Slashdot Mirror
Cool Linux Tricks With Atlas
dpilgrim writes: "Looks like some powerful players want to see Linux going toe to toe with Unix 'big iron.' Would you like to be able to run two Linuxes simultaneously on the same box? Or seemless swap processor and memory in and out of your machine? The Atlas project aims to bring you all that and more. There's a press release from TurboLinux reported here, and a more in-depth article running on SourceForge's
Linux on Large Systems Foundry."
It would be useful for webservers (or any other server for that matter). Upgrade w/o reboot, full redundancy (if one crashes, the other goes on). This would increase the reliablility of the internet tremendously. Not to mention, you can run Debian + RedHat at the same time :)
Everything is mainstream now.
You got my hopes up, only to find this is for future enterprise hardware.
I want hot-swap PCI now. The memory swapping would be good in the case of a failed DIMM or two. The processor swapping...well, I'll just admit that wouldn't work too well in a uniprocessor computer.
Since I really doubt memory connectors are grounded properly to handle hot-swapping, that leaves PCI as the only one that's remotely feasible with today's computers. I know Solaris SPARC has it, what about x86?
Hot-swap PCI could be a really nifty feature on x86 machines. Especially for net guys like me who move NICs around all the time...
± 29 dB
It sounds like a good idea and all, but does it work in real life? With hot swappable memory and cpu's, isn't the risk of electrocution really, really, high. I, as a personal user, wouldn't stick my hand into a server and risk death. I would just get a second server to take over for the 10-15 minutes it would take to upgrade, if I wanted 100% uptime. But businesses already have a HUGE amount of servers, incase one of them fails. So the corporate advantages of it are not that big.
So far as IBM is concerned, they don't seem to be "competing against" Linux, they are running it on their servers right now. If you want some big iron running Linux, look at their zSeries machines. They run hundreds of simultaneous Linux images through their Virtual Image Facility. Of course, this has been discussed before here and probably some other places...
Other computer companies might have the same offerings, but IBM is the only one I am familiar with. Of course, we are also talking some serious cash for these IBM machines, whereas the Atlas project seems to be geared at more mid-range stuff that a smaller company could afford. So, I know it's a little like comparing apples to oranges, but I thought it might be of interest...
Would you like to be able to run two Linuxes simultaneously on the same box?
Actually, I'd like to be able to run one Linux on N boxes, or M Linuxes on N boxes where M!=N. Just immagine a cluster of 50 machines where the failure of one machine has no effect on the operation of the cluster as a whole. There are some good projects in this area, but I don't think they can quite offer this kind of transparency.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
There aren't many reasons at the moment to switch from Solaris to Linux on big-iron hardware. But tomorrow is another matter...
IBM is now marketing Linux as a big-iron OS and is actively selling S/390 mainframes with Linux. I believe that Linux now has a good chance of becoming the standard OS for big-iron systems - IBM and SGI first, then Compaq and HP, and finally Sun. Sun have switched Unixes before. I worked at Sun during the transition from SunOS 4 (BSD) to Solaris (SVR4). If they can do it once, they can do it again. Solaris is also gradually becoming more Linux-like, with a Linux compatability layer and Gnome. This could ease an eventual transition from Solaris to Linux. I'm not saying that this will happen, just that it's becoming increasingly likely.
HH
I've always been very intrigued by the various partitioning options which you can get from commercial Unixes. Personally, I think Solaris is lightyears ahead of the rest, but any of the available solutions look intersting.
Partitioning, especially the dynamic variety, lets you take maximum advantage of a large multiprocessor machine. Can you say, 'OS upgrade without downtime'? From testing to gradual rollout, to full deployment, and if needed roll back, all without having to bring the machine down. Really cool!
I realize that atlas only envisages static partitioning for now. But can dynamic partitioning be far behind?
A lot of people are going on and on about what linux can do that solaris can't.. cross platform, open source, etc...
But I think your question was, given the Sparc platform.. why not use solaris?
At this point, you are right. Solaris is where it's at.. I mean, if you are buying Sun.. you obviously want more than just a fast machine... you want the support, etc.
But... as to why I prefer using linux to solaris, in general...
Linux is the new reference platform. new tools are developed on linux first, then ported to other unixes (the mahjority, anyway).
The number of tools quickly & easily available for linux vastly outnumbers the same for Solaris. Yes, you can get, compile, and run pretty much everything on solaris.. it's easy to port form linux to solaris.. but it's still easier to use linux.
Linux is open.. I just, well, I DO like that. Sure, I'm not gonna go out and modify a kernel.. but it means I'm not necessarily stuck with what Sun tells me I'm stuck with.
Would I buy a server farm of solaris boxes and run linux on it now? no.
Would I if Linux sparc supportw as as good as it's intel support? probably (once SPM is fixed)