MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-02-05 |
| FROM | From: "Inker, Evan"
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Linux beats a path to the datacenter
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Linux beats a path to the datacenter
IT shops can no longer ignore the open source operating system
With this cryptic reference to "Stoned Beaver," the code-name of the Linux
v2.6 kernel, Linus Torvalds officially released the first major upgrade to
the Linux kernel in three years late last December.
Now, as the major Linux vendors are preparing new releases of their
enterprise software based on Linux 2.6, it appears that the upstart open
source operating system is poised to significantly narrow
the feature gap between Linux and its older cousin, Unix.
Linux 2.6 promises a lot. It will scale to larger systems with more memory
and many more devices than its 2.4 predecessor. The operating system also
supports more embedded processors than ever before. In short: The kernel is
packed with more than enough features to make IT shops take notice.
Torvalds clearly hopes the 2.6 kernel will do much to widen the range of
Linux users. "The greatest impact is really how we've extended the reach of
the kernel; both up through scalability to enterprise hardware, and down to
the embedded space," Torvalds said
The Next Level
To achieve higher scalability, IBM last month detailed plans to marry its
64-bit hardware to the 2.6 kernel.
Linux distributor Red Hat, for its part, has focused its resources on areas
higher up the operating system stack; of late, in areas like J2EE
applications and, with its acquisition of software company Sistina Software,
on storage management.
"When we find ourselves talking with customers, they're asking us to solve
the next level of problems," said Brian Stevens, Red Hat's vice president of
operating systems development. "Storage management is probably the biggest
one.
[Other] big stuff for us has been around virtualization, and then systems
management."
Stevens added that improving Java's performance and ease of use was a top
priority. "We're really excited about getting an ubiquitous Java platform
out there, and getting ISVs to certify to that," he said.
With 2.6, Linux continues its march into the enterprise. And corporate users
welcome it.
"2.6 is a major leap forward for Linux," said Scott Lewis, the manager of
infrastructure architecture and planning with UMB Bank. Although the 2.4
kernel made Linux a strong choice for UMB's edge-of-network deployments -
applications like mail, DNS, and FTP servers - all of that changes with the
new kernel.
"2.6 will make Linux a viable option for deployments closer to the core of
the network, where Java application servers, middleware, and databases
play," Lewis said.
The new scheduler, which is the part of Linux that starts and stops jobs
done by the operating system, will be a major improvement, Lewis said. And
Linux 2.6's NTPL (Native POSIX Thread Library) will make heavily threaded
applications like J2EE application servers and databases perform much
better, Lewis said.
The new threading model "was probably the biggest thing in Linux 2.6," Red
Hat's Stevens said.
Big Iron
Companies that use large servers will also take notice of Linux 2.6, which
will support NUMA (non-uniform memory access) multiprocessor machines.
Linux's SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) support gets a major boost with the
new kernel. Although the 2.4 kernel can theoretically handle as many as 64
processors in a single system image, in practice it has only been useful in
configurations as high as eight processors. With Linux 2.6, however,
developers say this limit will jump to a theoretical maximum of 256
processors. In practice, 32-way SMP x86 systems will now become usable, they
expect. And with 64-bit processors such as Intel's Itanium or IBM's Power
Architecture, this practical limit will jump to 64 processors.
Though Silicon Graphics is now selling a 64-processor Linux SMP machine, the
Altix 3000, it is doubtful that many vendors will jump into the 64-way Linux
fray, said Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst tracking Linux for IDC.
"Right at the moment, people are not comfortable deploying tasks large
enough to need that kind of configuration on Linux," Kusnetzky said.
When Linux vendors such as Red Hat and SuSE bring out their own
distributions based on the 2.6 kernel later in the year, customers will be
more comfortable moving to a higher number of processors, Kusnetzky said.
The analyst expects customers to remain cautious about deploying systems in
the 32 to 64 processor range.
Superior Storage
In addition to running faster on bigger servers, Linux will also run better
on larger storage arrays. Developers have overcome a technical limitation
that capped the number of storage devices that could be attached to a Linux
system, and they have added better volume management support for storage
devices. Furthermore, they have completely rewritten Linux's I/O subsystem
and added support for asynchronous I/O so that applications can run faster
and more efficiently while reading hard drives.
"The people who I think are going to be storming down the door for [Linux
2.6] are people with huge amounts of disk storage," said Chris Mason, a
software developer with SuSE. The 2.4 kernels have a limit of 2TB per
device, which limited the number of devices you could use with the operating
system to approximately 1,000 - enough for most Linux users, but not enough
for use with some Linux-based mainframes and Oracle databases accompanied by
extremely large storage arrays, according to Mason. "2.6 will support up to
a million devices," he said.
These I/O performance improvements alone could make Linux 2.6 worth
considering, said Jesse Crew, manager of global systems at Aventis Behring,
who is running accounts receivable and electronic data interchange
applications on top of the Oracle database and Linux.
"At this point, the main thing we're looking forward to is the better volume
management, as well as the asynchronous I/O, just for performance
improvements," Crew said.
Red Hat and SuSE both say that the next major release of their Linux
distributions will support the new kernel, but because of Linux's open
source development process, the vendors have long had access to the most
interesting new technologies in 2.6. And both, as is common practice with
Linux, have already added many of 2.6's features to their product offerings
in the form of patches to the 2.4 kernel.
In fact, one of the reasons why Red Hat's Stevens downplays the significance
of the 2.6 kernel is because so many of its key features have already been
implemented in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, released last October.
Perhaps another reason is because vendors like Red Hat have to work hard to
make sure that the new features work well with their certified applications.
Linux 2.6's new device numbering scheme, for example, will have a "huge
impact" on all the layers outside the kernel, namely applications and device
drivers, according to Stevens.
Lacking Legitimacy
"I'm anxious to be working on 2.6 because it's a cleaner design, don't get
me wrong," Stevens said. "But as far as new opportunities that it's opening
up, I'm not seeing them."
The constant refinement and relentless scaling up into more powerful systems
may give Linux something that it needs even more than technical features:
the confidence of IT managers. "Frankly, I think that's what Linux really
lacks," Lewis said. "It's nothing technical. It's legitimacy."
But if Torvalds gets his wish, Linux 2.6 will also achieve another
longstanding goal: It will make the kernel boring.
"Most people shouldn't care about kernels," Torvalds said. They should "take
them for granted and find them mind-numbingly boring."
Torvalds believes that the most interesting work ahead for Linux will be
outside the kernel in areas such as graphical user interfaces, office tools,
and games.
Historically each kernel release has been a major step in Linux's race to
catch up with Unix, but with the 2.6 release, one has the sense that the gap
has closed so much that some of the excitement has disappeared.
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