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DIY Carrier Grade Linux with Debian
An anonymous reader writes "Carrier Grade Linux, once the domain of big-bucks Bells and commercial software vendors, just became more attainable for universities, companies running high-availability web services, and average Linux hackers interested in learning what goes into the world's most reliable, maintainable, and available systems. The Debian project, backed by HP, has launched the Debian-Carrier Grade Linux subproject, and registered Debian-CGL with version 2.02 of the CGL spec. LinuxDevices has created a simplified version of the registration form that lets you see which Debian packages to apt-get, and which packages you'll have to download and compile out side of Debian, in order to get your own Carrier Grade Linux setup."
An excellent example of the clarifying power of hyphens.
Personally I'd rather wait for torpedo grade Linux.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_Grade_Linux
Carrier Grade Linux' is a set of specifications which detail standards of availability, scalability, manageability, and service response characteristics which must be met in order for Linux to be considered "carrier-grade" (i.e. ready for use within the telecommunications industry). The term is particularly applicable as telecom converges technically with data networks and commercial off-the-shelf commoditized components such as blade servers.
WOW!! I wonder when someone will chime in about Ubuntu already being ahead of Debian on this....3,2,1...
----- I have bad karma for a reason! -----
"Carrier-grade" means that the server pipes all incoming data directly to the NSA.
Ride the skies
I was lost as hell over this summary and even TFAs. Here's some help, apparently "Carrier-Grade" refers to telecommunications carriers, which can typically accept no more than 30 seconds to 5 minutes of downtime per year from their servers.
SEO Firefox Extension
Debian has long been 'the example' IMHO. RedHat got all the fame and glory, but Slackware and Debian really showed what Linux should be like.
I just wish all these projects (i.e. ubuntu) that base off of debian would give them more credit.
do() || do_not();
apt-get install interceptors
Oh yeah, they tell you straight forward on the website.
What was your complaint again?
Get Firefox!
or just fix your IE6
looks fine on IE6 six here.
This Linux distribution was TyphoidMary(TM)(R)(SM)(ETC.) Approved on the 5th of May, in the 2006th year of our LORD.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
I am a huge Babylon 5 Fan, and I always wanted to build a "Destroyer Class" Linux box meant to secure my networks from attack by hostile nodes.
Personally, I perfer IE6 six VI. Of course, it's not due out until tomorrow.
(Note: This is only meant as a lame joke. I use Firefox.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
And, sure enough: from Google, "carrier grade Linux" - 114000 hits, "carrier grade Windows" - 17 hits (but still, not 0). The top Windows hit is from 1998: "a Microsoft white paper available at SUPERCOMM '98 will discuss carrier-grade Windows NT Server-based systems." Well, at least they talked about it, you gotta give them credit for that. Haven't heard much about it since, though.
So... does this spell the death ofNO CARRIER
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Seems like a good idea at first but if you have 5-30 minutes downtime per year
that means one very quick kernel patch per year . If you are really concerned
about uptime applying patches in a timely fashion is just as important as
hardening the system to start with.
Obviously starting with solid proven code should mean less patches are needed
but nobody is perfect and what about new functionality ?
That kind of uptime is IMHO more a function of your hosting environment and the
hardware you choose , this is going to be a waste of time for anyone but the
carriers who can afford it . You would do better to have multiple servers in seperate
locations , a nifty routing/caching setup and a sensible Develoment/Production regieme.
Still its a nice stick to beat microsoft with , even if it is a bit too bendy
[site]
I can think of no reasonble purpose for me to have this, yet, I want it. Bad. "Sure that's a nice 64 way system, but dude, it's not even carrier grade." ffoiii
Carrier grade means not only uptime of the machine, but also that the machine correctly responds to requests within the limits set out in a Service Level Agreement (SLA).
But note that telcos usually only offer service with an SLA to customers paying through the nose.
You should check your contract. Three nines of service is nine hours of (unscheduled) downtime per year. The vast majority of contracts will specify an SLA of four or five nines and you're barely getting three.
Telecom carrier? I'd doubt it. Internet service provider- fine- but they're not a carrier.
Telecom carriers are Long Distance providers, and Ma-Bell providers around the globe. They are the ones that provide power into your home for your phone service as well as the service itself. They are the ones that do switching entirely on closed circuts.
Carrier grade is usually coined as 5-9's (9.9999%) which is friggin amazing. It's what the systems are designed for, and they usually pull it off.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
And just what does CG cost the user? Just extra time and effort on his/her part, or out-of-pocket money for some of the modules and/or instructions?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Thats the dirty little secret, scheduled downtime. As long as you schedule the downtime, its still carrier grade. I've yet to see a service even with maintenance windows stay up for a month. Service in terms of big pile of servers running multiple applications with a big fat database cluster behind it. YMMV.
With the exception of an OS we will not mention 'carrier grade' to me at least means top notch redundant and hotswappable hardware (all hardware). I am sure some of the self healing stuff in solaris helps it with being carrier grade however. As far as linux goes, I think it is already 'carrier grade' based on the equipment and demand. I have a fedora 3 server (coldfusion, mysql, apache2, cgi-perl stuff, sunray server) that has been going non-stop for ages and another fedora 4 with less traffic that has been going for a year now. I had a yellow dog purple imac(333) that rand for 480 days straight before the ethernet card puked.
This is the funniest thing I've seen all week. /has played too much Homeworld
So...to updgrade, do I need third party verification?
(Sorry, I work for Qwest.)
Wow,
8 27S0008
Finally, A linux subject that the slashdot crowd is silent about. Since it references debian the ubuntu comments were inevitable.
In reality this goes far beyond a debian discussion and is actually great news for the business of linux. In general Carrier Grade OS's is a way of saying that the OS used for certain carrier/telecom applications must follow a certain set of rules and standards.
This is important because carrier grade linux has to support a ridiculous feature set in order to achieve guaranteed uptime status. The more distributions there are with these features the more they become into mainstream kernels.
Another key advantage is that most carrier grade OS's charge you an arm and a leg such as montavista, sun and others. This prevents the smaller players from really being able to get into the carrier business and offer services because of the exorbitant costs of such applications. However this doesn't really figure into most of the current American telecom companies but where it really does make an impact is in third world/developing countries. The telecom's there are either government run or private institutions that can only offer their services to the wealthy.
Combine a platform like this with an open source SIP server like http://www.sipfoundry.org/ and you have the makings of some lower priced and more ubiquitous VOIP solutions for developing countries.
I think that steps such as these are what will make linux such a key component in other countries where the infrastructure is not yet built and can be based upon the matureness of open source technologies.
Here is my synopsis of what CGL entails. The full article can be found here http://www.commsdesign.com/design_corner/OEG20020
Overview
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The OSDL CGLWG (Carrier Grade Linux Working Group - whoo thats a mouthful) defines three main types of applications that carrier-grade Linux will support -- gateways, signaling servers, and management.
Categories
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To build an effective specification for the applications above, the CGLWG is working on seven categories: standards, platform, availability, serviceability, tools, performance, and security. Work within each of these categories is broken down into three priority levels: level 1 defines first release requirements, level 2 defines second release requirements, and level 3 defines future release requirements.
Category 1: Standards - IPV6, Posix etc etc
Category 2: Platform Requirements - Hot swappable devices, uptime, kernel hardware error correction blah blah
Category 3: High Availability - Hmm pretty self explanatory
Category 4: Serviceability
On the serviceability front, the CGLWG is currently trying to define requirements for resource monitoring, kernel crash dump and analysis features, structured kernel messages, dynamic kernel probing, hardware error logging, and remote access to the event log.
The best feature of CGL in my opinion
Category 5: Tools
Priority 1 in the tools category will focus on the development of debugger support for threaded programs, kernel debugger support, and a kernel crash dump analysis tool.
Second best feature
Category 6: Performance
In the performance category, priority 1 performance features required include millisecond real-time (less than 10-ms worst case latencies), pre-emptible kernel, RAID 0 (striping), application pre-loading, and a scaling analysis and report to identify scaling bottlenecks.
Category 7: Security
The current version (V1.0) of the carrier-grade Linux specification does not have any requirements for security, but this will be addressed in a future version of the document. Security is recognized by the CGLWG as a key component of high availability.
YIKES!!
So there it is CGL 101. It will enable small development teams to offer real solutions in the behemoth telecom field.
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