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BBC Increases Usage of Linux

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the ain't-that-spiffy dept.

JediGeek writes "The BBC signed a deal to use BMC Software's Patrol product suite to manage computers running Linux. The BBC said it would use BMC's Patrol for the next five years to improve the availability, performance and recoverability of its core applications and data. The article can be found at Yahoo "

23 comments

  1. Great idea... by RoLlEr_CoAsTeR · · Score: 1

    Now, if only the American broadcasting companies would take note. But I guess they're a bit slow on the draw...

    --

    Insert mind here.
    1. Re:Great idea... by Matts · · Score: 2

      Most other Broadcasting companies don't have a web site/team as large as the BBC's. They might use Linux and you'd never hear about it.

      The BBC Online team actively encourage the replacement of NT (the default) with Linux on your workstation if it will help your productivity. Now if only I could find that Mandrake 6.0 cd I had lying around... :)

      perl -e 'print scalar reverse q(\)-: ,hacker Perl another Just)'

      --

      Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
    2. Re:Great idea... by Matthew+Kirkwood · · Score: 1
      BBC Online are a pretty traditional Apache/Solaris/Oracle shop for most (public facing) things.

      They do, however, have some Linux in development positions and a lot of it doing things like file/print/DNS/dhcp.

      I was told only a couple of weeks ago that BBC1 would probably be off-air within a few hours of their Linux boxes getting pulled. It may not be powering their Oracle boxes yet, but that still sounds pretty mission-critical to me...

      Matthew
      - just finished a www project with the BBC.

    3. Re:Great idea... by webslacker · · Score: 2

      Actually, there was a news article a while back about how MSNBC had to switch all their systems back from NT to Unix because NT just wasn't cutting it. Anyone know if that's still the case?

    4. Re:Great idea... by Simoriah · · Score: 1

      Not sure. I found it hilarious when I discovered that www.microsoft.com was being run on Solaris. Is it still?
      That kind of made me wonder... If NT is so great, why isn't Microsoft using it to run their high-traffic site? hhhmmmm?????

      --
      "It compiles, SHIP IT!" -Overheard at Microsoft's development lab
    5. Re:Great idea... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it isn't the case, nobody here is gonna say so. We all primarily hate Microsoft. Using Linux is just a manifestation of that hatred.

    6. Re:Great idea... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      off air? Im sure the BBC even though they might have a few systems crash would not be off air. For a company thats the oldest TV broadcaster in the world, they didnt always rely on computers. Therefore they should be able to figure out how to keep "something" going on the station. Im sure they would just have a slick voiced announcer say "Im sorry ladies and gentlemen, we seem to have had a technical fault etc etc, So we are now showing another repeat of Dad's Army"

      Whats an oracle box got to do with the image on my TV screen? Do they now store all programs digitally in a massive database? Are they incapable of running into a store room to get the original video tape?

      Odd.

      Brad



    7. Re:Great idea... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What an idiot. GNU/Linux is fun; I liked it before I hated MSFT.

    8. Re:Great idea... by Clansman · · Score: 1

      Don't think he meant the tv broadcasting part of the operation ... :)

    9. Re:Great idea... by Black+Blade · · Score: 1

      I didn't start using Linux or FreeBSD because I hate Microsoft. I did want a more stable platform, however, - I managed to crash my system during almost every session when I was trying to program in Visual Basic 5. I use Linux and FreeBSD because I find them much more interesting. They come with a slew of applications, particularly for development, (I don't have to spend days downloading tons of shareware to make my system interesting) and for all the power of having a Unix-like workstation on my desktop my modest hardware is very responsive. And I get all this for $1.99 at Cheapbytes? Hatred's not the motivation - I'm in heaven!

      :)

      --
      #include "mysig.h"
  2. What exactly is "Linux Patrol"? by Sun+Tzu · · Score: 1

    The headline refers to "Linux Patrol" but the article implies that it is an application suite that supports a wide variety of platforms.

    Is anyone familiar with Patrol?

    --
    Geeky modern art T-shirts
    1. Re:What exactly is "Linux Patrol"? by siva06 · · Score: 1

      Well Patrol is a nifty little application/process monitoring system which has been around since the big machine and off late it has made a good impact on clusters and smaller networks.

      the beauty of the systems monitoring market is that they all have been working with one another very nicely on the OS and Applications level without many people knowing what is going on.

    2. Re:What exactly is "Linux Patrol"? by jetpack · · Score: 1
      Patrol is a product for managing system resources network-wide. The basic idea is that you run "Patrol Agents" on each machine you want to monitor, and each agent loads "Knowledge Modules" which tell the agent what resources to monitor, and how to monitor them.

      You connect up to each agent with a "Patrol Console", and from there you can view the status of the agent, and the resources it monitors.

      There is SNMP support built in, and agents can talk to each other.

      I'm currently writing a KM for Patrol (I dont work for BMC) and have my own opinions of coding under the Patrol "environment" *ahem*

      You can check out BMC's description of Patrol here. I work for these guys

  3. BMC supported port? by fluffhead · · Score: 1

    Anybody know if BMC is releasing a Linux Patrol port for general consumption?
    This would be very tempting. I have even thought about sending my resume to BMC
    but never knew they had any interest in Linux....
    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak

    --

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
    1. Re:BMC supported port? by jetpack · · Score: 1
      I have even thought about sending my resume to BMC but never knew they had any interest in Linux....

      I haven't seen any news of linux ports for Patrol other than the BBC story, but it wouldn't be too suprising for BMC to start pushing linux ports, considering that Tivoli is making noise about supporting linux.

  4. I just think my career just skyrocketed !!!! by siva06 · · Score: 1

    Well i am Patrol Consultant, and have been running it in NT under VMWARE (http://www.vmware.com) in a LINUX Notebook. Frankely i have had enough reboots of the system.

    I have been pretty successful considering that i am running it under NT. Well with Patrol for LINUX goodby to NT. I am up and running and my conviction on LINUX seems to be paying off. I think i will this to my BOSS for a raise :)

    Way to go LINUX

    May the source be with us :)

    1. Re:I just think my career just skyrocketed !!!! by jetpack · · Score: 1
      I have been pretty successful considering that i am running it under NT. Well with Patrol for LINUX goodby to NT.


      Don't get too excited ... If you are going to support KMs on both NT and *nix machines there may be a *lot* of porting issues, depending on what sort of stuff you are doing.

      Check out Enterprise Application Management with PATROL by David Spuler for some of the porting issues.

    2. Re:I just think my career just skyrocketed !!!! by siva06 · · Score: 1

      Right, but this is atleast a start. Si far i have converted 2 of BMC's major KM's to work across platform.

      I have removed all system() calls from the KM's and have only used PSL function to achieve it. Yeah it was a painful effort, but it was worth it. Also PSL is not really that big a programming language. It has along way to go for that. But still most of the Maintenence tasks could be taken care of.

  5. improvment by RoLlEr_CoAsTeR · · Score: 1

    Might I assume that by

    good to see they're improv[first post!]ing

    you mean that you consider their use of Linux and/or Linux Patrol (name?) and improvement? If so, then yes. However, a _great_ improvement would be for them to solely use Linux... IMHO anyway.

    appears you weren't the first post after all, eh?

    --

    Insert mind here.
  6. Patrol is COOL. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    We had a demo version of this for HP-UX. It is slick... it is like a beefed up top, but you can set threshholds on just about any aspect of your system to warn you when you need to do something like add RAM, disk, etc, etc.

    We didn't buy it last year because of a lack of Linux support (and I made sure to let the sales folks know that was the reason).

    I'll have to dig it up again...

    Mark

  7. Which version of Patrol? by siva06 · · Score: 1

    Anyway why don't u tinker around the KM and instead of shifting to the OS try working with the processes() function is PSL.

    So far I have customized 10 BMC KM to really be platform independent. None of them have a system() call

  8. Linux port of PATROL is coming... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Linux will be supported as a second tier OS in the next release, 3.3.01, i believe. probably before the end of the year. Patrol currently supports many OSs, solaris, aix, hpux, nt, etc.

    Apparently there is much call in europe for this, as a beta version of the port and the unix KM were tested out there.

    PATROL is good not only for monitoring your system and applications (like oracle or web servers) but it can also react with recovery actions to fix problems when they occur.

    Like any other software vendor, if you want a Linux port, tell BMC about it!
    www.bmc.com

  9. Nifty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It uses 'ps' under HP-UX to minotor the system and thereby completely screws up the results. Is that "nifty"?