Slashdot Mirror
Linux-only POWER5 server From IBM
vaporland writes "This story from Infoworld.com talks about IBM's new low priced POWER5 based servers which will ship with Red Hat or Suse Linux, but not IBM's AIX.
My question is, will it boot up Apple's OSX Server?"
instead of a bunch of people with no idea what the answer might be and just attack IBMs marketing practises
Something tells me that booting up OS X Server on an XServe is going to be cheaper than these babies.
Um, interesting, because those ROMs aren't present in .. any of my machines running OS X. Welcome to newworld. The only OSX-running machines which isn't newworld are the beige G3s, and they're not even supported any more.
Even OS 9 has supported having the ROM present in a file rather than physically present for ages.
They are not the same CPU, so its doubful OSX would run..
I Belive PPC is a subset of "Power", but i could easily be wrong on that part..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Why would you want to inflict a Big Brother email system on your friends?"
What's the big hubub about? Big Brother already scans ALL your email. Its called CARNIVOR. If you are so concerned about your privacy, perhaps you should stop using the net.
For whatever reason IBM intentionally or un-intentionally will be pissing off their AIX customers by not certifying the hardware for AIX. Technically there's no reason for not doing this, financially they would take a hit. Currently a similarly powered machine for AIX is 3-6 times more money depending on the config...
Nice product, don't get me wrong, they're just going to be pissing off their best customers...the died in the wool "UNIX" customers.
What are the servers you replace. In our lab we have a server dedicated to being a proxy cache to our code-versioning software. We have a server dedicated to being an ssh tunnel. We have a server dedicated to a dns/nis/nfs server which is terribly under-utilized.
No 4 power-5 processors aren't going to replace a dozen maxed-out dual-xeons. But more likely they will replace 2 maxed-out dual-xeons, and half a dozen servers that are largely underused. One clever thing they let you do is adjust the allocation of resources. Clever.
It is just irrelevant to the marketing initiative and the goal of IBM. Why the hell should IBM cares about the PowerPC on the desktop when Apple is already providing a solution? Go and buy Apple!
IBM is just unrolling the red carpet for Linux to enter enterprise data-centers in some of the most skeptical and demanding industries.
The most interesting feature is the virtualization engine on the four processors model. Given what it is costing to some banking customers per server on the floor, while some are idle most of the time and only justified because they need a "separated box for security reasons", this single feature will sell the box by tons. And I know a customer who would benefit right away from this to replace about 50 servers by two or three of these. And two-third of these servers are Sun boxes. IBM is likely to get the integration project using their virtualization engine, they will lost some money on the maintenance since the remaining third is IBM boxes, but they will get fresh new cash for the new boxes, the project and kick-out Sun. Anything else they could wish to have?
Achille Talon
Hop!