SUSE Announces SLES 12, With Concurrent Support for POWER8 and System z

November 19, 2014

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LINUX NEWS

• SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Announced with Concurrent Support for POWER8 and System z
• IBM Power S822L Linux-Based Server Wins CRN Test Center’s Tech Innovator Award for PC Server
• New POWER GPU Acceleration and Design Center to be Launched
• OpenStack Reveals Results from Latest User Survey
• KVM Matures, and the Use Cases Multiply
• Hungry for High Performance and Low Cost? Kimchi and Ginger Make it Easy to Consume PowerKVM
• KVM and Security: Protecting Users in the Cloud
• Jim Zemlin: Are You Ready for the Next Open Source Blockbuster?

LINUX AND KVM EVENTS 

• LinuxCon Japan – June 3-5, 2015
• Red Hat Summit Returns to Boston – June 23-26, 2015

LINUX AND KVM SUCCESS STORIES

• Avis Accelerates with Linux
• EVERTEC Ensures Leaner, Faster Processing for Billions of Transactions
• L3C LLP Delivers Reliability and Cost Savings to Cloud Customers Using IBM System z
• Dundee City Council Discovers the Outstanding Reliability of Linux on System z
• IBM Research and SCA Create a Shared Service Cloud for New York State Municipalities
• System z Enterprise Linux Server: Increase Performance & Security
• IBM Enterprise Linux Server and the Software Battle
• Miami-Dade County, Zhuhai City and CNAV are Enabling Over 100 Million Citizens Around the Globe
• Berlin University of Technology Taps Big Data Analytics Architecture from IBM
• Bon Ton Stores Upgrades IT Infrastructure to Support eCommerce and Mobility
• NC State University on the Business Case for Big Data and Analytics on IBM Power Systems

INSIDE LINUX AT IBM

• New Docker Technology Makes Deploying Applications Easier

“Given their competitive cost pressures, IT organizations today have a hard time responding quickly to changing business needs and leveraging innovation,” said Nils Brauckmann, President and General Manager of SUSE. This release helps enterprises “stay agile, reclaim budget and easily leverage future open source innovation, helping them compete more effectively now and in the future,” he added. To access the SLES 12 announcement, go. More information is available about  and about 

IBM Power S822L Linux-Based Server Wins CRN Test Center’s Tech Innovator Award for PC Server

CRN has announced that the IBM Power S822L Linux-based server is the winner of the CRN Test Center’s Tech Innovator Award program for PC Server. The CRN Test Center’s Tech Innovator Award program recognizes companies for outstanding innovation in products developed for the enterprise. In the program, hardware and software products from 18 categories are evaluated on their ability to increase worker productivity as well as reduce cost and complexity for solution providers, IT departments, and end users through innovation and technical advancement. According to CRN, “the power of IBM Power8-based servers combined with the company’s laser-like focus on Linux and open source in general combine to give IBM’s Power Systems S822L the top spot for server technology innovation this year. ”

To read the article, go 

New POWER GPU Acceleration and Design Center to be Launched 

IBM in collaboration with NVIDIA, and the J?lich Supercomputing Center, part of the largest research center in Germany, plan to launch a new competency center to advance the creation and optimization of research applications on GPU-accelerated OpenPOWER compatible systems. The POWER Acceleration and Design Center will be designed to combine the technology expertise of IBM and NVIDIA with the world-class research capabilities of the J?lich Supercomputing Center. The Center will join together a team of experts from IBM Research & Development Lab in B?blingen (Germany) and IBM Research Zurich (Switzerland), the J?lich Supercomputing Center and NVIDIA (Germany). In addition to expanding software ecosystems around OpenPOWER, this new collaboration will create opportunities to develop advanced high-performance computing (HPC) skills and drive the creation of new technologies to bring value to customers globally. Through the creation of the OpenPOWER Foundation, an open development community formed in late 2013 – with over 70 members to date – a new ecosystem based on the POWER architecture is emerging that will lead to new solutions for high-end HPC systems. “Our plans for launching this new Center reinforces IBM’s commitment to foster an open collaboration environment and is our next step in expanding the software ecosystem around OpenPOWER,” said Dave Turek, Vice President of Technical Computing OpenPOWER for IBM. “Teaming with NVIDIA and the J?lich Supercomputing Center will allow us to leverage each of our strengths to extend innovation and bring value to our customers around the world. ”

For more information, go 

OpenStack Reveals Results from Latest User Survey

Before the OpenStack Summit held earlier this month in Paris, OpenStack operators and application developers were asked to provide feedback on their experiences. It was the fourth consecutive survey conducted by the User Committee prior to each Summit. KVM continues to be the most popular hypervisor deployed with OpenStack across all deployment types, with over 80% of OpenStack deployments using KVM, according to the survey results. In addition, Linux, from a range of distributors, is the most popular operating system, spanning Production, Dev/QA, and Proof of Concept use. The top four business drivers for using OpenStack are “Ability to Innovate, Open Technology, Cost Savings and Avoiding Vendor Lock-In. ” This is notable since “Ability to Innovate” jumped from the sixth-most-often-cited business driver to the first in this report. To access OpenStack User Survey Insights: November 2014, go 

KVM Matures, and the Use Cases Multiply

LinuxCon Europe and KVM Forum were recently held in Dusseldorf. Adam Jollans, Program Director for Linux and Open Virtualization Strategy at IBM, attended the events and shares his reflections on what took place in a new blog on The Linux Foundation website. “First of all, the conference was big. LinuxCon Europe was quite a bit larger than LinuxCon Europe last year. With the array of co-located events, including KVM Forum, there were over 2,000 delegates at LinuxCon. This really shows the strength of interest in Linux and also in the related open source projects such as KVM,” he writes. “As I look back in the rear view mirror at the conferences now, the key takeaway for me is that KVM use is rapidly expanding. From first being used to virtualize Linux servers, it has now evolved to form the basis of the open cloud, being used for emerging new uses such as network function virtualization, and running on many more processor architectures. ”

Read it 

Hungry for High Performance and Low Cost? Kimchi and Ginger Make it Easy to Consume PowerKVM

When IBM introduced the new POWER8 processor and next-generation Power Systems earlier this year, PowerKVM was also launched. Aline Fatima Manera, Christy L Norman Perez, and Paulo Ricardo Paz Vital, Staff Software Engineers, Open Virtualization, at the , have written about the significance of PowerKVM and how the open source Kimchi and Ginger software make it easy to manage PowerKVM in a new blog. “With the rollout now of KVM on Power, IBM is committed to making it as easy as possible for both Power users who have not used Linux or KVM before, as well as existing Linux and KVM users – who are familiar with KVM on x86 or System z but not Power – to gain all the benefits of PowerKVM. In addition to the favorable economics of KVM virtualization, PowerKVM virtualization fully leverages POWER8’s symmetric multi-threading to achieve the highest performance possible with the hardware. ”

Read it 

KVM and Security: Protecting Users in the Cloud

Security as it relates to the cloud technology is under the spotlight as concerns heighten about the need to safeguard users’ sensitive personal information, as well as enterprise and government applications and data. In a new article published by DataCentre Solutions Europe, Adam Jollans, Program Director for Linux and Open Virtualization Strategy at IBM, and a member of the Open Virtualization Alliance Marketing Working Group, considers the key issues involved in ensuring that workloads in the cloud are secure and that private data stays private. “One key technology decision in making clouds secure is which hypervisor to choose, and it is here that we believe that KVM offers a better solution,” notes Jollans. Access the article  

Jim Zemlin: Are You Ready for the Next Open Source Blockbuster?

Open source is fundamentally changing technology and redefining the tech industry, said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of The Linux Foundation, in his keynote at  On every layer of the technical stack, whether it is networking, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, or web frameworks, he noted, there is a hot open source project that is defining that particular category. A key development that is making open source software so important now is the emergence of the software-defined economy. “Software is eating the world,” said Zemlin quoting Marc Andreesen. And, today, “open source is eating the software world,”  he added. There is too much software needed for any one company to write it all on their own. Increasingly, he said, more companies are moving to the Pareto Principle, or 80/20 rule, where 80% of the software in any product or service is open source. As the open source model increasingly becomes the dominant form of software development, Zemlin said, it is critically important for companies understand how to manage their external research and development. Open source collaboration requires a new set of skills that includes knowing how to pick the right projects; understanding the intellectual property frameworks that govern those projects; understanding the social coding style within those projects; knowing how to integrate it – collecting that code within the organization, improving it, making changes, giving those changes back to the central project;  as well as creating projects and services that enable “the virtuous cycle of continuous improvement” for both the company and the open source project. “If you don’t have an external R&D org at your organization, you should start doing that right now,” Zemlin told the audience. “The question to ask is: Are you ready for the next open source blockbuster?”

LinuxCon Japan presented by The Linux Foundation is the premiere Linux conference in Asia that brings together a unique blend of core developers, administrators, users, community managers and industry experts. Scheduled forJune 3-5, 2015, at the Chinzan-so Hotel and Conference Center in Tokyo, the event is designed to encourage collaboration and support future interaction between Japan and other Asia Pacific countries and the rest of the global Linux community. The conference includes presentations, tutorials, birds of a feather sessions, keynotes, and sponsored mini-summits. For more information, go 

Red Hat Summit Returns to Boston – June 23-26, 2015

Red Hat Summit brings together thought leaders and executives from across the technology industry to participate in keynotes and sessions on community, innovation, collaboration and customer success. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet with Red Hat product teams, hear from expert users at leading customer and partner companies, get hands-on training and learn best practices and strategies for innovation and success. The call for papers for Red Hat Summit 2015 will open later this year, with registration opening in early 2015. For a recap of the key announcements at Red Hat Summit 2014 in San Francisco, go 

According to an article in CIO Journal by Steven Norton, in an effort to lower software costs and become more agile, Avis Budget Group Inc. will run open-source Linux software over its IBM mainframe. Avis is using an integrated facility for Linux (IFL), “essentially a processor that runs Linux workloads on an IBM mainframe,” writes Norton. “The speed of the IFL on IBM’s servers lets Avis host more virtual servers per processor than other platforms, and increases processing capacity. Besides dramatically lowering software costs, it also reduces operational expenses, energy and floor space. ”

Read the article, “Avis Budget Shifts to Linux to Cut Software Costs in Half,”

EVERTEC Ensures Leaner, Faster Processing for Billions of Transactions

EVERTEC, Inc. , based in Puerto Rico, offers a comprehensive suite of services for core bank processing, cash processing and technology outsourcing. The company processes billions of financial transactions annually and must ensure 24/7 responsiveness and availability for its systems – or risk failing to provide customers with access to key services. EVERTEC relies on IBM zEnterprise EC12 system running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z to support key financial systems and Oracle databases. Read the case study 

L3C LLP Delivers Reliability and Cost Savings to Cloud Customers Using IBM System z

IBM Business Partner L3C LLP focuses on three ways to help businesses across the U. K. increase profitability and reduce costs: consultancy, managed services and complementary IT resources. A key avenue for applying this model is its use of mainframe computing. When it needed to bring the robust reliability, security and affordability of the mainframe to its cloud customers, L3C deployed IBM System z servers running Linux to provide companies of any size – including small, midsized and very large enterprises – with scalable, cost-effective, high-performance cloud services. Read the case study 

Dundee City Council Discovers the Outstanding Reliability of Linux on System z

Dundee is the fourth-largest city in Scotland, the United Kingdom, and home to 145,000 citizens, a number which surges by 20,000 students during university term-time. Challenged to do more with less, Dundee City Council identified IT as an area in which it could cut costs. The council consolidated its Oracle Database environment supporting critical services from distributed servers to an IBM zEnterprise BC12 platform, dramatically improving efficiency. Read the case study 

IBM Research and SCA Create a Shared Service Cloud for New York State Municipalities

IBM Research and SCA are partnering to create a shared service cloud for the municipalities of New York that is predicted to eliminate 25% of government’s IT budget by streamlining applications and connecting siloed municipalities. After the break, we have compiled spyappsinsider.com/thetruthspy/ of list of 20 such web apps. The IBM mainframe is the platform that New York trusts to host that cloud. In addition to its time-tested scalability, reliability and security, it offers the lowest total cost of ownership – supporting the state as it strives for reduced spending and a smarter, future-ready IT infrastructure. Watch the video 

System z Enterprise Linux Server: Increase Performance & Security

IBM designed the Enterprise Linux Server from the ground up to add real business value without increasing IT costs. The Enterprise Linux Server’s integrated combination of industry leading server and virtualization technologies provide a simple, efficient and trusted infrastructure foundation for businesses with growing Linux workloads. Watch the video 

IBM Enterprise Linux Server and the Software Battle

IBM Enterprise Linux Server (ELS) can help save software licensing costs, while consolidating different kinds of workloads onto a single server, supporting CIOs in their today’s budget challenges. ELS also helps to overcome server sprawl, by requiring less physical servers, less floor space, less energy, with increased flexibility due to IBM z/VM virtualization and simplified management based on IBM Wave for z/VM. Watch the video 

Miami-Dade County, Zhuhai City and CNAV are Enabling Over 100 Million Citizens Around the Globe

Government agencies in the U. S. , China, and France are improving the lives of their constituents through increased transparency, robust services, and 24×7 access. And while they each differ in their approach to civic governance, they all have one thing in common: the IBM mainframe is their core infrastructure platform. Watch the video 

Berlin University of Technology Taps Big Data Analytics Architecture from IBM

Whether your business provides big data and analytics to others, or you use big data and analytics to enhance your own products, research and marketing, it is necessary to have a fast, efficient and reliable infrastructure and architecture. Find out how the Berlin  one of Germany’s largest and most prestigious research and educational institutions, leveraged Linux on IBM Power Systems to boost student learning and strengthen its reputation for pioneering research. Bon Ton Stores Upgrades IT Infrastructure to Support eCommerce and Mobility

In 2013, Bon Ton Stores invested in upgrading IT, continuing to update and expand its eCommerce sites, and launching a new mobile site supporting delivery of promotions and online purchasing. A central aspect of this technology upgrade involved the replacement of an x86 server environment, supporting eCommerce with 10 IBM PowerLinux 7R2 servers and IBM PowerVM running IBM WebSphere Commerce on SUSE Linux operating systems. Read 

NC State University on the Business Case for Big Data and Analytics on IBM Power Systems 

Although big data promises to dramatically alter the business environment, technology is only a decision enabler. A new white paper describes the business value of using big data techniques to gather and analyze unstructured data, and the difference in how structured and unstructured data are used in decision making. The paper provides examples of how companies realized business value using unstructured data, shows how other companies can realize similar business value using unstructured data, and explains why picking the right servers and software can make a difference. Read 

Michael D. Day, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Virtualization Architect, Open Systems Development, IBM, describes the advantages provided by Docker, an open source project  for container-based virtualization in a new blog. Docker allows developers to encapsulate applications and dependencies and deploy them on Linux-based virtual machines, he explains. “People are using Docker for its packaging technology and deployment model. With KVM (Kernel-based Virtualization Machine), you get a virtual machine (VM), but with Linux containers, you get a virtual Linux kernel and you share everything else with the rest of the machine – but you don’t see the other users of the kernel unless you want to. ”

Read the blog