HP picks Red Hat for AdvancedTCA Blade Server

IT Managers Journal ^ | Friday February 24, 2006 (12:01 PM GMT) | Stephen Feller

[N3WBI3]

Hewlett-Packard has announced that it will certify Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4 as the preferred operating system for its new AdvancedTCA Blade Server, which the company debuted last week at the 3GSM World Congress.

The new blade server is HP's most recent addition to its Advanced Open Telecom Platform (AOTP) blueprint, a line based on the Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) industry standard created by the PCI Industrial Manufacturer's Group (PICMG). The AOTP is HP's suite of hardware, carrier-grade Linux, and software that supports the ATCA standard.

HP's bh5700 server is a shelf-management subsystem with a 14-slot backplane made for two-way server blades. The blades use Intel's Xeon processor with 64-bit extensions. Though it was introduced last week, the bh5700 won't begin shipping until April. The server is being targeted specifically at operators and network equipment providers in the telecom industry.

About 100 of the 450 PICMG member companies participated in creating industry standard specifications based on new technology, according to the group. The requirements for carrier-grade communications equipment are designed to improve reliability and to ease management and servicing in the telecommunications industry.

Arindam Banerjee, a senior analyst with Yankee Group, says telecommunication service providers are beginning to embrace standards because standard hardware and operating systems allow them to develop and market products and services faster.

"Adoption of Linux is growing in the communications industry," Banerjee says, "and this is mainly because of service providers demand for a more open and affordable infrastructure." Banerjee says adoption of Linux in the telecommunication industry is being driven by a desire for lower costs and the availability of Carrier Grade Linux (CGL). HP and Red Hat are among the 23-member CGL Working Group put together by the Open Source Development Lab to establish and steward the CGL Requirements Definition.

The growth in use of CGL by telecommunications service providers over the last 15 months, and the vendors' continuing adoption of ATCA-compliant hardware, have driven the development of standards-based hardware for the industry, Banerjee says.

Banerjee adds that service providers are emphasizing the implementation and use of standards, because it reduces the need for custom hardware, the dependency on a single company to manufacture compatible components, and the ability to know hardware will meet expectations if it follows the ATCA specifications.

HP chose RHEL as the initial Linux offering on its servers based on customer research, according to Joy King, HP's director of worldwide marketing for network and service providers. "RHEL is already firmly entrenched in customers' Linux data centers," King says. "With the strong anticipated growth of information management systems, we see customers looking at having a common OS down into the ATCA infrastructure." King says HP will certify and support additional Linux distributions for the ATCA blade server based on feedback from its customers.

RHEL's selection for the new HP server is another facet of Red Hat's efforts in the telecommunications market, says Tom Wunderlich, Red Hat's director of communications. Wunderlich pointed out that there's no difference between the RHEL that will run on HP's telecommunications-geared bh5700 and the one enterprise customers use; RHEL 4 has been tested, and is intended, for both audiences.

Wunderlich says details of how the platform will be offered to customers are expected to be worked out over the next couple of months, but that the announcement makes a statement about the potential uses of RHEL.

Though HP is already referring to RHEL as its OS of choice, it still must go through a certification process for the bh5700 that will include the standard hardware certification Red Hat recommends for its software and a "deeper" test by HP in areas of stress, installation, and functionality.

HP also plans to recommend areas of the Red Hat certification process to be changed specifically for ATCA-consistent configurations. Among the areas where King says she expects recommendations for changes could be made are diskless environments, the use of the Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) protocol, and various configurations of advanced mezzanine cards (AMC) used to connect to I/O devices and disk storage devices.

Telecommunication service providers are slowly beginning to adopt the new technologies as the number of vendors developing hardware based on the ATCA standard also continues to grow. The industry typically takes a cautious approach to new infrastructure in order to prevent compatibility problems with existing equipment.

Industry experts say that 3G wireless and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) markets will become leading adopters of the ATCA, because the services they provide are not dependent on legacy systems. Though adoption of ATCA will pick up in 2006, many analysts do not expect mass-deployment of the technologies until 2007 and 2008, if not beyond.

[N3WBI3]

OSS PING

If you are interested in the OSS ping list please mail me

[Golden Eagle]

So?

[AFreeBird]

Not a surprising development for the platform considering Unix has been running switches and other telcom gear for decades.

[N3WBI3]

Yes but it is nice to see *some* convergence in distro usage. While there might be hundreds of distros out there its nice that a few can rise to the top. There was a time when HP would have tired to roll their own Linux distro for this but it seems Novell and RedHat now have the corporate market lions share..