But Wait, There's More

NTT Rolls Out NILFS, A Highly Available Linux File System

It isn't called Nippon Telephone and Telegraph anymore and has not been a part of Ma Bell for decades, but Japanese telecom company NTT continues in the long tradition of inventing neat technology that eventually ends up in commercialized computers. Last week, NTT's Cyber Space Laboratories in Tokyo announced they had created a new file system for Linux called New Implementation of a Log-structured File System, or NILFS for short.

What NILFS does is take continuous and automatic snapshots of the state of the Linux system over time so in the event of a crash, getting back to that initial state before the crash--which is what all those system administrators, disk recovery tools, and tape backups are really for--is a matter of rolling back through the NILFS snapshots. NTT says that while Unixes (such as Solaris, which it mentioned by name) have functions to take snapshots of data, the file system running on top of that Unix must be suspended for that data snapshot to be taken. NILFS aims to make such snapshots while file systems are live, doing real work. This sounds a lot easier than it is, of course. And because NTT has released the code as an open source project under the GNU General Public License, you can look at it and participate in the future development of NILFS. You can check the project out at www.nilfs.org.

HP Spurs Its Own Internal Linux Use

Eating your own dog food. Drinking your own Kool-Aid. Putting your money where your mouth is. That's what IT vendors usually never prove they do with their own internal systems. But it is important that they do what they tell you to do, and to that end, Hewlett Packard has twisted a few arms at commercial Linux distributors Red Hat and Novell to get good volume pricing on desktop and server Linux licenses that will allow the company to more easily and more cheaply deploy Linux--just like it is trying to get a lot of its own and its competitors' customers to do on its ProLiant and Integrity servers.

Jeffrey Wade, worldwide Linux marketing manager at HP's cross-divisional Open Source and Linux Organization (OSLO), says HP always had easy and cheap access to Red Hat and SUSE Linux for testing purposes, but now it has broader deals to make Linux and easier technical and economic choice for HP employees. For instance, HP has what it calls the Common Operating Environment, which are essentially gold images of Windows and Linux desktop platforms, complete with HP's own applications, that HP end users can choose from when they get their jobs. Linux is now a full COE platform, and it is now affordable, too (although Wade can't say what Linux HP is using or what it is paying for it). So far, about 13,000 out of about 145,000 employees have opted for Linux as part of the COE program; the remainder are, of course, Windows.

Other parts of HP like Linux, of course. Over 1,000 LaserJet design engineers use Linux machines. All of HP's incoming email is scanned from inside Linux servers, which makes sense since very few viruses are written for Linux and most of them are written to activate on Windows boxes. HP uses Jabber for secure instant messaging, which runs on a Linux cluster, another Linux cluster runs its AirWave wireless network connectivity tool, and all time synchronization on the HP network is done from Linux machines. The company has over 160 servers running the BIND protocol at the heart if the corporate DNS network, and the company phone book (which is called PeopleFinder) also runs on a cluster of Linux machines. One of HP's chip design teams has its own Linux cluster to run simulations, and while most of the back-end ERP applications are running on big Unix iron, HP does have some Oracle 9i and 10g clusters running some portions of its mission-critical applications. "Just like our customers, we are finding uses for Linux and we are trying to reduce our costs in a mixed environment," says Wade.

Zend, Oracle Deliver Integrated PHP Development

Zend Technologies, the company behind the development of the open source PHP programming language, and database maker Oracle said last week that the Zend Core for Oracle tool, which integrates PHP tightly with Oracle databases. Zend Core for Oracle is ready today for Linux as well as IBM's AIX Unix and Sun Microsystems' Solaris Unix; a version of Zend Core for Oracle on the Windows platform is in beta, and the company didn't say anything about HP-UX. Noteworthy in the new product is an updated OCI8 driver for connecting PHP to Oracle databases. Zend said that 1,200 developers had downloaded the beta version of the Zend Core for Oracle tool, which came out at the end of August.

Univa Partners with IBM to Support eServers with Globus Grid Tools

IBM and open-source grid software developer Univa last week unveiled a new partnership that will bring new grid tools to the eServer platforms. As part of the agreement, Univa will deliver a commercially supported and enterprise-ready release of software built around Globus Alliance's open-source Globus Toolkit for use across pSeries, xSeries, zSeries, iSeries, and BladeCenter systems running AIX and Linux.

IBM also plans to use Univa's grid software for internal IT projects, and has taken to comparing the development of grid tools with Linux distros. "We will work closely with Univa on delivery of enterprise- ready implementations of Globus for IBM platforms in much the same way that IBM works with Red Hat and Novell to ensure Linux distributions on IBM platforms are at the forefront of the industry," says Ken King, vice president of grid computing at IBM. Univa was formed in 2004 to provide commercial software, technical support, and professional services for grid infrastructure based on open source Globus Toolkit. Univa's grid software is deployed at more than 1,000 sites around the world, comprising more than 40,000 CPUs and 10 TB of storage, which Univa says makes it the most widely used grid middleware on the market.

IBM Offers Deferred Payments to Goose Leasing of New Gear in Q4

Because my alma mater is Penn State, I think of annual computer sales cycles like a football game. The fourth quarter and fourth down are when it usually gets interesting. IBM is also in a fourth quarter situation, where it wants to show server growth, and that is why it has taken out its tried-and-true financial deferral deal to help boost iSeries, pSeries, and xSeries server sales.

Specifically, IBM is offering a financing deferral plan that allows iSeries, pSeries, and xSeries servers, TotalStorage storage products, various printers, and Integrated Technology Services with financing between $1,000 and $1 million in gear and/or services and 24-month or 36-month financing. Buyers do not have to make payments or incur interest for 90 days. You can buy in Q4 2005 and push it out into Q1 2006's budget. Products acquired under thus deferral program have to ship before December 31. It applies to new machines as well as upgrades, by the way.

Going Mobile: IDC Reckons 850 Million Workers to Cut the Cord by 2009

According to research performed by IDC, there were more than 650 million mobile workers in the world at the end of 2004 and by 2009, the mobile worker count will grow by 200 million more. That will mean about a quarter of the worldwide workforce will not be latched to any particular physical location and will be in need of various technologies to keep them in contact with customers, suppliers, and co-workers. IDC says Asia/Pacific (not including Japan) has the highest number of mobile workers, followed by the United States, Western Europe, and Japan.

Take Part in Gabriel Consulting Group's Unix Usage Study

We have partnered with Gabriel Consulting Group, an IT consulting firm, to help it find IT people to take part in surveys for the purposes of understanding what the devil is going on out there in data centers these days. Gabriel Consulting's survey is a semi-annual Unix Vendor Preference Survey that explores enterprise customer attitudes toward the big three Unix vendors. Dan Olds, the founder of the company, says his surveys are a bit different than the standard IT analyst's "What's on the CIO's Mind Today?" poll. "The biggest difference is that we want to hear from people who are actually on the data center floor and who are intimately involved with technology," he says. "We're looking for IT shop managers, system architects, system managers, application developers, rather than CIOs. Nothing against CIOs, but they generally don't know the down-and-dirty details of what is actually happening in the data center and the challenge of day-to-day operations." Amen to that, brother.

Gabriel Consulting wants to examine the customer experiences with and perceptions of various system vendors (primarily Unix and X86 servers so far) in order to understand how vendors are, or are not, adding value to customer operations. Many Linux shops are also Unix shops (and vice versa), which is why we are helping Olds out with his survey. To make it worth your while, Olds says he will give the first 200 survey participants coming from IT Jungle's publications to take the Unix survey a $10 Amazon.com gift certificate, delivered through email. He adds that you can use an anonymous email account if you wish, but that you should rest assured that you will not receive any spam or sales pitches from Gabriel Consulting and that he promises to never disclose any identifiable data to any third party. You can help out and take the survey by clicking here. Olds has also signed up to be a contributing editor at IT Jungle and to share some of the details of his surveys with our readers. Help him out if you can and, in the long run, what he finds out may help you. Thanks.