The Linux Executive Report from IBM
December 15, 2011
The Linux Executive Report from IBM: December 15, 2011. A monthly summary of important trends and market research, case studies and information about IBM's Linux initiatives of interest to senior management.
Linux News
Fedora 16, the latest version of the free open source operating system distribution, is now available from The Fedora Project, a Red Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration. Developed by a worldwide community, the Fedora Project collaborates closely with upstream free software project teams to provide a compelling experience for users and to access and integrate improvements and innovation rapidly.
Technology enabling IBM zEnterprise System users to integrate Microsoft Windows applications into the mainframe environment-an industry first-will become available from IBM on December 16th. With this new capability, end users with multi-tier applications-for example, Windows applications connected to mainframe data-can be integrated and consolidated on the same system. By bringing Windows and the mainframe together, IBM is helping clients to innovate more freely in multiple environments across z/OS, Linux, AIX and now Windows.
With the publication of the overall highest score ever achieved by a system using 4 processors, IBM continues to deliver leadership performance on the SPECvirt_sc2010 benchmark. SPECvirt_sc2010 is the first-generation SPEC benchmark for evaluating the virtualization performance of data center server consolidation. The x3850 X5 server leverages fifth-generation IBM Enterprise X-Architecture, offering innovation with enhanced reliability and availability features to enable optimal performance for databases, enterprise applications, and virtualized environments. The IBM System x 3850 X5 server delivered an overall performance score of SPECvirt_sc2010 4,603 @ 282 VMs.
For those of us who have witnessed the emergence of open virtualization technologies such as KVM, the benefits of an open approach to server virtualization can seem obvious. But one of the things that KVM has suffered from is that it has not been well explained in the marketplace. It is actually quite a geeky name if you think about it - and then explaining what KVM stands for - Kernel-based Virtual Machine - doesn't actually help to explain it much more! It would probably have been easier to attract attention if it had a cooler name but in fact it is a really good product and is now very much enterprise-ready. So we now need to get the word out about it - we need to talk about the benefits and we need to talk about why the hardware support for new virtualization hypervisors like KVM has come into the marketplace and talk about what people are doing with it.
The need for cost-effective, reliable solutions to IT problems has become more acute through the first decade of the 21st century.
You've probably been reading about the economics of cloud computing. The promises of efficient, virtualized computing platforms are attractive: low entry cost, dynamic sizing to accommodate varying workloads, automated management, and more. The value proposition looks equally compelling for both emerging and well-established organizations.
The openSUSE Project, a global open source community, has announced the general availability of openSUSE 12.1. The stable and easy-to-use multi-purpose operating system distribution helps users and developers leverage free and open source software in physical, virtual and cloud environments.
Inside Linux at IBM
Inside IBM's Linux Partners