LinuxCare Resurfaces as Linux Device Vendor 83
An anonymous reader submits "LinuxCare, famous employer of Rasmus, Tridge, and others during the go-go-90's Linux start-up days, has resurfaced as a Linux device vendor. The company, now known as Levanta, is shipping its first hardware product, which it says is the 'world's first Linux management appliance.' At nearly $8K, it's pretty expensive, but the Integra M does appear to bring some of the cool sysadmin features long available on the Windows side over to Linux IT types."
What sunk Linuxcare (Score:5, Insightful)
Fernand Serrat - CEO
Doug Nassaur - CIO
The second one managed to spend a metric shitload of money on equipment that there were no plans to even use, and, indeed, if you follow his career around, you see him getting turfed out of pretty much everywhere he goes. The sad thing is that, he comes in at such a high level that instead of just being fired like you or I, he gets a big severance package, and no one says anything bad about him anywhere.
Re:The automation of system administration (Score:3, Insightful)
Mind you, that cost is still well under the cut-off point at which most level 3 managers can sign off on, so there's a chance that it might gain some market traction.
Still, no matter how bad the material on the website is, it's still fantastic seeing these kinds of products coming out. Good to see these guys haven't given up.
Fair Chance? (Score:3, Insightful)
We should be supportive of companies and individuals that are attempting to establish a broader base of Linux/Unix hosted/compatible systems since it can only benefit the industry.
If a system truly is a piece of crap, then many will hopefully learn from the experience - even folks not part of the effort. Many great products started as a POS and grew into respectable offerings.
Although I understand people taking the opportunity to thrash this system (it can be fun), I wish that the general attitude of the vocal members of the community was just a little more positive.
Re:Why sell a device? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The automation of system administration (Score:3, Insightful)
On the contrary, there are no relevant technical details, only some very, very high-level, ambiguous conceptual stuff.
Well, it is dumbed down for the CIOs, perhaps not enough for the CEOs but who cares -- such a system will be sold to them by the CIOs, they won't read this kinda stuff. It's us techies who are left in the cold, and the mention of 'systems administration' and 'MySQL' in the same pages does not bide well, nor the claims of patented software technologies.
Re:What sunk Linuxcare (Score:3, Insightful)
intersting reading
I've downloaded the "papers" --- also marketing (Score:4, Insightful)
Now they come, and create this buzz with only marketing bullshit on their site. I have filled in the form with all my data (curios that they did not ask my mothers maiden name...), and got the chance to download the whitepapers with such a huge amount of marketing stuff in it, that I still don't know how this system works.
So:
- I don't care about cost graphicons
- I don't care about stories
- I don't care about anything, but
could anybody please tell me what the architecture is, what is the way it installs/maintains servers, so how does it work?
porting to appliance form factor (Score:4, Insightful)
In related news Microsoft reports they have successfully ported Windows from Intel Desktop ATX platform to VIAs mini-ITX platform
Re:The automation of system administration (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think the product is cool at all.
Why?
I don't know what it is at all.
They don't actually say, in technical terms, what the box offers me, as the sysadmin.
I already know how to run a site on Linux. I'd love to know there's something out there to make it easier, but make it easier *how*?
I'm not putting out $10k for a box that doesn't have software and functional specifications.
How It Works (Score:2, Insightful)
In the meantime...
As a basic concept, the Levanta technology marries network-boot provisioning with data virtualization and change control. MapFS, a GPLed Linux kernel-loadable module, is an integral part of this process, as is PXE-boot.
However, rather than trying to post a white paper's worth of content here, with limited space and no ability to draw diagrams (you don't want to see my ASCII art), it's probably best to refer those who are interested to a recent report published by Illuminata, a niche technology research firm specializing in grids, clusters, virtualization, and other leading edge stuff. Illuminata does a good job of giving an introduction to the architecture, including a few basic diagrams.
You can access the Illuminata paper below, no registration necessary:
http://www.levanta.com/downloads/docs/levantaPDFp
[Full Disclosure: Levanta did not commission this paper from Illuminata and it's available to Illuminata subscribers. However, we did purchase redistribution rights to it.]
Currently, Levanta supports managing Linux servers and workstations, although we're seriously considering adding Open Solaris support for next year. Right now, officially supported Linux distros cover Fedora, SuSE, and RedHat, although other RPM-based distros like CentOS are sometimes possible. Levanta can manage these distros running on x86 hardware (racks, blades, boxes), VMWare virtual machines, and z/VM sessions on zSeries mainframes.
Levanta Release 3.3 exists as two software products that support x86 and zSeries. The new Intrepid is actually running Release 4 of the Levanta software. We currently plan to port the new features of Release 4 to the software product lines in the near future.
For those who were asking, "Why sell a device?", there were many factors that contributed to our decision:
-Some were technical. For example, the Levanta Manager needs access to shared storage to act as the data store. Many customers like having the idea of the storage 'built in', especially if they don't already have ready access to NFS, iSCSI, or SAN.
-It costs less. The Intrepid appliance licenses actually cost less than the standalone software. With an appliance, there are fewer things like a multitude of shared storage device drivers and SMIS differences to worry about, which reduces our R&D and support costs. This, in turn, lets us come out with a lower-priced product.
-Simplicity. One of our key goals was to make a product that is easier for a broader range of people to use. This is especially important now that Linux is growing beyond universities, data centers, and hobbyists and (hopefully) is on its way to becoming more mainstream. It was easier to make the technology more 'plug and play' by putting it in a box.
If you plan to be at the SF LinuxWorld, feel free to pop by and ask questions.