If VERITAS Software has its way, running Linux on the
Intel Itanium platform will become wildly successful as
more software vendors build applications that will run on the open source
operating system and 64-bit computing architecture.
That’s why the Mountain View, Calif., maker of storage and utility computing
software extended its support for the Intel Itanium 2 platform on Red Hat Linux 3.0,
with the introduction of VERITAS Foundation Suite 2.2 storage management
software and VERITAS Cluster Server 2.2 on Itanium for Linux.
Adding support for Itanium may seem like a minor perk, but not to VERITAS.
According to Ranajit Nevatia, director of Linux strategy at VERITAS, the
company is intent on making sure enterprise-class Linux is available for
both IA-32 and 64-bit Itanium architectures. The outfit first supported
Itanium on Linux last year in its VERITAS OpForce software.
VERITAS has a vested interest in making Linux on Itanium work. According to
research from IDC, the market for Itanium-based servers shipped with Linux
is forecasted to grow to $2 billion by 2008. Customers looking to run
enterprise workloads on Linux have been asking ISVs like VERITAS to bring
support to Itanium on Linux, Nevatia told internetnews.com.
Moreover, the company has more or less bet the ranch on its utility
computing strategy, which vows flexibility and heterogeneity in offering
computing resources to customers on the fly at reasonable prices. Linux on
Itanium can help deliver that, Nevatia said.
Together, Cluster Server and Foundation Suite software bring storage
management and high availability to Linux deployments with demanding service
levels. Nevatia also said Linux on Itanium is inherently cost-effective and
easy to manage.
The news is also a coup of sorts for Intel, which has been trying to get
more support for Itanium to compete with AMD’s
Opteron architecture and, to a lesser extent, IBM’s
POWER platform. Until recently, hardware vendors were loathe to
build Itanium-based servers until more applications were designed to run on
it.
That’s changing, analysts say. Some 400 applications have been certified on
the architecture, according to Aberdeen Group analyst Peter Kastner.
Meanwhile, HP has been an eternal supporter of Itanium
while Dell Monday announced a high-end, 4-way server — the PowerEdge 7250 — based on Itanium.
The news is telling: Dell isn’t known to bet on technology if it doesn’t
think it will scale to a high volume. The fact that Dell has thrown its
weight behind Itanium with a high-end server means it believes in Itanium’s
value and ability to sell.
VERITAS a Believer in Itanium
