Richard J Moore - IBM UK Ltd.

RAS round-up from the IBM Linux Technology Centre

Linux is receiving the attention of industries that require reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) as key characteristics. The Telco and Enterprise market spaces particularly come to mind. Over the past two or three years a number of independent RAS initiatives have been launched from the Linux Community. These are beginning to reach a state of maturity such that major distributors, which include Red Hat, Turbo Linux, SuSE and Monta Vista, are considering RAS items for inclusion into their Linux distributions.

IBM has taken a major part in open-sourcing several of its own RAS technologies - notably Dynamic Probes - but more importantly is working collaboratively in a wide range of complementary community-based RAS projects. The result is that a consolidated approach to RAS is beginning to emerge that should accelerate its adoption by the Linux community at large. This paper provides a round-up of those initiatives and will provide an insight into the growing interest in RAS from the Linux Community. Anyone interesting in commercial use of Linux or Serviceability or indeed joining the Linux RAS Community should find food for thought in this talk.