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AS OF 8/20/2008 9:41AM EST

IBM Focuses on Big Linux Systems
By Alex Handy

August 6, 2008 — IBM made a flurry of announcements yesterday that bolster its support for Linux on large systems.

At the LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco, the company said that it has open-sourced clustering code and updated virtualization software for it's System z computers. It also announced support for Novell's real-time Linux distribution.

Inna Kuznetsova, director of Linux at IBM, spoke of the update of z/VM to version 5.4. “z/VM allows you to run thousands of instances of Linux on the mainframe,” said Kuznetsova. “This new version allows Linux users to do dynamic memory upgrades. You can add memory dynamically without shutting the VM down."

Kuznetsova also said that IBM has created a new open-source project around its clustering stack. “More and more, our customers need the skills and tools for high performance computing. We're releasing our first HPC software stack to the open-source community. It will be maintained by the University of Illinois, as both binary and source. It will include such components as IBM's Extreme Cluster Administration Toolkit,” said Kuznetsova. “It's used by Los Alamos National Labs to run one of the most powerful computers in the world.”

IBM's Geronimo-based WebSphere Application Server Community Edition was also updated. Version 2.1 adds the ability to create custom application packages, which include only the code and components needed to run the target application, allowing them to run with less overhead and in smaller virtual machines.

Vendor Neutral Products
IBM also made numerous announcements with the top three Linux vendors.

Red Hat, SUSE and Ubuntu have all worked to bring Microsoft-free desktops to IBM's retinue. Building on top of these popular distributions and IBM's own Lotus productivity tools, the four companies hope to build a more compelling alternative to the existing Microsoft-dominated corporate desktop environment.

Real-time Linux also got a boost, as IBM announced that it now supports Novell's SUSE Enterprise Real-Time Linux on a select subset of its BladeCenter servers. IBM is also including WebSphere Real Time in this support, allowing SUSE users to run their time-sensitive Java applications on top of IBM hardware and Novell software. IBM announced support for Red Hat's real-time MRG operating system on its BladeCenter systems earlier this year.

Kuznetsova said that July 15 marked IBM's 10th year of supporting and working with Linux. Back in 1998, the company released Jikes, a Linux-based Java compiler. Since then, the company has moved on to contribute code, research, products and patent protections to the Linux community.

“It was downloaded at seven times the rate of the Unix version. In the 10 years that have followed, we have become one of the major suppliers of Linux solutions," said Kuznetsova of the original Jikes release.

Related Search Term(s): Linux, mainframes, virtualization, IBM, Novell

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