Mandriva Opens Up Corporate Server 4 for Beta Testing

Published: May 15, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Commercial Linux distributor Mandriva has announced that the beta program for its future Corporate Server 4 Linux implementation is now open. And Mandriva is looking for some committed people to help it test out the next release of its server platform. Corporate Server 4.0 is expected to go commercial sometime in the third quarter, and will bring Mandriva's Linux to a parity of sorts with competitive products from Red Hat and Novell.

If you want to participate in the beta program, you can do so at Mandriva's Web site. Mandriva says that Corporate Server 4 will include integrated Xen and OpenVZ partition support. The former is the open source virtual machine hypervisor that came out of the computer labs at Cambridge University, while the latter is an open source and Linux-only version of SWsoft's Virtuozzo container-style virtualization technology. The future Mandriva server release will also have an integrated Java application server and improvements in the Linux kernel's Rule Set Based Access Control (RSBAC).

According to statements from Mandriva earlier this year, Corporate Server 4.0 would conform to the Linux Standard Base specification and would include "essential middleware," with additional "autonomous stacks" available as add-ons. When it ships in the third quarter, it will include Samba 3.2, OpenLDAP 2.3, CUPS 1.2, PHP 5, and PostgreSQL 8.1 or 8.2. Mandriva said it wanted the server platform to be LDAP-enabled right out of the box, and is making it compatible with most enterprise directories. Mandriva has also been working on adding management tools to its Linux for servers, including enabling RPM rollback, allowing user and local resources provisioning, putting in preconfigured SNMP agents for all the software in the stack, and building simply system monitoring programs. Mandriva is also looking to add multiple HPC clustering technologies to Corporate Server 4.0, and to get more software providers certified on the distribution.

To help motivate people to participate in the beta program, Mandriva is offering some rewards--provided testers play by the rules. If you sign up to be a tester, you have to install the product within three days, and use as many different servers and configurations possible. You have to report on bugs and install new images as they become available, and answer survey questions a few times in the two-month beta period. If you do that, you will get a free license to the final version of Corporate Server 4.0 for a year or a discount on corporate products from Mandriva (what you get depends on how big your company is and how much iron you test). You also get to network with Mandriva's developers and other like-minded Mandriva customers, if that is your thing.