* Veritas, IBM, HP at LinuxWorld
“Crowded” is always a word you can associate with the LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco. At this year’s show – expected to draw 20,000 attendees – the word “clustered” would be better to describe the goings-on at the event.
That’s because ready-made Linux clustering products from several big name vendors were announced at the show and on display on the floor of the Moscone center.
While symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) boxes have for years been the standard way to deploy high-transaction databases, clustering lower-cost two- and four-way Linux CPUs has become an option for transaction heavy applications. The technology allows users to add processing resources as needed, rather than buying a large multiprocessor server that may or may not be used to capacity.
Veritas announced tools for working with clusters of IBM DB2, MySQL and Oracle databases running on Linux. The vendor says the software is aimed at increasing availability and improving the recovery of lost data and Linux-based database clusters.
IBM the week before LinuxWorld announced a pre-configured Linux cluster with all the ingredients – AMD Opteron-based servers, DB2 database software, network switches and storage hardware. The offering supports both 32- and 64-bit AMD Opteron chips and is scalable up to 1,000 nodes.
HP also announced pre-configured Linux clusters that integrate support for BEA’s application server into the offering. Clusters, ranging from 16 to 128 nodes, are based on HP ProLiant DL380 and HP ProLiant DL 360 servers with Intel Xeon processors and 1G byte of memory.
