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Are we letting Microsoft define our industry?

Mar 10

Posted by Vic in Operating Systems, Soapbox

I’ve been trying to solve a problem at work for a few weeks now — one of those tricky “it’s only software so it shouldn’t be this hard” sort-of problems for which you know the solution is just a matter of putting the right bits and pieces together. At work, I’m more-or-less forced into using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the distro formerly known as RHEL), and one of the pieces I’m looking at is OpenLDAP.

My first stage in the process was to get OpenLDAP set up with the right config — but when I started it, slapd complained about an error in slapd.conf. The overlay I was trying to use, it claimed, was not found. I spent the next couple of hours trying to find additional packages, trying different things, reading doco, searching Google, to no avail. The overlay I want is missing from Red Hat’s build of OpenLDAP.

So “boo hoo”, you say, “just build from source”. Well, remember how I said I was forced into RHEL? The corollary to that is that I am only allowed to use exactly what the Shadowman ships on the DVD. No build-from-source, no other OSS, is allowed.

But what does any of this have to do with Microsoft?

In my research, I found the release notes for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. In it was the following text (highlighting mine):

OpenLDAP Server and Red Hat Directory Server
Red Hat Directory Server is an LDAP-based server that centralizes enterprise and network data into an OS-independent, network-based registry. It is set to replace OpenLDAP server components, which will be deprecated after Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. For more information about Red Hat Directory Server, refer to http://www.redhat.com/software/rha/directory/.

You guessed it: Red Hat Directory Server is a pay-for product. So Red Hat’s setting a direction here: server platforms comprising only the base OS, and additional function provided through extra-cost modules — now where have we seen this before?

Does this now mean that on RHEL-next, in order to run a Samba server with an LDAP IDMAP backend, companies will have to pay for RDS? That won’t fly at my work: “we already have a corporate directory, we’re not paying for another” will the customer sayeth.

“Okay”, you say, “so don’t use Red Hat”. As far as I’m allowed (this is at my employer remember) the only other choice is SLES… from Novell… that organisation that felt the need to cross-licence with Microsoft to “protect” against undisclosed and unproven patent infringement.

(Note that this post is not about Novell-Microsoft, nor is their deal a reason not to use SLES in my opinion. The thought only popped into my head because I was already thinking about Microsoft as a result of the Red Hat thing with RDS.)

So it seems like the two biggest names in corporate Linux are marching to Microsoft’s drum. Have I misread something? Am I overreacting?

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OpenSolaris on System z

Dec 3

Posted by Vic in Operating Systems

It’s all the rage on YouTube, apparently…  posting video of a z/VM system booting something.  Only kidding, this is a good piece of tech.  If you search YouTube for “OpenSolaris System z” you’ll find a set of five videos that show an interview (recorded at the recent Gartner datacentre conference) with David Boyes of Sine Nomine Associates demonstrating OpenSolaris running on an IBM System z mainframe.  It’s a great achievement, and a fine piece of work — but there’s a catch.

I can’t stress enough what a great job David, Neale (Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!), Adam and everyone at SNA have done.  Networking is not there yet, but I trust it’s not far (need a hand fellas? (: ).  It must have been a hard slog, and for some (particularly Neale) perhaps brought some unpleasant memories (anyone remember Bigfoot?).  Congratulations are deserved.  I can see the lolcat now: I IS SUN. IM IN UR MANEFRAYM, KIKIN OUT YR PENGUINZ.  YA RLY!  Only joking!

The catch is, ironically, the aspect of the port that makes it most useful in the “real” world.  The guys have made the port dependent on z/VM.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s the right thing to do — without z/VM, you can’t play to the strengths of the System z platform and it’s capabilities for massive resource sharing in a virtualisation environment.  Many believe that Linux on System z should have been taken in the same direction, as other platforms (like System p) do big-single-Linux-footprint better than what System z does.

The twist is that by tying the OpenSolaris port to z/VM, they’ve eliminated a set of would-be hackers from contributing to the effort.  Those with motivation, time, skill, and a big Intel box who can get a couple of hundred MIPS out of Hercules.

There are, rightly or wrongly, a lot of people who think that Solaris is a good platform.  These are the kind of people I’m thinking of — maybe folks who have always derided the mainframe, but perhaps are now thinking “gee, well if it runs Solaris now, it can’t be all bad.  Maybe I’ll check it out”.

Obviously I can’t speak for Sun (nor for IBM or SNA), but I’m sure I read that one of the objectives of OpenSolaris was to get Solaris into more hands and to try and benefit from the “millions of set of eyes” effect that Linux enjoys.  It seems ironic then that the first “non-Sun” platform to which OpenSolaris has been ported is one that doesn’t contribute to that goal.

Not to worry.  David at SNA has stated that they are committed to releasing their work to the community.  This will be the point at which an interested party could look at the code and potentially rip out or rewrite the z/VM-specific bits and replace them.  It wouldn’t be impossible — even CMS was able to IPL standalone once upon a time — but it would be a huge piece of work (no doubt part of SNA’s reasoning was to let z/VM do a lot of heavy lifting for I/O and such tasks; that would have to be written for OpenSolaris).  Bags I not-it.  Likewise, our potential interested party would be very likely to turn away to Linux… or even away from System z entirely.

Meh, enough doom-talk.  I’ve downloaded three different flavours of OpenSolaris for x86 (NexentaOS which I had a brief look at previously, Solaris Express Developer Edition, and something that called itself the “Indiana Preview”) and I’m running them in VMware to have a poke around (but not all at the same time, they need a heap of memory).

I’ll be following this as close as I can (or as close as I’m allowed).  I think it will be really interesting to see how this progresses.  Good luck to all involved (and if you need a hand guys… ;-)

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Rebooting my belief system

Mar 7

Posted by Vic in Linux, Operating Systems, Soapbox

I’ve been away from SHARE for far too long.  It’s really great to hear positive things about Linux on zSeries again, rather than the crap I have to put up with at home.

In Australia, there is no evangelism of zSeries.  There’s an attitude bordering on arrogance that seems to say “we’re not going to explain zSeries to you; if you don’t know you want it already then you’re not worth it”.  At least that’s what it looks like to me.

I’m surrounded by people who think that all problems can be solved by installing an xSeries or pSeries machine.  Maybe some can be, but IMHO they’ll be replacing one set of problems with another (possibly greater) set.

Anyway, it’s nice to hear different stories — like a company whose IT costs went from 1.7% to 0.9% of sales by migrating their ENTIRE server farm (including about a dozen p690s) to a z990 running Linux.  Like a company that has placed 250 Linux server guests onto z/VM inside a year, freezing acquisition of new discrete servers.

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