Linuxcare has rolled out software that helps larger shops configure
and update large-scale Linux deployments.
The San Francisco company's Levanta package is designed to allow
administrators to reduce the time it takes to deploy Linux on host
systems, as well as allowing them to double the number of Linux
servers from a single console that they can configure and
update.
"Today you don't really have change-management capabilities on
Linux, and that is not acceptable in a data centre. Multiple people
have access to and can touch a system, and it is unacceptable to
have a situation where you can't roll back to a stable
environment," said Avery Lyford, Linixcare's chief executive
officer.
Besides being able to institute change management, the new software
also is designed to grant administrators the ability to deploy
Linux using their best practices in a relatively non-intrusive way,
officials said.
And, because the product contains a number of different interfaces,
it allows various programmers with expertise in mainframe, Linux,
and networking environments to work more efficiently together
across an enterprise on a number of different projects.
Linuxcare officials contend that server consolidation is becoming
an increasingly important consideration in trying to lower their
shop's total cost of ownership as well as lowering their error
rates and improving scalability and performance.
Linuxcare said that several large financial services companies are
testing and evaluating Levanta as part of their respective
Linux-led server-consolidation initiatives.
Levanta is available in limited quantities and will be more broadly
available in October, according to company officials. It currently
supports z/VM Version 4, releases 2 and 3, as well as Linux
distributions including SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7 with Kernel
Version 2.4, and Red Hat 7.2.
The product's pricing starts at $150,000 (£97,975) with technical
support and training available from Linuxcare.