IBM, Linux, & Monterey
Jim Gunnell
The following is from one of those on-line newsservers.
It is nice to see that this "new" os sounds so familiar....
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IBM Kills Project Monterey
August 21, 2000
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Jacqueline Emigh
IBM is killing off Project Monterey, a joint venture with The Santa
Cruz Operation, while giving birth to a new OS. AIX RL, a future Unix
OS able to run on both Intel IA-64 and IBMs own Power chip, will
integrate Linux alongside some of the technologies from Monterey.
"At the same time, though, were also focusing Linux on a brand new
market of people who might not know anything about AIX," said Scott
Handy, IBMs director for Linux solutions marketing, during a technical
session at this weeks Solutions 2000 developers conference in Las
Vegas.
IBMs multifaceted moves to Linux go a long way toward opening up the
companys commercial code base. This is a far cry from the IBM of old,
which once teamed up with Hewlett-Packard and Digital Equipment Corp.
to create the Open Software Foundation (OSF), whose sole purpose was
to splinter Unix and protect its members respective proprietary OSes.
Keen interest in Linux stretches from small ISPs and mom-and-pop
development shops to corporate IT departments, according to Handy.
"The action in autonomous departments is bottoms-up. CIOs have
discovered they already have Linux."
Within the established Linux community, Linux is having its strongest
impact in server-based applications like Web servers, networking,
e-mail/messaging, database and file/print, say statistics from
International Data Corp. IBMs projections for the next 12 months dont
vary much.
IBM has much grander visions for the OS, however. The company sees it
as a "pervasive" computing environment, able to run in just about any
hardware or software environment. IBM has already started running
Linux on S/390 mainframe, Netfinity and RS/6000 servers, in addition
to ThinkPad, Intellistation and NetVista clients. A port is under way
for AS/400 midrange servers.
Now, under the upcoming AIX RL, IBM will integrate AIX with Linux to
create a common operating environment with shared systems management,
along with high-end technologies that were supposed to be included in
Project Monterey.
In RL, IBM is building "strong affinity with Linux," combining Linux
source-code compatibility, a Linux build-time, and an AIX enterprise
environment for running Linux applications, said Miles Barel, IBMs
program director for Unix marketing, also at the conference in Las
Vegas.
Advantages of the Linux/AIX integration will include "using your
existing servers, applications, data, skills and business processes
with little to no change as technology advances," according to Barel.
Nevertheless, it will take some time to get the same kind of
performance out of Linux that IBM currently gets from AIX. One of the
biggest problems is scalability.
"Right now, were lucky if we can get Linux to support two- or four-way
SMP," said Handy. "Meanwhile, AIX is kicking butt on 32-way SMP."
Noted Barel: "With AIX RL, Project Monterey effectively goes away."
IBM previously teamed with SCO on Project Monterey. Recently, however,
Linux distributor Caldera announced its intentions to acquire SCOs
Server Software and Professional Services divisions.
Under a road map handed out this week during Solutions 2000, version
5.0 of AIX RL will provide a 64-bit kernel and device drivers; Java 2
version 1.3 in base; an enhanced JF32 file system; SVR4 technologies;
and improvements to TCP/IP and the Workload Manager.
Barel maintained that AIX RL will be the first OS to incorporate Java
2 version 1.3, ahead of Suns own Solaris.
Other sources at IBM said the enhancements to Workload Manager will
include the ability to manage disk I/O.
The next release of AIX RL, 5.1, will add the Linux operating
environment (LOE); a multiserver Web-based system manager; NUMA system
enabling and tuning; RS6K Power4 enabling with LPAR; and SecureWay
LDAP 3.2 with Kerberos5, also under IBMs road map.
Further down the line, AIX RL version 5.2 will include NUMA and SMP
performance tuning; dynamic partitioning support; NUMA and SMP
performance tuning; and systems management and RAS enhancements.
IBM has targeted the fourth quarter of this year for release of the
final version of AIX 5L version 5.0; spring of 2001 for AIX 5L version
5.1; and the first half of 2002 for version 5.2. The final version of
5.0 is slated to run in both Power and IA-64 environments. For the
third quarter of this year, IBM is planning an early adopters release
of 5.0 on Power, plus a developers release on IA-64, according to
Barel.
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