With big-ticket vendors like Oracle and Dell now supporting Linux,
the open source system has its sights firmly set on the data
centre. But does Linux offer a compelling high-end alternative to
Windows and Unix?
UnitedLinux, the initiative launched on 30 May by Caldera, SuSe,
Conectiva and TurboLinux, is as much an attempt to consolidate
market share as it is to push Linux further into the enterprise.
The companies have clubbed together to create a standard Linux
distribution that will reduce ISVs' investments in redeveloping
their software for different Linux distributions. This promises to
boost the availability of applications written for Linux.
The final UnitedLinux specification is due to ship in Q4, but its
reception will be hindered by one notable absence; Red Hat, which
has the lion's share of the Linux market, has no intention of
joining.
Fiona Phelps, Red Hat's European marketing manager said the company
was already conquering the enterprise space that the UnitedLinux
team would like to be in. It signed deals with Oracle and Dell on 5
June, creating a holy trinity with which it will further attack the
enterprise market.
Oracle 9i was ratified on Red Hat's Advanced Server, (joining 8i),
and the Linux version of the product has been optimised for
operation on the Red Hat system. Moreover, the database firm
announced that it would offer technical support for Red Hat
Advanced Server, and finally Dell announced Oracle 9i and Red Hat
Advanced Server configurations on its hardware.
Whatever happens between the two rival camps, both UnitedLinux and
Red Hat will be competing with Microsoft in the data centre market,
where Windows 2000 is attempting to establish itself as a cheaper
alternative to Unix. Microsoft will be making an even greater play
for high-end corporate users later this year when the next release,
Windows.net ships.
Cash-strapped users, however, are facing an increasingly persuasive
case for moving their corporate applications away from Windows to
Linux. Microsoft's new licensing rules will do nothing to stop the
rot - the firm's UK licensing manager Sue Page admits that
companies preferring to upgrade infrequently could face higher
licensing fees under the new regime.
Scaling the data centre
Cost is a prime factor in
moving away from a Unix RISC box. For example, IBM's pSeries
PowerPC boxes with eight-way capacity start at $61,000 (£39,000)
for two processors, while its rack-mounted Intel Xeon-based xSeries
440 units with eight-CPU capacity and one processor installed is
available at less than half that price.
The disadvantage is one of scalability between the Intel-based PC
architectures and a Unix/RISC design. Users lose the ability to
scale vertically when moving from RISC to Intel. In other words the
number of processors that can be installed in an Intel-based server
is limited.
"The prime motive for buying a Sparc box is scalability," says Gary
Yeomans, technical consultant at Amdahl IT services. While Sun's
15000 boxes can scale to 106 processors, the Linux 2.4 kernel is
far less scalable. Red Hat's Advanced Server only scales to eight
Intel CPUs, for example.
This may not be a problem for the majority of users, who won't be
running applications that need to scale vertically. Scaling
horizontally by clustering servers will still enable you divide
tasks among processors, as long as the tasks don't need a high
level of intra-CPU communication, says Adam Jollans, Linux strategy
manager at IBM. "At the entry level there are things that run on
Intel that would have run on pSeries boxes in the past," he
says.
Buying commodity Intel kit means that users can change their
hardware configuration more easily than expensive RISC equipment as
their requirements alter over time. On the other hand, users lose
out on high-end advantages like IBM's copper processor technology,
which improves the performance of its Power chips.
On the upside, IBM provides Linux from the workstation all the way
up to its zSeries mainframes, and offers logical partitioning of
Linux on the zSeries using Z/VM virtualisation technology and the
iSeries (nee AS/400).
Managerial responsibilities
Management costs are also
crucial to consider, but companies such as Red Hat are mirroring
Microsoft's efforts here too. The company's Red Hat Network fulfils
similar functions to Microsoft's Software Update Service, enabling
administrators to update their servers with patches.
Jollans argues that because Linux comes from a command line user
interface, it is more intuitive to manage than Windows 2000 systems
where administrators are encouraged to use graphical management
tools.
Along with the tools within the OS there are a number of commercial
management tools available. For instance, Caldera sells the
Volution Manager for managing Linux systems, for example. It
provides a breakeven analysis for harried Linux administrators
thinking of buying it. (see
www.caldera.com/products/volutionmanager/breakeven/).
Does integration stack up?
Managing the system well
still leaves you with the challenge of integrating your Linux box
with other systems, at various levels of the communications stack.
Your clients will still probably be Windows-based, and secondly you
will need to hook into applications on other back-end servers.
However, these challenges are becoming easier to solve thanks to
the open source community. To hook your Windows clients into a
Linux file and print server, use Samba. This is a freeware utility
providing Server Message Block access to a Samba-enabled server.
SMB is the protocol that Windows clients use for file and print
access to Windows servers.
As more products become Linux-enabled, application-level
integration with other back-end systems will be less of a problem.
IBM's WebSphere application server, which runs on Red Hat Linux,
handles integration with systems including legacy applications, and
with software like Oracle 9i, DB2, JD Edwards and SAP either
ratified or in the process of ratification on Linux distributions,
hooking Linux applications to the rest of the software
infrastructure will be as easy as integrating any other
system.
Care in the community
When a user is facing a
challenging integration issue, Yeomans argues that the benefit of
Linux over Windows and Unix is its support network. "You have to be
a fairly large organisation before the likes of Sun and Microsoft
will listen to what you're saying [when something is wrong with the
operating system]," he warns.
With Linux there is a support network of genuinely interested
developers that make up the Linux community. This should make it
easier for smaller businesses to influence how the OS is
evolved.
Clearly, Linux is thwarting many people's predictions by slowly
clawing its way into the data centre. The key challenge for Linux
vendors is still to convince users that they can trust it. The good
news is that suppliers such as IBM, Dell and Sun are helping by
releasing their own Linux-based products and making the operating
system compatible with their own brands of Unix.