Linux In The Data Center: How Does It Fit?
Linux in the data center now must compete not only with Windows and Unix, but now it's got to be able to work with public and private clouds, on-premise and off-premise virtual solutions. And it's got to do it without adding needless complexity.
Novell, Ubuntu distributor Canonical and Red Hat -- three of the Linux giants -- have all in recent weeks launched versions of their technology they say are geared toward making it easy to integrate better management with both on-premise and cloud-based solutions. It's too early to say how significant an impact these will have on information technology, just as it's still too early to say what kind of an impact the cloud will have on information technology.
Two of the biggest enemies of small and midsize businesses remain cost and complexity. While prevailing wisdom holds that cloud-based solutions take much of the cost out of a solution, the jury is still out on what it does for complexity. And it's not clear that Ubuntu, Red Hat and Novell aren’t themselves guilty of adding complexity while trying to reduce cost.
For this issue of CRNtech, we set out to examine best practices and methods for integrating top Linux distributions inside a data center and even on the desktop. As we were getting closer to deadline, though, both Red Hat and Novell launched what they said were significant, new initiatives in the integration of Linux with the data center and the cloud.
Our first look at these offerings tells us that while Novell, Red Hat and even Ubuntu developers have made significant strides, none have stepped forward with technology that’s -- right now -- a slam dunk. They are all good starts.
Here is what we found:
NEXT: Canonical Ubuntu
Canonical Ubuntu
Canonical's Ubuntu was arguably the first distribution of Linux to gain wide acceptance on the desktop, and for a reason: It was (and still is) as simple and intuitive to use as Windows or the Mac, and it was (and still is) free to download.
But Ubuntu is more than just a desktop operating system. The Ubuntu developer community has made great strides in building it out as a server operating system over the past several years. It's a nice, low-touch server to install, it's not a hardware hog, and Canonical has begun positioning the server software and the desktop software as turnkey, cloud-friendly. To this end, Ubuntu has made great strides.
Ubuntu's low-end stride into desktop cloud services brought out a new look with integration of its Ubuntu One cloud-based, online storage. Ubuntu One is simple and provides 2 GB of hosted storage for free, or 50 GB for $10 per month. It’s now in beta, with developers admitting they are working hard to get it ready for prime time in sync with the formal launch of Ubuntu 10.04. But this will provide many with an easy, early look at the service.
But that's the desktop. For the data center, Ubuntu-cloud integration is taking several approaches. For starters, Canonical launched Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for its three most recent versions of Ubuntu -- versions 10.04, 9.10 and 8.04 -- meaning the latest refresh of the technology now integrates with Amazon.com's Elastic Compute Cloud.
That's important for several reasons:
• Amazon has the most geographically diverse, and one of the most reliable, cloud-hosting services. • Canonical has allowed enterprises to leverage Amazon's own development and integration tools. • Ubuntu's free operating software combined with Amazon's hyperaggressive pricing makes it a highly competitive solution in terms of initial cost of deployment -- a potentially huge differentiator.
Unlike Microsoft or other Linux providers, Ubuntu doesn't have a high-end management layer that can tie it all together. That may add needless complexity to an enterprise, but for the most part it shouldn't be a deal-killer.
The fact is that out of all of the Linux distros we've looked at for the enterprise, Ubuntu is probably geared the most toward SMB deployments. Add to that some promising first steps toward cloud integration, and that leaves us wanting more (in a good way.) It's not a perfect solution for virtualized data centers, but it's a good solution and it's one we can recommend.
NEXT: Novell
Novell
Novell provides both SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) operating systems, but folks at the Cambridge, Mass.-based company don’t seem to want to be called a Linux shop.
The fact is, though, that SuSE remains a stable, battle-tested operating system solution that has been optimized nicely for virtual environments. Our installation and examination of SLES 11 SP1 on VMware showed a robust operating system that, with new management and security tools from Novell, makes for a solid foundation for a compliance-ready, workload-flexible environment. Novell also has recently added integration with Amazon's EC2, which is an important step toward delivering platforms and technology to the broader IT-cloud audience.
With a growing suite of enterprise integration and compliance tools, including its just-released latest version of its Identity Manager, Log Manager and other policy-based software, which has all impressed the CRN Test Center, Novell is making virtualization and cloud integration as much a part of its go-to-market strategy as anything. In fact, about the only thing Novell executives say they don’t offer are the services that VARs provide.
We like the NaaS approach-- "Nothing as a Service" -- that Novell has taken in providing platform software, compliance and network management.
In fact, Novell is arguably the company with the longest channel heritage in all of IT. It's a plus that that heritage looks to be translating into what the company sees as new opportunities in the cloud and in virtualization.
In addition, even though Novell and Microsoft have had their ups and downs and some of the ugliest battles in the industry's history, Novell executives say they are still working with Microsoft on joint development of integration and virtualization technologies.
NEXT: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (and RHEL 6 Beta)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (and RHEL 6 Beta)
Red Hat has been among the most aggressive companies at providing on-premise data center integration and middleware, but until recently cloud integration had been a question mark.
Red Hat is now trying to erase that question mark with Cloud Foundations: Edition One, its recently unveiled bundle of software that aims to provide a soup-to-nuts entry into public or private cloud computing. Put another way, Red Hat is simply bundling Red Hat Enterprise Linux, several versions of its JBOSS middleware and development platform, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and more under one banner.
Installation and deployment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (and RHEL 6 in beta format) installed fine on a Hewlett-Packard ProLiant ML 110 in the CRN Test Center lab, but it proved to be a little bit more resource-intensive than either SuSE or Ubuntu. From our standpoint, Red Hat does not produce a distribution that's ideal for small or midsize businesses or workgroups because of the significant investment in hardware, training and service that one of those enterprises would need to maximize the platform. Also, in terms of application-building for hosted or on-premise clouds, Red Hat has a difficult case to make for JBOSS over, say, Microsoft’s technology and platforms, particularly the nascent Azure platform.
Put another way: Red Hat isn’t turnkey. The company doesn't try to pitch its solutions for small businesses.
As a stand-alone server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 -- which is production-ready, while RHEL 6 is still in beta -- does provide support for a good amount of applications, functions (the LAMP stack is as easy or easier to install in Red Hat as with Ubuntu) and performance.
The Bottom Line
We're at the very left hand of the Linux-cloud-virtualization integration curve, which is to say the earliest stage.
We can recommend Ubuntu for SMB, Novell/SuSE for SMB and workgroups in larger enterprises, and Red Hat for larger enterprises. It's good to see the various efforts each is deploying to integrate their technology with the cloud and with virtualized data centers. But there are a lot of reasons why most enterprises have not yet taken a full dive into the cloud pool -- or even the virtualization pool -- and that's because the pieces still don’t fit as smoothly as they could or eventually will.
Looking at each distro's road maps, we believe there will be dramatic gains made over the coming year. If hosting providers like Amazon.com and others can provide reliable, and lower-cost, cloud infrastructure and if virtualization platforms including Citrix's Xen, VMware and Microsoft's Hyper-V can become more hardware-friendly than they currently are today, they will make choosing cloud over on-premise and Windows over Linux increasingly difficult decisions.
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