Michael Merritt wrote:
>
> Karsten Johansson wrote:
> >
> > Ewan Dunbar wrote:
> > >
> > > On Mon, 12 Apr 1999, Fred A. Miller wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > This is DEAD wrong in a lot of areas...but, you should read it.
> > > Where? I haven't found any problems with it. WAY better than that WSJ
> > > article.
> >
> > Yes, I fail to see where it is dead wrong... especially in a "lot" of
> > areas. Please explain.
>
> Well, take the paragraph:
> "Missing from Linux are high-availability features that would let one
> Linux server step in and take over if another failed; full-fledged
> support for computers with multiple
> processors; and a "journaling" file system that is necessary to quickly
> reboot a crashed machine without having to laboriously reconstruct the
> computer's system files, the study said."
>
> Is Beowulf merely a figment of my imagination? As well as many other
> clustering solutions. Try doing half of that with NT.
I know this is a bit old, but there are some misconceptions here that
keep popping up.
The article didn't say that SMP was completely absent from Linux, but
was green. I've heard of people running serious loads on multiprocessor
systems with linux with excelent results, IBM's Netfinities in cluster
being a great example. But there truly isn't much documented about it
out there. That doesn't mean it isn't so in reality, but to big biz, it
does.
Also, clustering does not equate to failover support. True, you can
remove a node and have the cluster continue to function, however,
clusters use a API that allows for custom programs to do highly
specialized tasks. They are not ready to support stuff like Oracle DBs
running over several machines (that's *next* week ;-)). Failover is a
totally different thing, and NT has it better than linux, I'm afraid.
Finally, there seem to be efforts on making a journaling filesystem for
Linux, but I see no documentation on such a thing being part of the
default system. As far as I know, NT doesn't have one, or if it does,
it's capabilities are limited. An example of an OS that does is BeOS.
AIX is another.
> Also, my server does quite well using its dual processors -- I'm not
> sure how much more support is needed to be "full-fledged?"
How much load does your server handle? How many open file handles, user
requests per second, and so on? Linux is getting there, but some of the
commercial UNIXs can handle stuff that Linux cannot yet. I don't think
that NT can, though. There's just not enough documentation out there to
say either way.
--
lunaslide * PGP key->pgpkeys.mit.edu port 11371
* * * * * *
Yep. I have a very active imagination; it's been a personal
condition of mine for years now. * -Bruce Sterling
* * * * *
--
To get out of this list, please send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e
Check out the SuSE-FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/ and the
archive at http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html
