Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 18:24:52 -0600 (CST) From: "Lee Crites (AEI)" <leec@adam.adonai.net> To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: SCO (was Re: hi terry) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.95.980319174440.19449C-100000@adam.adonai.net> In-Reply-To: <199803191739.LAA04649@crocodile.vail>
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On Thu, 19 Mar 1998, Hal Snyder wrote:
=>Whoa boy, we better run for cover now.
There is SCO unix and there is UnixWare. My understanding is
these are two different products. If they aren't, I don't really
care. I am only talking about the UnixWare product here.
There *are* some things which UnixWare has which we (FreeBSD)
could take a lesson from. Tandem is using this as the base os
for it's new non-stop clusters product because of its support for
clustering. A "cluster" (in case you haven't had to keep up with
this) is a group of computers linked together via a network. In
Tandem's case, this network is ServerNet. I have seen this
product demo'd, and have even helped design some of the demos.
It is a really nice feature.
In a nutshell, with clusters (as Tandem's NSK is using it,
anyway) you can have a virtually unlimited number of boxes
connected via the network, each of which can have multiple cpu's.
You can start processes on one cpu on one box and migrate that
process anywhere you like/need. The potential of this is
staggering. The mail server is bogging down because of some
other work going on the system? No problem, move the processes
around. Okay, it's not that simple -- but I've seen it done and
it's not that hard, either.
Tandem is, of course, adding a lot of "custom" enhancements to
the base product so it will support the fault-tolerance features
which are part and parcel of the Tandem non-stop unix world.
I can tell you, though, even though I don't like the news, and I
don't like the meaning of the news, SCO *is* positioning itself
quite well. This clustering technology is being supported by a
rather impressive list of industry leaders with deep pockets.
In addition, SCO already has the ability to run (some?!?) Windoze
products.
=>Here we run a mix of FreeBSD, SCO, and NT. FreeBSD systems run
=>uptimes in hundreds of days. Of necessity, we've equipped the
=>SCO systems with hardware to reboot them when they wedge -
=>uptime averages 72 hours on the more active servers.
I can understand the stability problems with SCO. It's not as
stable as we are by any means, but it is getting better. A big
part of it's "instability" has recently been decided upon. After
a long battle, SCO was finally released from having to keep it's
backward compatibility with xenix. The next version will be
significantly more stable than the current one is, even if that
is the only improvement made.
=>NT isn't used for production servers, just desktop systems for
=>the less technical users and guys/gals in suits.
Cute. They threatened to make me use NT. The threat didn't last
very long, though (thank goodness). I told them it seemed rather
like a very large slap in the face to make a unix internals
programmer work on an NT box. Sort of like making a Cadillac
engineer drive a Yugo.
Having said all of this, let me conclude with my feelings on
FreeBSD in relation to all of this. I believe we can maintain a
good and stable system which will have it's place in the
industry. I'm quite happy with my fbsd systems. And the people
here which I have given copies of fbsd to are also happy with it.
(one of which upgraded from sco, in fact)
But the industry is changing quite rapidly. I believe we need to
step back and see where it is going and make some strategic
decisions about where we want to see FreeBSD go. We have
stability and security pretty well taken care of. I'm seeing
some positive comments about smp in 3.0. But we might want to
see about clustering and some fault-tolerant extensions. If we
are proactive about this, we might just be able to catch the wave
and take advantage of the new directions.
Lee
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lee Crites
www.adonai.net/~leec
Tandem/Compaq (Austin) Adonai Services Company
phone: 512-432-7112 phone: 512-789-7853
leec@austx.tandem.com leec@adonai.net
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