scum bria - Compaq Demonstrates its Commitment to Intel IA/64 Architecture.
"Compaq will use this future 64-bit version of Windows, referred to as Win64, and an Intel processor running in IA64 emulation mode to demonstrate that Wintel can scale beyond departmental servers."
Seems like Compaq is doing a lot of work to insure they have a good IA64 NT clustering technology.
Note - this comes from INFOWORLD - not your YUK SCHMUCK REGISTER.
Alpha is mentioned - but so far the Kmart 7 is Missing In Action in Compaq's plans.
Paul
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infoworld.com
Compaq to lend clustering credibility to Microsoft
By Ephraim Schwartz, Ed Scannell, and Cara Cunningham InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 10:00 AM PT, Apr 2, 1999 With a little help from its friend Compaq, Microsoft plans to boost a future version of its Windows NT operating system with some truly enterprise-class features.
At its Innovate '99 conference in Houston beginning April 11, Compaq plans to demonstrate a future, 64-bit version of Windows NT with Compaq subsidiary Digital's TruCluster clustering software and its Tandem division's NonStop clustering technology integrated into the OS, said sources close to the company.
Compaq will use this future 64-bit version of Windows, referred to as Win64, and an Intel processor running in IA64 emulation mode to demonstrate that Wintel can scale beyond departmental servers. Next week, Jim Allchin, head of Microsoft's Business and Enterprise division will be demonstrating Win64 at the WinHEC show in Los Angeles.
"Right now we can tap on the door of mini [computers] and small Unix deployments with Intel boxes," said Eric Cone, senior analyst with systems integrator Metamor Technology, in Chicago. "As we get closer to Win64 and Merced processors then the Intel market begins to take a little bit from Unix."
Adding enterprise muscle to NT will help IT managers in customer sites where business executives are sold on Microsoft products one analyst said.
"The business people have bought into the Microsoft vision. If IT wants funding for [a non-NT] project, there has to be strong reasons why NT couldn't do it," said Dan Kusnetzky, program director at International Data Corp. in Sarasota, Fla. "As Microsoft and its partners are able to overcome IT objections, then Microsoft will move up."
According to Ed Muth, Microsoft's group product manager for Windows NT Server, in Redmond, Wash., the company currently offers two-node fail-over via its Cluster Server services in Windows NT Enterprise Edition. Microsoft is making "very good progress from an engineering point of view and plans to be able to expand that" to more nodes for 32-bit Windows 2000, he said.
Compaq's acquired clustering technology will be included in future 64-bit versions of NT, and will expand clustering in two directions: By letting customers cluster together many NT servers with a single file system image for simplified management; and by shared-nothing clusters where an application is partitioned across multiple nodes, Muth said.
Setting the stage for the announcements at Innovate, Compaq next week will announce upgrades to its Tru64 Unix variant and TruCluster software. TruCluster Server 5.0, which can include as many as eight servers in a cluster, features a uniform shared root cluster file system.
"Clusters have always been hard to put together where each system [in the cluster] has its own file system and so looks to be a different system to the systems manager," said Don Jenkins, vice president of product management and marketing for Compaq's Unix Software Division.
Trying to achieve mainframe-class systems management across clusters, Tru64 Unix 5.0 will implement both system partitioning, allowing multiple instances of the operating system to run on the same hardware, and application partitioning, which lets users run multiple applications in separate partitions under one copy of the operating system.
Compaq will also announce plans to make Linux available on both on its lower-end Alpha and Intel-based Prosignia server lines, as well as its higher-end workstations. The company intends to build greater compatibility between Linux and Tru64 Unix, starting with porting its Fortran and C compilers to Linux.
TruCluster Server 5.0 will ship this summer, priced at $5,000. Tru64 Unix 5.0 will also be available this summer, starting at $2,500.
Compaq Computer Corp., in Houston, can be reached at www.compaq.com. Microsoft Corp., in Redmond, Wash., can be reached at www.microsoft.com.
Cara Cunningham is InfoWorld's enterprise section editor. InfoWorld Editor at Large Ephraim Schwartzis based in San Francisco. Ed Scannell is an InfoWorld editor at large based in Framingham, Mass.
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