The Linux Executive Report from IBM
July 2012
The Linux Executive Report from IBM: July 2012. 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
Casio in Japan wanted to optimize the global IT infrastructure within its business development department and create business models to gain a competitive advantage in its industry. Casio installed Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Enterprise Linux to enhance optimization of its IBM BladeCenter for increased efficiency and to develop IT systems tailored to specific sections of its business.
In a new blog, Ian Robinson, virtualization product line manager, IBM Systems Software, STG, writes about the complexity that comes with the managing physical and virtualized servers, and the increasing need to manage more than one hypervisor. That's where IBM Systems Director with VMControl comes in, he says. "Generally, when we think about new technology we tend to focus on all the advantages it adds. And, in the case of server virtualization - a technology that has been strongly embraced over the past decade as it expanded beyond the mainframe into the realm of x86 servers - the advantages are many. Virtualization is being widely embraced in the enterprise because it enables greater utilization of an existing infrastructure, flexibility in terms of reallocating resources when they are needed and where, and not incidentally, significant cost savings due to a smaller physical footprint, energy efficiency and the ability to avoid or postpone new hardware purchases."
Google recently announced the Google Compute Engine, a service running on KVM that enables developers to have quick access to vast numbers of virtual machines. Cade Metz writes about the new service in an article on for Wired Enterprise in which he interviews Google's Urs Holzle. "Compute Engine was built using the KVM hypervisor, open source software that was built to run virtual machines atop the Linux operating system. KVM, or Kernel-based Virtual Machine, is a little different from the XEN hypervisor that underpins Amazon's service or the VMware vSphere hypervisor that drives applications inside so many other data centers," writes Metz.
Mike Day, distinguished engineer and chief virtualization architect, Open Systems Development, IBM, dispels some persistent myths about KVM in his new blog. "KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is gaining traction in the enterprise as a virtualization solution that provides high performance, scalability, and cost efficiency," writes Day. "But misconceptions still abound about this open source hypervisor. Some falsehoods continue to be perpetuated by organizations offering competing products, and others because KVM is maturing quickly and the up-to-date, correct information is not yet widely known. Here, we tackle some of the most persistent myths about KVM - because it's time to set the record straight."
LinuxCon is the leading annual technical conference in North America. Launched in 2009, LinuxCon has become known for offering top speaking talent, a cross-section of the leading players in the Linux community, innovative and timely content, a wide variety of opportunities for attendee collaboration and a place for smaller groups to co-locate for topic-specific mini-summits and workgroups. Co-located with CloudOpen, the Linux Kernel Summit and the Linux Plumbers Conference, LinuxCon North America 2012 will take place August 29-31 at the Sheraton Hotel & Marina in San Diego.
The Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) made its presence known at the recent Red Hat Summit. The OVA, a Bronze Sponsor of the event, hosted a networking reception for the 27 participating members, and the Open Virtualization Alliance booth allowed many OVA members to promote their company's success stories around KVM, as well as highlight the benefits of being an OVA member.
The oVirt Project develops and distributes an open source virtualization management platform that combines the KVM hypervisor with advanced capabilities for hosts and guests, including high availability, live migration, storage management, system scheduling, and more. As part of its community's efforts to provide education about oVirt and to bring more contributors into the fold, oVirt is hosting workshops at LinuxCon North America and LinuxCon Europe. Interested parties are invited to attend these workshops free of charge, and all workshop participants are eligible for a $200 discount on their LinuxCon registration courtesy of The Linux Foundation.
During his Red Hat Summit keynote, Robert LeBlanc, senior vice president of IBM Software Group, spoke about the impact of open source technology on business decisions in the past, present and future. IBM was a Premier Sponsor of the Red Hat Summit, and LeBlanc's long experience with Linux, along with his leadership of the original IBM Linux strategy team, enthusiastically engaged the more than 3,000 audience members at the event.
SUSE has announced the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 2 (SP2) for SAP Applications. Built using the recently updated SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP2 platform, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications increases the performance of compute and memory-intensive workloads, including those involving the SAP HANA platform. The operating platform optimized for running SAP solutions also supports the latest hypervisors, helping customers move physical workloads to virtual and cloud environments more quickly and easily.
Inside Linux at IBM
Jean Staten Healy, director, WW Linux and Open Virtualization, IBM, writes about why KVM merits a closer look: Virtualization is all about sharing resources of IT systems to get better usage out of them — to lower costs and to make it a more productive environment, with a better return on investment. Of course, you need a sufficiently large server with enough power and capacity so it is worth sharing the resources between different workloads. But once you have decided to virtualize, a key issue to consider is how the source code for the virtualization hypervisor is developed. That brings us to the importance of open source hypervisors, and in particular, KVM (the Kernel-based Virtual Machine).
Adam Jollans, program director, Linux and Open Virtualization Strategy, IBM, provides answers to frequently asked questions about KVM. "In the early days of Linux, it was often the technical people in organizations who knew about it and were already implementing, while management had little awareness of Linux. We are seeing that same trend occurring now with KVM," writes Jollans. "To help further the overall understanding and awareness of KVM and fill in the information gap, here is a list of the most frequently asked questions that we at IBM have encountered in recent panel discussions, conversations, and interviews."
Case studies and videos showcase how customers are benefiting from IBM technologies and KVM.
Inside IBM's Linux Partners