Oracle Adds Features to Linux, Validates Configurations

September 4th, 2007 Noor

its may be hard to think of Oracle as a commercial Linux distributor, but whether the Linux purists like it or not, the company is still in the game, albeit in a slightly different way from other commercial Linux suppliers. This month, Oracle is banging the drum for its variant of Red Hat Enterprise Linux backed by Oracle support, dubbed Oracle Enterprise Linux and formerly known as Unbreakable Linux.

Because Oracle Enterprise Linux is a fork off of Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux 4 Update 5 and Enterprise Linux 5, the new virtualized variant of RHEL that started shipping in the spring of this year, certification is something of an issue. But given that Oracle is starting with the same code base on day one, certification is not a difficult a proposition–it’s not like Oracle actually rolled its own Linux distro from scratch. Oracle Enterprise Linux includes patches to bugs that Oracle codes itself as part of its support offering in the wake of the RHEL 4 Update 5 or RHEL 5 launch, which it says is half the cost of what Red Hat is charging and which is backed by a Linux kernel staff that Oracle says has the technical skills to not only fix bugs in Red Hat code, but to do so in a more timely fashion. (No one ever accused Larry Ellison, one of Oracle’s founders and its current chairman, of being bashful.)

Oracle has also done other things to make Oracle Enterprise Linux different, such as porting Novell’s Yet Another Setup Tool (YAST) system configuration tool from SUSE Linux to RHEL; Oracle did this and launched it a few weeks ago because YAST is a good tool and some Linux users prefer it. The company has also announced that Chris Mason, an Oracle employee, is spearheading a new, scalable file system for Linux called Btrfs, which will be distributed under the GNU General Public License v2. Btrfs includes checksum error detection and correction, object-level mirroring and striping, dynamic allocation, incremental backup and file system mirroring, snapshotting, and other features that a modern operating system needs. (The Oracle Cluster File System, which Oracle took open source years ago, is now part of the Linux 2.6.16 kernel distribution, so this will not be the first Oracle file system to see use in the Linux community.) Oracle has also taken its own in-house Linux Test Kit, which was used to validate the Linux server and storage setups for its own database management systems on Red Hat, SUSE, and Oracle Linuxes, and donated it to the open source community.

With the six new validated platforms for Oracle Enterprise Linux announced recently, Oracle now has now put together over 30 certified and tested Linux setups, including servers, storage, operating system, and related systems software. (You can find out more about Oracle Enterprise Linux at this site, and see the list of validated configurations here.)

Oracle’s own 10g and new 11g databases are among the first programs certified on Oracle’s Linux variant, of course. Server and storage platforms from Compellent, Dell, Egenera, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Network Appliance, Pillar Data, Sun Microsystems, and Unisys have been certified for the Oracle Linux variant; Advanced Micro Devices and Intel are validation partners, too; Emulex and QLogic have partnered with Oracle to deliver certified host bus adapters, and Brocade Communications and Cisco Systems have also worked with Oracle to have their networking gear certified to operate with Oracle Enterprise Linux.

Oracle also announced that Compellent, Unisys, and Liquid Computing, an up-and-coming Opteron-based server maker, have joined Oracle in certifying its Linux on their iron.

In July, Symantec and Oracle announced that Symantec’s Veritas Storage Foundation software, which includes file systems, cluster file systems, and backup software, have been certified for use on Oracle Enterprise Linux.

Finally, on the customer front, Oracle has managed to get Activision, the online game software maker behind Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, and Call of Duty, to switch from Red Hat support to Unbreakable Linux support from Oracle. Activision is a big-time Oracle shop, using its databases and ERP software and is in the midst of adding support for clustered databases using Real Application Clusters. Activision reportedly did the switch to Oracle support on its Linux servers in under 10 minutes–no word on how many machines were involved–and the company says that on the machines where support was changed, the support costs are 65 percent lower.

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