Not your average client/server network
 
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Progeny Linux, which just emerged last week, has been working for the last few months on a system it calls Linux NOW - Network of Workstations. It's exactly what the name implies: a system of decentralized workstations that share a common file system and distribute processing tasks, creating an entire network without a central system server.
The model for this type of system is not new. Groups of workstations have been tied together in educational ranks for research purposes for many years. Linux NOW, however, is the first commercial implementation of this networking model. The attraction of the system, developers say, is its scalability. Essentially, it is a network that becomes more powerful, stable and productive the more user machines are added - where in many networks, the opposite is more often true. Over 1,000 workstations can be networked together this way.
Based on the Debian Linux distribution, the system is unlike standard client/server or host/terminal environments in that there is no one server or mainframe that users log on to and where common system files are stored. Instead, the file system, kernel, processing workload and network storage for all users is distributed throughout all the machines on the network. This design, in essence, could provide the ultimate system of load balancing and system clustering.
In systems such as Linux NOW that were used in the past, the biggest headaches were security and the integrity of the distributed file system. Progeny is trying to address some of these problems by creating a single network "image," or an illusion of a centralized computer system. The code, kernel and file system for it is really distributed across hundreds or thousands of Linux workstations.
One of the main challenges Progeny is trying to address is security. In a decentralized network of distributed workstations, every client is actually a part of the "server," giving users a multitude of access points to important system and configuration files. While an answer to this security conundrum is still in development at Progeny, the company's goal for Linux NOW is to have a network in which users to log on to a "system" where user rights and access policies are enforced, thus keeping important system files behind a protective curtain.
Ian Murdock heads Progeny. Murdock founded the Debian Project (the name Debian, incidentally, is derived from the first names of Ian and his wife Debra). The company is one of the more open-source-oriented Linux start-ups to come along. Debian has long been one of the few Linux distributions to hold out from widespread commercialization, which has kept venture capitalists away from the technology in the past. However, the company's technology was enough to attract the interest of Bruce Perens, who is chairman of the board at Progeny. Perens, a high-profile leader of the Debian Project, has worked for several years in helping to bring open-source technology into the world of commercial software. Progeny aims to ship Linux NOW by year-end.
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Phil Hochmuth is a Network World Senior Writer and a former systems integrator. You can reach him at phochmut@nww.com.
Linux in the Enterprise archive
Past newsletters.
Find out more about Debian
the technology behind Linux NOW
Learn about Sprite
the predecessor to Linux NOW's distributed networking model
