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 NEWSLinux future scales out By Ed Scannell November 29, 2002 1:01 pm PT AS DOMINANT SYSTEMS and software companies continue to pour millions into scaling Linux for the enterprise, some observers now believe the open-source OS's future is to serve as a distributed, network-based operating system.
Rather, at a time when distributed architectures such as those proposed by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems are beginning to emerge, Linux should be considered for its ability to "scale out" in a horizontal fashion. "Scale up remains very important, but that is not where the big growth is. I don't necessarily see a large, incremental market opportunity for a relatively new operating system like Linux there. There are already too many established players there," said Gordon Haff, senior analyst at Illuminata in Nashua, N.H. Key to the argument are mainframes, which are generally considered to be scalable machines. Haff argues to the contrary, stating that mainframes running Linux can easily scale out as a distributed environment. "Scalability on mainframes has more to do with scaling out and not up, because essentially they are running small [Linux] instances in partitions in virtual machines that are handling departmental level tasks," Haff said. Linux can serve as a distributed or front-end system that controls tasks such as encryption, load balancing, and access to Web sites, according to Haff and others. "It is this distributed function that lies at the heart of Linux market opportunity now. Scale-out clusters and network computing are increasingly what all computing is about, including in the business heartland," Haff said. At least one user agrees, noting the need does not exist for yet another high-octane server OS that requires integration and management. "If we want to scale things up, all we need to do is wait for the next version of AIX or IBM's mainframe [zOS] operating system. What we really need is something at the mid-tier that can work nicely out of the box with what we already have in place for high-end operating systems and applications," said John Henderson, purchasing agent at a large insurance company in Omaha, Neb. At the same time, Linux's capability to continue scaling up in the enterprise is virtually assured with facilities such as the Open Source Development Lab, a facility in Beaverton, Ore., where open-source developers have access to big iron servers. The lab was established by IBM, HP, NEC, and Intel, all of which have a vested interest in seeing Linux scaling up to support more and more processors. In fact, the image of Linux as a scale-up operating system will get a boost soon when SGI releases its Itanium 2-based Origin 3000 server. The product can run off-the-shelf versions of Linux on as many as 64 processors. Linux's scale-up effort will receive a boost in the first half of 2003 when Version 2.6 of the Linux kernel is released. The kernel is expected to scale significantly better than it has in the past, and it will handle more memory more efficiently, according to Linux inventor Linus Torvalds. SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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