Linux clusters: Can't bust 'em

FAA is among adopters of latest Dell/Oracle/Red Hat technology.

By Phil Hochmuth
Network World, 06/17/02

While last month's UnitedLinux announcement - in which TurboLinux, SuSe and Caldera agreed to join forces - jolted the open source software market, the recent Unbreakable Linux release from Dell, Oracle and Red Hat may make more of an immediate splash with enterprise-class customers.

Vendors behind the Unbreakable Linux effort say the product combination could help businesses and organizations looking to consolidate Unix databases in data centers, and they say they have real-world deployments to prove it. Analysts say the idea of Oracle on Linux is sound, but uptake has been slow by customers.

The Unbreakable Linux announcement involved the debut of Release 2 of Oracle9i Real Application Cluster (RAC) for Red Hat Linux (Unix and Windows support is to come later this year). As part of the Unbreakable Linux product push, Dell is certifying configurations of Oracle9i RAC and Red Hat Linux Advanced Server across its server line and will sell the product bundle, starting at about $12,000. All three companies are combining support efforts to help customer rollouts and maintenance contracts, with Dell being the primary support source for the products.

The Dell servers running Oracle and Red Hat could let a database or many databases be distributed across two or four multiprocessor nodes. This lets information from the database be extracted more quickly and also provides database access to clients in case one of the cluster nodes fails or drops off the network.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently deployed an early-release two-node cluster built on Unbreakable Linux technology at its headquarters in Virginia. The cluster is used to support air traffic control applications such as a centralized information logging system. The cluster also runs a capacity management application and a program for distributing severe weather rerouting information.

One of the main goals of the Linux initiative at the FAA is to do more with less, says John Kelly, project manager and senior database administrator for Kenrob and Associates, a Virginia technology contract for the FAA.

"What we're trying to do is have a lot of smaller to midsize databases out there, which run on a lot of smaller [Unix] machines, and have them run on one centralized database," Kelly says. "Centralizing our databases lets us do less work," which saves the FAA on administration costs. The total cost of ownership is also less, he adds, because the Intel-based hardware the cluster uses is less expensive than Hewlett-Packard or Sun boxes used previously.

Kelly says the high-availability features of the Dell/Red Hat/Oracle cluster were the main selling point for the system.

"One of our requirements is that these applications can't have downtime," Kelly says. The Oracle cluster configuration runs two active servers that can back up each other, letting the servers load-balance traffic and provide quick failover for scheduled downtime or system crashes. He says this configuration is superior to other server-based database products "where one database is doing nothing, waiting for the primary to fail. Here, we're making the most use of our resources."

Kelly says the FAA is looking to consolidate more databases into the cluster and plans to increase the Oracle cluster size to the maximum of four nodes.

Internal support and security were issues of concern for the FAA when choosing Linux, Kelly says. While some management tools and resources for supporting Red Hat are not as slick as the company's old HP or Sun Unix environment, this was not a hindrance overall.

"When you get into Linux, it's a little less structured, but it's pretty much Unix," he says. As for security, the FAA disabled many of the nonessential services that run on Red Hat Linux, which could pose potential security breaches, such as FTP or script support. Kelly says the FAA also runs regular security audits on its system and that the cluster itself sits behind firewalls, with no connection to a public network.

Possibly lost in the Unbreakable Linux hoopla was the unveiling of Oracle's new database product, Oracle9i Release 2, which adds several new features to Oracle9i platform, released last year.

One feature of Release 2 is XML DB, which lets XML components be stored in a relational database table and accessed via SQL. This could help businesses that want to deploy Web services based on XML technology that taps into corporate data stores. A new Data Guard feature lets a "hot standby" database be set up remotely for creating logs and reports, or for backing up a primary database. Other features include enhanced Java APIs and data-mining capabilities for the database.

Linux could be the right springboard for getting these new features into customers' hands, says Mike Shiff, vice president of e-business and business intelligence at Current Analysis.

"Oracle is taking Linux very seriously and is aggressively moving to be the database of choice on that platform," Shiff says. Oracle's push into the Linux market also differentiates it from leading rival Microsoft and its SQL Server, which won't be ported to Linux anytime soon, he adds. "Linux has a lot of momentum right now; [by partnering with Linux and Dell] Oracle is looking to hitch itself to a race car."