IBM Linux Line
March 9, 2011
A concise monthly report of news and insight of interest to IT managers responsible for Linux deployments and the hands-on Linux community.
Linux News
IBM has announced that the Dundee City Council has implemented a cost-effective IT architecture with IBM System z and IBM XIV Storage System technologies. Dundee is Scotland's fourth largest city, home to 145,000 people. Like all U.K. local authorities, the Dundee City Council needs to handle increasing demand for IT and e-government services, while also reducing costs in line with central government targets.
Did you miss a webcast covering important information about technologies you need to learn more about? IBM offers replays on-demand of webcasts presented by IBM experts and partners.
The High Performance Computing (HPC) Linux Financial Markets event will take place April 4 at The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, NY. Wall Street is adopting high speed HPC systems with low latency to create new profit centers in arbitrage trading, and is using virtualization to increase back office efficiency and cost savings of existing HPC systems, according to the conference organizers. The 2011 show and conference will feature low latency and virtualization as two strategies to increase speed and increase full operations performance of HPC systems.
Following Watson's winning performance against Jeopardy! game show champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, IBM hosted a keynote session about its Jeopardy! Watson project at The Linux Foundation End User Summit. The project incorporates IBM Power 7 systems with Linux and analytics software. But Watson wasn't the only computer system that won last month when it competed successfully on Jeopardy! The other computing system is called World Community Grid, a virtual supercomputer that helps scientists solve humanitarian challenges by tapping the unused computing power of personal computers around the world. Scientists who use World Community Grid are not only set to receive Watson's $500,000 in prize money - but are already earning support worldwide because the day after the tournament's conclusion, World Community Grid saw a 700% spike in the number of people who normally volunteer their computers' spare power for the effort.
Inside Linux at IBM
"The Mainframe and the Cloud" and "Scaling Your Oracle E-Business Suite with IBM System z and Linux" are available for download.
The IBM Software Product Availability tool provides you the latest information about IBM software available for the Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux Server (SLES) versions and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) versions for System z.
"z/VM and Linux on IBM System z: The Virtualization Cookbook for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0" and " z/VM and Linux on IBM System z: The Virtualization Cookbook for SLES 11 SP1" are two new IBM Redbooks publications available.
Inside IBM's Linux Partners
Check out Solaris Alternatives, a website sponsored by Novell and IBM.
SUSE Linux Enterprise is the ideal end-to-end solution for running critical business on IBM zEnterprise System.
In light of Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, enterprise customers on the Sun SPARC-Solaris platform face uncertainty in ongoing support and development, and should consider alternatives, according to a new Cabot Partners white paper sponsored by IBM and Intel.One of the most widely available alternatives to the Sun's SPARC-Solaris platform is the IBM System x or BladeCenter and Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based platform. A migration to x86-Linux must address three core issues - hardware, operating systems, and workloads, according to the paper. In all three of these areas, IBM System x and BladeCenter platforms running Red Hat Enterprise Linux offer compelling value. Read the white paper.