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HP Embraces Linux for its Toughest Servers
Colmao writes "Investor's Business Daily wrote up an article interviewing Martin Fink, the head of HP's NonStop Unit. From the article'In a move that suggests Linux is finally ready for prime time, Hewlett-Packard is giving the free software a bigger role on some of its toughest servers.' NonStop servers are HP's most costly machines. They are designed to be always on, mission critical appliances. They are used to run some of the world's stock markets. Linux is making big moves in the datacenter and getting some much needed exposure."
>in a move that suggests Linux is finally ready for prime time
Again? I think the last time was when it was let known that linux run several important systems in stock and other vital exchanges.
Linux is the OS most suited to big iron.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
The link given in the story is bad. There's a good story listed in yahoo news: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ibd/20050 720/bs_ibd_ibd/2005720tech01
The linked article doesn't seem to mention HP or Linux in any way...
"Linux is making big moves in the datacenter and getting some much needed exposure."
Not as much as CowboyNeal.
I own a hp laptop and i cant get some of it's features to work under Linux. Thanks to the good work of the open source community, some patches were made available but none of them works flawlessly.
.diff files as an apology to the buggy nature of the patch, which mention that hp don't support Linux, hence, these patches are the work of reverse engineering.
The developpers explicitely included hp support email response in the
They put on their most expensive hardware an OS that they don't support.
What to make of this?
We should have been
So much more by now
Too dead inside
To even know the guilt
What will they think of next!? Personally, I shut all of my servers down at 5PM so that people working late are inconvenienced and all incoming mail delivery fails! Take that, SPAM!
Oh wait.
My other car is first.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But is now running on Itanium processors (was MIPS). I suspect the Linux connection is that you may be able to now use Linux-based tools for development and the cross-compiler -now you have to use Windows and Visual Studio IDE.
..but I'm glad that the machines my bank uses to hande their online banking site are #6, #7 and #8 on this list.
I don't really remember, that there would have ever been any unavailablilities due to them. (But due to my ISP? Yes.)
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
i never turn mine on. take that hackers!
Are we talking about the remnants of Tandem being moved to Linux?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
They have long touted HP-UX as their non-stop platform, but this seems to me somewhat as a concession that it, well, sucks and they need something more adoptable by the mainstream.
I really think HP has the some of the best hardware in the market, particularly the superdome and friends, so hopefully this will help them.
Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/
...hasn't read the article, since the current posted article mentions *nothing* of Linux, Unix, BSD, etc...
Good job everyone!
</Sarcastic Flame>
Trust me. We get the calls.
Just because Linux is cool doesn't mean people have any idea how to use it.
I'd like to know where the idea got out that tech support was also free Linux instruction.
Further, IBM has spent enormous sums of money to ensure that Linux is reliable. IBM will soon discover that this aspect of Linux is the Achille's heel of open source. By using Linux, HP essentially gets a free ride from IBM and need not spend the money to ensure that Linux is reliable. IBM has already done the work.
I can already hear the grinding of the reduction-in-force axe at the OS department of HP.
And again there is some "HP loves your Linux" news. It's just a load of marketing. They don't support it, they don't promote it, they only use it a little bit. They just want to sell you their hardware. How many people read Slashdot? How much does this "news" cost? Exactly. Mod me troll, mod me flamebait I don't care. Just keep this in mind when you read the next "HP loves your Linux" news. Probably in a week or two.
but only if you live in Fanboy Land where Linux is the answer to every computer-related problem.
And this has WHAT to do with running Linux on HP servers?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Yep. and, oddly, Google News links to the same article from the headline "HP Propelling Linux Into Truly 'Big' Time". I'm guessing it's either a really stupid subscription redirect or they just moved the article (stupidly).
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
The original article seems to be inaccessible on investors.com. I found the same article on Yahoo news.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
Yes, well, look what "editor" posted the "story". Typical Slashdot.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
If you want everything to work, out of the box.
AFAIK Ubuntu now ships on HP machines if asked also.
that you may be able to now use Linux-based tools for development and the cross-compiler
HP already have more than a little experience with just what you describe
"The book ia-64 linux kernel by David Mosberger and Stephane Eranian was extremely helpful"
from: http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/journal/
in this (very instructive) article: "Porting OpenVMS to HP Integrity Servers"
(Integrity is one line below Superdome, both Itanium - based. Superdome IA-64 is just coming together now.)
hmm, 'kay that doesn't mean they used Linux tools, but it does mean they are sitting on some very recent and very applicable knowledge.
Not being a fan of Linux, for historical reasons, as much as other more practical ones, i nonetheless truly appreciate how OSS just affected positively one of the most closed - source OSs still out there.
(okay, VMS used to be available with source on microfiche, but that's not my point)
Considering
- Linux is the leading OS in the Top-500 supercomputers, and
- Linux runs large clusters such as Google, and
- Linux runs
a bunch of stuff for Schwab, ETrade, etc -
- and this other computer company that's a bit bigger than HP called IBM already noticed Linux
I think this article is badly misnamed.The article should have been titled
"Linux Propelling HP into Truly 'Big' Time".
This (virtual)article looks like a followup interview on a RedHat event mid june, where Fink talked about the possibility to run linux natively(as opposed to virtual). It got some coverage then, eg ,
5 /0613linux2.html">here.
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/linux/200
Yahoo news has the new interview. It's mentioned in one of the first posts here.
HP has ported ServiceGuard cluster management software to Linux! This is a _major_ step! You can now run Linux on high availability enterprise class servers (for example on HP Superdome)! Very nice, very nice indeed!
i don't know if the submitter did this on purpose (doesn't seem to be the case)...
But the "editor" didn't rtfa, the people commenting the story also didn't rtfa, and the moderators giving +1 insighful also obviously didn't rtfa, and probably also the people metamoding also didn't rtfa
me? i'm just ranting, of course i didn't rtfa
I wonder if HP is going to port the code from HP-UX for Linux to create vPars on their hardware, or is that going to be an HP-UX "only" feature?
These are systems that are really pretty cool. And really freaking expensive.
They have nothing to do with HP-UX or Unix of any kind. They are Tadem machines (feel free to look that up).
These are rather slow but super reliable machines with a bizzare OS that has had features for decades that mainstream os's still don't have. Take the current clustering and grid tech and meld it all together and you get something like the tandem. The company I work for came out of the tandem space. The typical intro to the machines for new hires is to note that you can smash one with a sledge hammer and you won't lose any transactions.
Who uses these things? Banks, Banks, Banks, Airlines, Governement, Dell, etc...
They (HP) have been working on a unixy layer to run on top of the tandem os for a number of years now. Apparently this hasn't been going too well. Sounds like Linux might help them do something similar to IBM and the VMs on the mainframe.
...HP also supported Linux on their notebooks. I bought the HP Pavilion zv6005us and getting Linux to run on it was a pain in the ass (not that I have everything working on it now).
"The company I work for came out of the tandem space. The typical intro to the machines for new hires is to note that you can smash one with a sledge hammer and you won't lose any transactions."
Well no wonder the machines are so expensive. They're smashing the inventory.
They list a "BSD/OS" in addition to FreeBSD [as well as "NetBSD/OpenBSD"].
My question: What is "BSD/OS" supposed to be? The old BSDi?
not a troll, see AC posting below for yahoo link (someone mod parent and AC as Dah Real Poop)
Apparently the NASDAQ is run on these machines.
NonStop systems, originally sold by a company called Tandem, have run the core of Nasdaq since 1982.
Of course they mod him down without even checking...
Fucking mods here are kikes.
"They have long touted HP-UX as their non-stop platform..."
I knew I was going to see this as soon as I saw the article.
NonStop is a platform all its own. It has nothing to do with HP-UX or the HP 9000 line. NonStop used to be called "Tandem". IIRC, DEC bought Tandem, Compaq bought DEC, and HP bought Compaq, which is how it ended up in HP's hands. Somewhere along the line, it got renamed to "NonStop".
HP-UX might be appropriate if you need 99.999% uptime. NonStop is appropriate when five nines isn't even close to what you need. This is totally fault-tollerant hardware. You can loose a processor, a memory bank, even a system bus and the system keeps right on going. Very high-end, esoteric stuff.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
HP's last few decisions about the Tandem line haven't worked out too well. After acquiring Tandem, they moved that product line over to PA-RISC. (Remember PA-RISC, HP's very own microprocessor line?) As PA-RISC sank, they had to move to another processor.
They picked the Itanium. Oops.
NonStop customers are getting very nervous.
My big hope is that one day Compaq will become "HP's Desktop Linux brand" so that it can ship Linux PCs without losing Windows OEM licences on the HP side. Its the best shot for any major PC company supporting Linux on the desktop in the near future.
Open Source Sushi
Sun has a product line with machines which are designed to be fire proof (ok, for a limited amount of time). The design is made so that the data survives a more physical disaster.
The HP non-stop machines are not the old tandems, but HP-Ux machines. I have not heard of any Tandems being sold for the last decade, I know some still running ones in banking environments as transaction machines, since they do that great.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
The point is, Fink is not interested in anything but getting buzz by leveraging brand names. He's admitted that to us internally. He's basically set things up where he can just take the NonStop brand and stick the label on something else and you the customers are supposed to be none the wiser.
For those of you who think there is actually a chance doing what Fink says in the article instead of simply reappropriating the brand name, ask yourself who's left among the Tandem/NonStop folks to work on it. Oops, nevermind. Ask yourself that question a couple of weeks from now.
Back in the last 1990's - I remember HP saying Unix was dead and NT as the future.
Anyone have a series of links to those press releases?
Another shot in the arm for Linux ! go linux go !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
The OS is very cool technology, it's too bad it's not more widely used. All the processes are redundant pairs with checkpointing. Definitely a different world, but very cool.
h tml describes the methodology.
"Why Do Computers Stop and What Can Be Done About It?"
http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.7.
I don't care about non stop servers, I want desktop and notebooks that are guaranteed to work with Linux and that don't come with a Windows tax, HP, do you hear me ?
Pupeno
I won't debate the merits of AIX v. HP-UX.
The more salient point is that HPs new CEO, Mark Hurd, has stated that "[Proprietary] UNIX is dead".
You can figure out the rest.
For almost 2 years now I've been running CheckPoint SecurePlatform (aka SPLAT) on HP servers for our firewalls and they've been rock solid. SPLAT is basically a customized Red Hat install that Checkpoint distributes (no, they don't charge for it) and those are the two most reliable boxes on our network. On a 5,000+ machine network, 300 of which are web servers, CPU utilization on the primary fw spiked up to 15% once on a busy day.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
We shouldn't use commodity software in critical apps. These should be served by specialized machines that the general public does not have access to. I don't want to see things like Airbus and the triple 7 using it either. I hope that would never be considered. This is leading to the same mono culture problems that windows has already exposed us to. Very dangerous.
What?