jfs for Linux will *silently* be skipped. Because I do have friends at other sites that are getting hit by this "idiot check" of file system types.
And how do you address the complette lack of Linux PPC TSM client? pSeries Linux is supported?! How? Where can I get the specs for writting a SSA driver? Shouldn't there be some basic criteria that IBM should meet before declairing that "the forces of openness has an unexpected and powerful new alley." Putting out marketing about "support" is not support. Putting out support is support. And while setting up better relations with Red hat is a step in the right direction, IBM still need to look at it own internal support.
If you talk to IBM sales, they explain how they will be your Linux experts and your problems will all be handled by them. In reality, the continue to create more problems than they solve. The history of ADSM/TSM is just one good example. ADSM v2 requires Linux to use a SCO emulation module to use. ADSM v3.1 violates the LGPL but IBM declairs that distribution in violation of licensing and federal copyright law is alright since it is "unsupported" distribution from their ftp site. (Try handing out free copies of MVS which you don't support sometime and see if IBM think this illegal business practice is acceptable both ways.) Now ADSM v4 silently and very purposily skips backing up whole file systems (including your suggested mounting via NFS).
So what makes IBM a supporter of Linux? Does the fact that AIX 5L has an "L" in the version make them a supporter of Linux? Does it have the features you would expect in a modern GNU/Linux distribution? Can do define iptables in AIX 5L? Policy routing? Is Linux-PAM package support complied into all AIX 5L binaries which do authentication? AIX 5L is a half assed support for *some* Linux PPC binaries so you can move your Linux binaries *away* from Linux onto AIX 5L.
IBM is not following through on their marketing of supporting Linux. They are just following their marketing with more marketing. This is *NOT* good for Linux in the long run.
Gee, how could they miss such a simple business principle as the fact that if you are pouring money into something, you should always continue to pour money into it, and eventually you will turn a profit! What a bunch of fools...Even I know that! Thats the reason everybody who plays the lottery gets rich, right?
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
You've never seen the support costs for an IBM mainframe, have you? Suffice to say that our customers are quite happy with the cost differential, but they do it more so because of the access to modern technology in terms of software, networking and support.