Skinny servers stacked up by the dozen are rapidly becoming the
preferred way for PC companies to squeeze profits out of the popularity of the free Linux operating systems.
Several factors--relatively low cost, high reliability and network-friendliness--make Linux a good choice for companies that need lots of servers to handle tasks such as delivering Web pages or funneling requests to a
back-end database. Such tasks will get
easier with the arrival of new products from Penguin
Computing, SGI, IBM and Network Engines.
The announcements are the opening volleys of the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo that
begins
this week in New York. The conference has grown rapidly with
the widespread adoption of Linux, a clone of the Unix operating
system
and a competitor to Microsoft's Windows NT.
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Penguin, which is trying to be David to Sun
Microsystems' Goliath, has licensed Resonate's software for keeping
Internet information flowing smoothly from a collection of servers, said Mike
Tar, product manager at Penguin. Resonate's software has been available for
other operating systems, but Penguin is the first licensee of a new version of
the software for Linux and will sell it packaged with its new "I-Node"
rack-mountable servers.
Computer maker SGI has come up with a new thin server, the 3.5-inch thick,
two-Pentium SGI Internet Server, said Greg Estes, general manager of SGI's
Internet solutions division. The server will be packaged with a new software
product, the ProPack 1.2, a collection of SGI customizations, optimizations,
software and other improvements to Red Hat's version of Linux.
Meanwhile, IBM, which sells a rare two-processor server only 1.75 inches
thick,
is busy building new rack-mountable servers and improving Linux so the
operating system can take advantage of fancy features such as the ability to add new network cards or swap out defective memory while the system is still running, according to Alex Yost, manager of marketing for IBM's Netfinity server line.
Network Engines, the company from which IBM licensed that thin design, is
pushing ahead with new servers of its own. The company has released thin
server "appliances"--single-purpose machines--for several different types of Web page jobs. The different jobs range from delivering Web pages to administering collections of servers.
Meanwhile, TurboLinux, a seller of the Linux operating system itself, is
taking
another approach. It announced a new software package called enFuzion that lets Linux and other
computers on a network collectively act like a single powerful computer--a
method similar to the Beowulf technology
popular for Linux. EnFuzion, though, can tie together computers running Linux,
Windows NT, or the various forms of Unix from SGI, Compaq, IBM, Sun and
Hewlett-Packard. EnFuzion, which will be available March 1, is in use at JP
Morgan, Rockefeller University and other sites, the company said.
SGI has embarked on an aggressive plan to embrace Linux for its new line of
Intel-based servers and workstations, and it already has a strong presence in the
scientific and technical community, which is interested in the sort of
number-crunching tasks these gangs of computers are good at. However, SGI also wants to sell them to companies who want to analyze sales information or financial data.
To beef up its "Beowulf" offerings, SGI will begin selling its new Advanced
Clustering Environment, Estes said. A 32-CPU collection of computers, complete
with the management software that distributes jobs among the rest of the
computers, will cost about $125,000, he said.
Penguin Computing's I-Node machines cost about $8,000 for a two-node system,
but a full rack of more than 40 thin servers costs about $150,000, the company
said.
Penguin Computing competes with publicly traded VA Linux Systems but
considers
its main rival Sun Microsystems, said chief executive Sam Ockman. Sun's success rests on its strategy in the 1980s of taking on more
expensive but better established competitors, a technique Ockman now hopes to
use against Sun itself, he said.
The company's best-selling products are its 3.5-inch, two-processor
rack-mountable servers, he said.
The Resonate software used on the Penguin Computing I-Nodes lets a company
automatically route different types of Web traffic to different servers, Tar
said. For example, high-paying customers visiting a Web site could be
routed to
faster servers that handle complex iterations, whereas lower-priority
customers with simpler transactions could be routed to lower-end boxes. HP has
a similar software called WebQOS for ensuring the quality of service to
important Web site visitors.
New products help Linux enter hot market
