Enterprise Unix Roundup: Has LinuxWorld Peaked? – page 2

In Other News

» Do pigs have wings? Is it snowing in Bora Bora? Can I run Windows on my Mac? We're pretty sure the answer to the first two is still a resounding "no," but as for the latter, as of this week, Intel-based Mac users can run Microsoft Windows.

The announcement came so out of the blue, that some speculated the news was a belated April Fool's joke.

It's real.

The software, now in beta, but expected to be available in the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5, has been dubbed "Boot Camp," as it enables Apple fans to maneuver between Mac OS X or Windows XP.

For a limited time, Mac owners with Intel-based Apple computers can download the beta software and install Windows XP.

We'll vouch that it's cool, and it "just works." Whether this will be enough to win over scores of Windows users or will be akin to Custer's last stand, time will tell. But rest assured, we'll be watching closely.

» VMware challenger Virtual Iron is hopping on the Xen virtualization bandwagon. The company this week announced version 3 of Virtual Iron will use the Xen hypervisor to provide Virtual Iron's advanced virtualization and policy-based management capabilities to Xen.

Mike Grandinetti, vice president and chief marketing officer of Virtual Iron, told ServerWatch that he foresees the virtualization space boiling down to hypervisors from three organizations: Xen, VMware, and Microsoft. Virtual Iron is placing its eggs in the Xen basket.

Grandinetti notes that this will be the first fully supported commercial application on Xen.

Scheduled for a July beta release, the Virtual Iron product suite will include: the Xen Open Source Hypervisor (for both 32- and 64-bit environments), Virtual Iron Virtualization Services, and Virtual Iron Virtualization Manager.

The product will come in three flavors: Open Source Virtual Iron for Xen / Community Edition, which is aimed at the developer community and Grandinetti describes as comparable to VMware's ESX server; Virtual Iron 3 for Xen / Professional, which is aimed at enterprises but will come with only a limited number of user licenses; and Virtual Iron 3 for Xen / Enterprise Edition, which offers additional features and user licenses.

Both the Community and Enterprise Editions will be free, and the community edition will be released under the GPL. The Enterprise Edition will be priced at $1,500 per server, per socket.

» LinuxWorld wasn't the only trade show taking place this week. At the CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas, Sun unveiled two ruggedized, UltraSPARC-3 powered Netra blade servers, the CT900 and the CP3010. Later this quarter, Opteron-based versions of the ATCA blades will be available.

This will be the first time Opteron will be available in such a form factor, David Rich, director of x64 embedded systems at AMD, told ServerWatch. Kirk Mosher, senior product line manager, Sun Netra Systems describes it as "the perfect processor for ATCA," as it will deliver three-times the performance of a Xeon-based blade.

In addition, Sun plans to release an UltraSPARC-T1-based blade by year end, Mosher said.

In addition to breaking ground on the processor front, the blades will support both Solaris and a carrier-grade version of Montavista Linux. Mosher told ServerWatch that MontaVista was selected because it tends to be Linux distro of choice out in the field.

The blades, he noted, deliver 30 percent better compute density and six-nines reliability, which translates into seconds of downtime in the course of a year.

Elsewhere in the Corral

Recent relevant articles about enterprise Unix

• From Negroponte's $100 Notebook to Microsoft's Open Source Olive Branch, Internetnews was there to capture the essence of LinuxWorld. Here are some stories we found particularly noteworthy:
  • The Linux Key is Virtualization
  • LinuxWorld: GPL 3 and The Linux Kernel Devs
  • J2EE vs. LAMP vs. NET Battle Royal
  • IBM, HP Stack Up on Linux
  • Is Linux Killing The Enterprise Software Model?

• If you've always admired the Apple OS X desktop theme and layout but aren't ready to drop a load of cash on an Apple machine, Linux Planet has an article explaining how to make GNOME look and feel more like OS X, with some limitations.

Tips of the Trade

Asterisk, the open source VoIP PBX, is red-hot and lighting up the entire VoIP world. No more must we toil in the chains of inflexible, incomprehensible, expensive telephony systems, for Asterisk can be completely customized and controlled by the user, and installed on any hardware. (Computer hardware, that is.) Asterisk has spawned a veritable herd of derivatives and customized releases suitable for all occasions, both commercial and free of cost. Today, we take a look at the world's smallest VoIP PBX, AstLinux.

Usually an Asterisk server requires some pretty good horsepower, not only because all of the coding/decoding required to send voice calls over IP networks but also because the underlying Linux operating system needs a fair bit of muscle as well. Basic Asterisk occupies roughly 15 MB of disk space, and installing a general-purpose Linux like Debian or Red Hat is going to require at least 500 MB of disk space. AstLinux has been slimmed down and optimized to an extreme degree: It is a mere 27 MB in size, yet provides nearly all of Asterisk's core functionality. The bulk of the slimming was achieved by whittling away at the underlying operating system, a very customized plain-vanilla Linux, until nothing was left but the absolutely essential bits for running an Asterisk PBX.

This opens up all kinds of possibilities, such as running Astlinux on compact flash devices like the Soekris net4801 board. Compact flash is faster and more reliable than a traditional IDE or SCSI hard drive, uses less power, and is quiet. Embedded boards like the Soekris have small footprints and low power consumption, and are customizable to suit your specifications.

AstLinux includes some useful add-ons such as OpenSSH, OpenSSL, remote logging support, iptables, tc for traffic shaping, and dnsmasq. The root filesystem runs read-only to preserve compact flash devices, which support a limited number of writes. This is a very large number, but eventually they do wear out.

AstLinux is not limited to single-board systems; you can install it on most x86 hardware. Something like a Soekris board is not going to support more than 5-10 users, so you can scale up as you need to, and add additional packages for more functionality.

Carla Schroder writes the Tips of the Trade section of Enterprise Unix Roundup. She also appears on Enterprise Networking Planet and VoIP Planet. She is the author of the Linux Cookbook and the upcoming "Linux Networking Cookbook."

>> To Main