In recent years, the adoption of Linux in the data center has progressed beyond infrastructure services such as e-mail and file, print, and Web serving. Today, Linux is widely used as a business application server and is moving deeper into the data center as a database and content server. Given a vibrant development community and innovative solution providers, Linux continues its advance toward becoming the enterprise-computing platform of choice.

The benefits of Linux to data center customers are well known: superior economics, no vendor lock-in, reliability, and increasing independent software vendor (ISV) and system vendor acceptance and support.

However, with success comes higher expectations. User requirements for Linux in the data center continue to escalate. IT professionals are always looking for more performance, manageability, and other features that they've come to expect from an enterprise operating system. However, the user requirements list is as varied as it is long. Lacking a "center of gravity" where developers, users, and vendors can all look at Linux capabilities and requirements together, the necessary advances will come more slowly.

Enter OSDL Data Center Linux Working Group (DCL). The DCL is a virtual center-of-gravity where interested parties can come together to accelerate the development and adoption of Linux in the enterprise. Made up of a number of OSDL member companies and other interested individuals, the DCL focuses on services, databases, applications, and mid-tier and high-end multiprocessor servers used for a variety of mission-critical applications.

Accelerating Linux Adoption

Overall, the OSDL DCL focuses on all the things you'd expect from an organization trying to accelerate the deployment of any enterprise software, namely:

• Meet or exceed performance and availability currently expected for data center applications
• Scale to enterprise-class server hardware environments
• Meet or exceed currently accepted security standards
• Provide standards that encourage end-user, ISV, and third-party software adoption
• Yield a high degree of usability for activities requiring human interaction

In this early phase of the DCL's work, it is taking a two-part approach to accomplishing its objective. First is to identify capabilities required for accelerated Linux adoption in larger organizations. Second, recommend technical approaches to meet those requirements.

Periodically, the DCL working group also publishes capabilities requirements documents for public review. The 1.0 version of the OSDL DCL Capabilities Document can be found on OSDL's Web site under DCL Documents. The intent of this and future DCL documents is to stimulate discussion and review, then drive toward future, specific technical requirements from the list of capabilities. Thus, the capabilities document is neither a list of requirements nor a specification, but is an analysis of the enterprise usage needs of Linux, thus providing a starting place for driving efforts that facilitate building solutions to satisfy those needs.

The DCL identifies two levels of technical priorities for Linux in the data center: Priority One Capabilities are considered the most important for data center readiness for Linux, while Priority Two Capabilities are those intended to stimulate thought and discussion.

Beyond general priorities of importance, the DCL working group examines Linux enterprise capabilities in the traditional functional areas:

• Scalability
• Performance
• Reliability, availability, serviceability (RAS)
• Manageability
• Clusters
• Security
• Usability
• Standards

The standards category references specifications controlled outside DCL. This category includes only capabilities with standards related to adopting Linux in data centers.

At this stage, the OSDL DCL investigation is focused on enterprise-level usage models. The technical discussions center around data center issues such as security, storage networking, and file system performance. Because the objective of the DCL is to accelerate the maturation of Linux as an enterprise operating system, investigation of the other features on this list concentrates on server functionality and data center administration needs. Clearly, most of the features on this list are equally important to all who develop, use, or administer the system. But these nonserver-related issues are addressed in other OSDL initiatives such as the Desktop Linux working group.

In the latter half of 2004 the DCL Working Group will move on to its second objective: documenting the requirements necessary to advance Linux further in the data center, and recommending technical approaches to meet those requirements.

Call for Participation

The mission of the Data Center Linux (DCL) Working Group is to provide a forum for industry leaders to accelerate adoption and deployment of Linux in data centers.

The working group has completed its first pass at identifying Linux capabilities in the data center, and has developed a prioritized list of capabilities needed. The Data Center Linux Technical Capabilities v1.0 document is available for public review on the OSDL Web site. We encourage any interested person to review it and provide input. Together we can all help Linux become the enterprise operating system of choice.

For more information on how you can participate in the DCL, please visit www.osdl.org/lab_activities/data_center_linux.

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