Linux

Dell has officially supported Linux since 1999 with our release of Red Hat Linux 6.1 for PowerEdge servers. In the course of making sure that each successive Linux release that we ship works as well as our customers demand, we have made many contributions to the open source community. These contributions have come in many forms, from hardware donations to strategic organizations, code contributions to the Linux kernel, code contributions to selected userspace utilities, to participation and sponsorship of Linux technical conferences.

One of the most significant resources that Dell dedicates to the community is the large investments in equipment and engineering resources to find, debug, repair, report, and follow-through on issues. In some cases, Dell acts an extension of the QA department of our software partners, such as Red Hat and Novell. In other cases, Dell acts as the consultant for our partners looking to provide linux drivers and applications.

Because so much of the work that we do is intimately tied to the hardware that we are selling, a lot of the contributions we have made have been in the area of the Linux kernel. We've also helped with device drivers for all of our hardware options (RAID, SCSI, networking, FibreChannel, ...). Whenever a kernel patch is deemed necessary, we submit that upstream into kernel.org for acceptance, and then backport it into the Red Hat and Novell product kernels. This "upstream first" strategy is what enables our systems to work with all of the Linux distributions—Dell-supported product or not. Dell also maintains several kernel components.

In addition to kernel work, Dell develops userspace open source projects of its own, and Dell Engineers contribute patches to other projects on a regular basis. This covers everything from open source systems management utilities that are used within our systems management framework to vendor installer enhancements to take advantage of new hardware features. DKMS was one such project which was a precursor to the Kernel Module Package project we're involved in today.

As a result of these activities, we've been able to engage the Linux community directly through active support and participation in Linux conferences such as LinuxWorld Expo, the Ottawa Linux Symposium, the Linux Kernel Summit, Red Hat Summit, and Novell Brainshare. We're involved in helping build the worldwide Linux community, such as Matt Domsch's involvement with the Fedora Project Board. This is our execution of the "it just works" motto our customers expect.

Dell began formally selling and supporting Linux in 1999 with the release of Red Hat Linux 6.1 on PowerEdge servers. Prior to that, it was possible to get Linux installed via our Custom Factory Integration team. As the volume of Linux requests through CFI grew, we recognized enough system administrators wanted to run Linux on their systems that it made sense to 'productize' it, formally validating the product, developing device drivers, and offering support. Then like clockwork, we refreshed the product offering every 6 months, as Red Hat Linux 6.2, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.0, and 9 were released, adding Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, 3, 4, and then Novell/SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 9, and starting this week, SLES 10.

However, we also recognized that not every Linux user wanted Red Hat's distro. Immediately there were requests for Slackware, Debian, and SuSE. We weren't in a position to productize and support each of those at once, but we didn't want to discourage their use either.

In May 2001, we launched linux-poweredge@dell.com, a public mailing list for Linux system administrators with Dell PowerEdge servers. This was to our knowledge an industry first—a major hardware vendor putting their engineers on the front line in front of customers, answering questions in public. And its popularity has grown, now with about 2500 subscribers. For the most part, people ask and answer each others' questions, independent of Dell's engineers chiming in. But we do post there, especially when a question is of a nature that Dell's engineers would be the most knowledgable. As we added the Precision workstations to our Linux product mix, we added the linux-precision@dell.com mailing list to serve a similar purpose, but with unique aspects (high end video, audio, and IDE / SATA storage) which are less interesting to server admins.

In 2003, we launched linux.dell.com, a web site which was the outgrowth of the mailing lists. This site is unique within Dell as being 100% engineer-generated content and engineer-managed. Here we post details about the hardware and Linux device drivers necessary to use it, such as the various RAID controllers, NICs, and IPMI systems management controllers. We aim for this to be far wider reaching than our specific products, and more leading-edge, with links to updated Debian netinstall images, unofficial YUM repositories to ease installation of Dell software like OMSA, and hosting for developing projects such as libsmbios, firmware-tools, DKMS, and efibootmgr.  Our Linux blog has been live for a while now, and expanding our reach to include Linux content on Direct2Dell is a natural extension to the work we've been doing.

We welcome you to join us on our mailing lists at http://lists.us.dell.com. Michael Brown and I will be regular contributors to Direct2Dell discussing Linux topics going forward. Let us know what you'd like to hear about.

For Linux users, you can access the Ogg Theora format of our vlog here.

Food for thought from David Berlind at ZDNet… This goes back to what I talked about at LinuxWorld in April where I articulated a vision along these lines.

Up to now, enterprise needs have driven virtualization. I believe this will change with the move to client virtualization—unbinding the OS from the platform opens up cool new opportunities on the desktop.

In a virtualized environment, multiple virtual machines run different environments on the same platform. One could be running a secure Web browser so that viruses or malware can’t trash the rest of the system; another could run a dedicated gaming environment with a software stack optimized for gaming; and yet another could run Media Server to serve up video content over a home network.

A fourth scenario is the segregation of work and home applications. Let's face it… even though most IT shops mandate that laptops are for business use only, the reality is that they are used for work and personal efforts. I have yet to run into a business traveler carrying two laptops—one for personal use and one for business use—to comply with their IT policies. Now imagine: as a mobile user with virtualization, you could maintain a home virtual machine and a work virtual machine on the same laptop. This certainly better segregates usage and is a more realistic approach to IT policies for our ever-increasing road warrior population. One other client opportunity is having a dedicated virtual machine to help with diagnostic or support services on a system.

David points out how valuable this concept could be when, say, migrating to a new computer where you would merely create a new VM for your new OS/applications and maintain a VM of your legacy OS/applications.

Returning to the scenario of a single application per virtual machine… what if you could purchase these preconfigured “personalities”—customized VMs—that plug into your virtualized client system. There is a clear opportunity here for the industry to seed the market with a variety of purpose-built VMs. I think this vision around virtualization is key to driving Linux adoption on the client. In fact, I challenged the Linux community in my April keynote to seed the market. In this new world, we will find Linux co-existing next to Microsoft on the same platform.

VMWare has already done work here on their Virtual Machine Technology Network (VMTN) where people have posted prepackaged VMs for general consumption. This is an early indication of where I think that things could move. However, software licensing will probably be the gating issue for these prepackaged VMs.

One of the biggest values of virtualization is the fact that it abstracts the operating environment from underlying platform. However, for this to be effective, we need some industry standards that minimize the associated snags. Watch this space… : )

Virtualization—it’s been around for years, so why is it suddenly so hot? Big changes are underway that will make it mainstream in servers and even client systems. What has changed?

First, the industry has started a transition from single- to multi-core processors… and on the horizon are similar trends in I/O. These trends will continue. So what do we do with all these extra processing units? Virtualization is a natural fit for all of these processing elements. One option is to partition a multi-core system—and dedicate a processor core to a specific “guest” OS.

Second, native support at the processor level will be standard… both Intel and AMD will have native support for virtualization. This will accelerate adoption, drive common instruction sets, and improve memory management.

Perhaps the biggest change will be in the lower cost of implementing a virtualized system. Virtualization software is more and more common—some is even free open-source. Moving forward, this means two things: lower cost of implementation, and more software options for customers... both of which are good for virtualization.

Virtualization will not be a passing fad. What will be interesting in the coming years is to watch how software licensing will need to change and how virtualization will lead to new ways to package and distribute software. With virtualization, a software developer can do some pretty creative applications in the contained virtual environment.

This is all pretty exciting stuff and it’s got us brainstorming new ways that virtualization can solve problems and advance the industry in both the client and the server. I’d like to hear where you think this is going. Expect to hear more from me on virtualization soon.

Update: Direct2Dell reader Fred asked for this video in a Linux-friendly format... you can download the Ogg Theora file here.