Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Oracle's GPL Linux Firewire Clustering

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the not-a-bad-idea dept.

Smoking writes "It seems that Oracle just released libraries to allow low cost Linux clustering solutions using firewire... Aside from the coolness factor (imagine a beowulf cluster of DV cameras...) it's quite new for Oracle to release GPL software. They also seem to include really useful tools for NIC failover, Wizard building framework and integration of the cluster into Gnome (via a gnomevfs plugin)."

21 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Cheap! by grub · · Score: 5, Informative


    The Firewire cards needed to build a cluster can cost as little as 10% as much as the required FiberChannel hardware

    Not to mention the FiberChannel switch. The Brocade fiber switch we use to tie our three SGI Origins to our SAN's storage RAID was over CA$12K when we bought it.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
    1. Re:Cheap! by ivan256 · · Score: 3, Informative

      The Firewire cards needed to build a cluster can cost as little as 10% as much as the required FiberChannel hardware

      Not to mention the FiberChannel switch. The Brocade [brocade.com] fiber switch we use to tie our three SGI Origins to our SAN's storage RAID was over CA$12K when we bought it.

      Yeah, but you only get 20% of the speed. Fibre Channel is at 2048Mbps now, compared to the 400Mbps of Firewire.

    2. Re:Cheap! by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 3, Informative

      I have to confess that I don't actually know what HACMP requires at the switch level-- I've never used that particular HA implementation-- but setting up FC failover on SGI systems is about as simple as it gets. You just set a config file on the host telling it what the primary and failover device paths are for each LUN, and off you go. It requires no special configuration at all on the switch, so it's very close to plug-and-play.

      Not every application of fibre channel has to be complicated.

      --

      I write in my journal
    3. Re:Cheap! by WatertonMan · · Score: 3, Informative
      FireWire2 is extremely exciting. Since Apple will undoubtedly include it as standard in their future machines it could make some serious networking/mulitprocessing stuff possible. I hope that OSS takes advantage of this. How about a port of POOMA that works off a network of FireWire2 based computers?

      (For those not familiar with it, POOMA is a math library for C++ that handles multiprocessing in a very easy way. Debug it on a single processing system and run it on a multiprocessing system) It was developed at LANL but a lot of people use it. With FireWire2 and a bunch of cheap systems you could get a lot of supercomputer performance very cheaply.

    4. Re:Cheap! by scm · · Score: 2, Informative

      800Mb/s and eventually 1600 Mb/s FireWire are on the way. I beleive it is widely rumored that Apple will be releasing the 800 Mb/s controllers soon. Sorry I can't find any good links to back this up at the moment...

  2. Survival Tactics by bovilexics · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, this is of no surprise to many that have followed Oracle over the past few years (perhaps 5+).

    Oracle has been incoporating many open standards into their products recently which has been necessary to help keep the company in a (relatively) good position in the database server market. In the past all of their technologies were proprietary with their custom SQL extensions and their custom language for stored procedures and triggers (PL/SQL). Oh, and Linux - forget about it.

    However much of that has changed and now they support Linux, XML, Java (I believe the first to have Java stored procedures), and a large portion of the J2EE platform with things like OC4J (their java app server based on Orion).

    See these links for just a sampling of what I'm talking about.

    Java Stuff
    Linux Stuff

    --
    Are you bovilexic? Moo!
    1. Re:Survival Tactics by NineNine · · Score: 4, Informative

      Well, I wouldn't call their position in the database market "relatively" good. They're #1, and have been for a loooong time.

      The Java stuff is cute, but by and large hasn't been implemented much. People buy Oracle because it's been around forever, and has been tested probably more than any other software on the planet. PL/SQL is still, by far and away, much more popular than their Java app. PL/SQL is incredibly optimized and solid, whereas their Java solutions are still getting there.

      Their XML parser is definitely good, but the documentation for it is virtually nonexistent.

      I don't think that they're necessarily adapting because they have to. Their core business is very strong. I think that they're just trying to expand their market. Of course, they've had lots of misses too. Some of their apps, like Oracle Forms (which is incredible) and their very nice web server while used, aern't nearly as popular as their core RDBMS.

      And you forgot one of their coolest new technologies... OODBMS. Very bizarre. Very different. Hasn't taken off yet, but I've used it, and it's very very innovative.

      Oracle's not in any trouble *yet*. But I think that they're hurt every time they try to work their way into the low end market to compete against things like MySQL. Bad idea.

    2. Re:Survival Tactics by Petronius · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, Sybase had Java stored procedures first.

      --
      there's no place like ~
    3. Re:Survival Tactics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Oracle is doing this because clustering makes sense; the database has been one place where, traditionally, clustering is very difficult. YOu basically need one big fast server to really work, and that's where Sun and others are caching in bigtime.

      Oracle's new clustering stuff looks fantastic; it does really neat stuff, it's not just hype.

      As for the GPL stuff... oracle's main product is their database server, and it's ability to cluster. That's where the real uniqueness is; so they have no reason to keep something like firewire drivers proprietary. Their core product still stands out.

      A lot of poeple say "Oracle sucks" because it's quite a bitch to set up sometimes.... but nothing else scales like Oracle.

  3. Firewire technology is important. by phoenix_orb · · Score: 5, Informative

    My friend, I am unsure if you are purposely being obtuse, or just don't know about firewire technology.

    Firewire is hot-swappable. Try that with a external SCSI Drive. (not a hot swappable disk, the entire drive)

    Firewire doesn't need a computer to work. USB 2.0 and 1.1 need a computer for it to work, but you can actually plug a DV camcorder straight into a digital VCR.

    There is up to 50MB/s transfer rates (400Mbits/s) and the design is scalable, meaning the next iteration of Firewire will be 800Mbits/s, or possibly even 1.2Gbits/s

    Ease of use: FireWire cables are a snap to
    connectyou dont need device IDs, jumpers, DIP switches, screws, latches or
    terminators.

    Data and power: the FireWire cable carries data of course, but also power. I have one cable on my desktop for my iPod. It charges and synchs it to my iTunes with one wire. Serial doesn't do that.

    USB 2.0 doesn't have real world speeds at the advertised 480MBs. Firewire does.

    It is an industry standard. Bar none. Purchase a new digital 8 or mini DV camcorder. What do you get? A firewire port right on the side.

    So basically, I wish all ports were designed with the expandibility of firewire in mind. I can do just about anything with it. Now even if I have a super-duper fast parallel port, there is tons of stuff I wouldn't want to do it with.

    --
    Blah Blah Blah.
    1. Re:Firewire technology is important. by ejasons · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well, technically an external SCSI drive can be hot swapped (I've done it), but having the bus idle while swapping is important. It's just not a good idea to yank out a drive when the bus is active.

      To be pedantic, "technically" an external SCSI drive cannot be hot-swapped -- the standard doesn't support it. It just happens to work most of the time, when, as you mentioned, the bus is idle. It works great, until it doesn't work (when you fry your SCSI interface).
  4. Re:I was about to say... followup, real nfo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    &&&&& here's the link to real ip over firewire for linux: http://www.s.netic.de/gfiala/IP_over_1394.html

  5. Re:IP over FireWire by houston_pt · · Score: 2, Informative

    Could be a very good idea. Just googled-it and found a few cool links: TCP/IP over IEEE1394 ; 1394, i.Link, Firewire Networking
    The speed of FireWire sure seems adequate to substitute some small network ethernet connections...

    Google is your friend

    --
    coffee | nose > keyboard ©
  6. Re:IP over FireWire by CMonk · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's been around for a while.

    Here's a page I googled. http://www.s.netic.de/gfiala/IP_over_1394.html

    General Linux/1394 info can be found at http://www.linux1394.org/links.html

  7. Firewire for real clusters? I don't think so. by tonyhill · · Score: 5, Informative

    When I first read the post, I got pretty excited. Dreams of cheap clustering for scientific applications danced in my head. No more need for Myrinet, no Dolphin, just Firewire and Beowulf!

    Then, I read some performance metrics on Firewire. High bandwidth. High latency. Doh! The fairies stopped dancing for joy.

    The problem is that in scientific computing, the time it takes for one node to say I need that data to another node, and actually get that data determines the performance of many more apps than does the speed of the CPUs.

    So, until a cheap, low latency solution for communications comes by, real clusters will be communicating over Dolphin, Myrinet, or some other propietary technology.

    Tony

  8. Re:Firewire's future by afidel · · Score: 5, Informative

    Firewire will never die. The reason is simple, the next generation of midi is based around firewire as the physical transport. The origional midi has lasted decades because it was well designed and met most of the needs of those using it, but more modern setups that need to send actual sound data, not just notes were poorly supported with the old standard. Now there is a midi standard that can do everything the old one can and also carry samples!

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  9. Re:Firewire for real clusters? I don't think so. by afidel · · Score: 3, Informative

    Scientific clusters are not the only type of cluster you know. For instance Oracle Real Application Cluster is what Oracle thinks will be the companies future. These clusters may need the bandwidth of firewire et al and can live with the latencies.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  10. The cost of Oracle.... ummmm nothing really! by IdleTime · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have read several articles here why people prefer to use because Oracle is so expensive.

    Unless you are planning to use it in a commercial setting, Oracle is free as in beer!

    The latest version of Oracle for Linux can be downloaded from here

    --
    If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
  11. Re:Out of the political loop by runenfool · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are a couple of reasons Intel might want to kill firewire.

    1) It was designed by a competitor, Apple (who made the situation worse by implementing a high fee for a time). If it was designed by say, Microsoft or Dell, I doubt they would be working so hard to marginalize it.

    2) It uses no CPU resources like USB. Greater tax on CPUs = need for better CPUs.

    Intel would be well served to push IEEE-1394 (Firewire) as it encourages people to use their desktops for highly CPU intensive things like video editing.

  12. No TCP/IP support by heroine · · Score: 3, Informative

    With all the shared filesystem, process management, localization features, they don't support the most basic of all: TCP/IP over firewire. Then again, we wouldn't be in a recession if managers were producing something useful.

  13. Re:IP over FireWire by ultrapenguin · · Score: 2, Informative

    Of course, since this site is about bashing Microsoft, we cannot mention anything about good and working technology implemented by Microsoft.
    However, like it or not, direct link of 2 laptops with 400mbps firewire IS faster than 100mbit switched ethernet. I've copied gigabytes of movies from coworker PCs using firewire link, and if someone wanted to copy more than 2 or 3 movies while visiting our office, they would always bring a firewire cable or card, knowing how it would take much less time to transfer the data.

    So don't bag something because you had a suckass experience with it on YOUR XP install.