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Build Your Own Blade Server 123
fw3 writes "Information week is reporting
that IBM and Intel are opening up the standards for the eServer BladeCenter. 'The companies will make available the design specifications for IBM's eServer BladeCenter product... hardware vendors can build "BladeCenter compatible" networking switches, blade adapter cards, and appliance and communications blades for enterprise networks.' Not really a new strategy for IBM, ISA of course was open from the start, IBM's technical references for the original PCs contained nearly all of the engineering data needed to build a PC. Looking further back I've been told by a reputable source that RCA was able to fully duplicate the System 360 System/360, mainframe working just a month behind IBM's own schedule by using IBM's published tech reports. (Of course IBM *didn't* share the details of OS/360, leaving RCA with a box but no OS.) See also stories from EETimes, CNN."
Wonder What Sun is Kicking (Score:2, Interesting)
As for IBM and the RCA scandal, where is the OS/360 today. I wonder if it would have had deeper market penetration if IBM had extended the OS to RCA
Re:Wonder What Sun is Kicking (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, let's face it. (Score:2, Insightful)
And that can be both good, and bad.
Where OS/360 is today (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wonder What Sun is Kicking (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than McNealy trying to keep Microsoft from pushing big into the server market, maybe he should have been trying to keep up with the guys that were already entrenched in that market along with him, like IBM. Sure, you get more press from bashing Microsoft, but press doesn't pay the bills.
It's sad to see how badly Sun has been damaged over the past few years. It used to be the unquestioned leader in quality server hardware and software, now it's in danger of becoming an also-ran in a market it used to own.
Re:Wonder What Sun is Kicking (Score:3, Insightful)
what's sad about competition? it would be sad if they were just the only player in their segment - making ok hardware/software but billing much more than what they're worth.
Re:Wonder What Sun is Kicking (Score:3, Interesting)
Unquestionable leader my arse. Last time I dealt with a Sun order of any significance was 3 years ago (and there is no fscking way in hell I will ever buy from them again after that). Out of 120+ 1U netras 10%+ were dead on arrival, 10% more dead within warranty. Even Hassans corner shop does better. That is besides the fact that ALI 1536 as a peripheral and IDE controller is NOT selfrespecting server hardware. It does not even qualify for a deskt
Re:Wonder What Sun is Kicking (Score:1)
Re:Wonder What Sun is Kicking (Score:2)
Re:Wonder What Sun is Kicking (Score:5, Informative)
It evolved into OS/370 than OS/390 (zSeries) and this line of systems is still sold today. Nice try but failing to sell the OS did not doom it to failure as your post implies.
Re:Wonder What Sun is Kicking (Score:2)
Re:Wonder What Sun is Kicking (Score:2)
Where is OS/360 today? (Score:2, Informative)
OS/360 had two flavors. MFT and MVT. MVT became SVS when it had virtual storage added on. MVS was in parallel development and once stable replaced SVS. Again, virtual storage. MVS was replaced by MVS/XA when the addressing scheme was changed from 24 bit to 31 bit. MVS/XA was replaced by MVS/ESA along with changes in the I/O architecture. MVS/ESA was rep
IBM propietary OS language... (Score:1)
Re:Wonder What Sun is Kicking (Score:5, Informative)
Sun needs to read the writing on the wall, newspaper, toilet paper, everywhere * consumers are seeking alternatives from proprietary.
That is plain wrong. NFS isn't proprietry. SPARC is an ISO standard. Solaris runs on more than just SUN computers (ie Fujitsu ones as well, not mentioning Solaris/x86). As companies go, Sun is pretty un-proprietry and has been for quite a while.
Why is bashing Sun so fasionable on
Re:Wonder What Sun is Kicking (Score:1, Flamebait)
I bash Sun because I was forced to waste money on their products when upper managment would not go with Fujitsu, which offers better products.
why didn't SPARC do beter I wonder, 'tis a shame
Speaking of Blade... (Score:2, Funny)
"Blades- the only thing between you, and the end of the world"
Re:Speaking of Blade... (Score:1)
Not sure what I'd do with it, maybe I could use it to collect royalty checks.
Great step towards compatibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Thus far you could somehow mix'n'match components for standard servers (rack mountable or not), but blades were like hacking a SOHO router...
Wonder how fast will the component manufacturers respond to this and start making parts available (i.e. - we will stop paying exuberant prices for replacement parts from the big guys...)
get a free ipod! [freeipods.com] This really works... [iamit.org] 4 more GMail invites still available for signing up...
Re:Great step towards compatibility (Score:3, Funny)
That's not the only thing thats flawed.
Re:Great step towards compatibility (Score:2)
TCO (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:TCO (Score:2)
See this: http://www.ftsi.fujitsu.com/services/products/com
Clone Blade Servers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Chances are, if you're going to be spending that kind of money on a server, you're probably going to want something from a reputed vendor, with good support, etc.
Re:Clone Blade Servers? (Score:1)
Re:Clone Blade Servers? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Clone Blade Servers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Clone Blade Servers? (Score:4, Insightful)
IBM isn't going to make cool blade add-ons, other companies will. It'd be nice if Cisco had a 'direct to blade backplane' switch to the outside, Apple could make an XBlade, Sun could make one. You could pack all the stuff that used to need real estate into one big box.
IBM already lets you mix-and-match PowerPC and x86 blades, the other vendors are going to (hopefully) add other cool functionality.
Re:Clone Blade Servers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Clone Blade Servers? (Score:1, Insightful)
It'll be nice to be able to go to the meeting and say "Yep, boss, you were right, better stuff IS coming, but guess what, we were right too: Its the blade server standard from IBM."
Re:Clone Blade Servers? (Score:1)
Re:Clone Blade Servers? (Score:2)
Re:Clone Blade Servers? (Score:1)
Re:Clone Blade Servers? (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Clone Blade Servers? (Score:2)
Re:Clone Blade Servers? (Score:2)
well, could be useful still for 'home built' clusters. at least more useful than using full towers or expensive rack cases..
besides, your reputed vendor could be some business that would buy from these new bulk vendors..
Re:Clone Blade Servers? (Score:2)
Re:ob /. (Score:2)
History repeating (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:History repeating (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know about history repeating. IBM almost went out of business because they had a gross miscalculation on the popularity of the PC. Well, that may not have been the only reason IBM almost went under, but it was one of the key reasons.
It took IBM almost a decade to recover from it's miscalculation to be at the point where it was able to out-execute anyone.
Re:History repeating - MCA (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:History repeating (Score:2)
woah.. I must have woken up in the wrong reality.
IBM's technical references for the original PCs (Score:4, Interesting)
> engineering data needed to build a PC
Yeah, after plenty of legal action!
Re:IBM's technical references for the original PCs (Score:3, Informative)
The programming group I worked for ordered a bunch of the original IBM PCs. They came with 160k floppy disk drives and 64k of RAM (upgraded from 16k). The included Technical Reference Manual included complete schematics for the system and I/O boards, plus a source listing of the BIOS. The only thing it didn't provide was a listing of the ROM BASIC, which was licensed from Microsoft.
IBM was following the example of Apple, who provided extensive documentation on the Apple II.
Re:IBM's technical references for the original PCs (Score:1)
Re:IBM's technical references for the original PCs (Score:2)
BIOS. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for one of the key components to make a PC: the "Build your own BIOS" reference.
Re:BIOS. (Score:3, Informative)
IBM included the BIOS source code in the technical references.
Re:BIOS. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:BIOS. (Score:2)
I stand corrected!
Re:Mod parent troll! (Score:3, Informative)
Mod parent overrated I agree. But troll?
Re:Mod parent troll! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mod parent troll! (Score:2)
It certainly makes a lot more sense now - I guess I've been working in the "code is copyrighted and secret" world for too long
Compaq, the BIOS, and IBM (Score:2)
Example: The Cray-2 is frequently described as being cooled by artificial blood plasma, and most of those descriptions derive from the computer-history museum.
However, the exact chemical is not named, so it's difficult to figure out whether it was the same chemical that was later used as the oxygen carrier in artificial blood. Blood plasma pe
Control of open standards (Score:4, Interesting)
This was probably the same model they had in mind for the PC. They wanted to use commodity hardware and even encourage clone makers because they knew that would help allow them to match hardware prices of other high-volume competitors. They figured that they would maintain control of the platform through their proprietary BIOS, and that any clone manufacturers would have to license the BIOS from IBM.
Software vendors would write to the BIOS calls, and IBM would command a position akin to the present-day Microsoft, where they would be the arbiter of the standard interface between application software and hardware. That may explain why they outsourced the DOS OS to Microsoft; they may have thought of it as just a layer over the BIOS. They knew that versions of DOS that ran over other low-level APIs (of which there were a few examples) wouldn't be quite compatible enough to become popular, so they didn't bother to get exclusive control of DOS.
Unfortunately for IBM, the BIOS wasn't that hard to reverse engineer in a clean room environment, clones of the BIOS enabled Microsoft to sell 100% compatible versions of DOS to anyone, and the rest was history.
I guess the lesson to be learned is that if you're going to use software to maintain control over a commodity hardware market, make sure that the software is too crufty and complex to reverse engineer in a reasonable amount of time.
Re:Control of open standards (Score:1)
Let me get this straight, you're telling people to use Windows if they want to stay in control?
Re:Control of open standards (Score:1)
You stay in control by selling complex and ever-changing software. So to use Windows for this purpose, you would first have to somehow buy the Windows source code and copyrights from Microsoft.
Re:Control of open standards (Score:1)
Except, IBM never licensed the BIOS, or even offered it for license as far as I know. And in fact IBM got out of the PC business all together for a few years when it realized it had hopelessly lost the monopoly to the likes of Compaq, et al. But that was when IBM was a hardware company. Today IBM, the services company, is much more amenable to open standards.
screwed again? (Score:5, Informative)
But of course, every silver lining has its cloud. For example, the PC-AT spec didn't specify exactly where the motherboard screw holes must appear. So not only were there incompatible motherboard/chassis combinations, but the kluges to accomodate the differences made many cheap boxes significantly more expensive for manufacturers on a volume basis. Just an example of how the 80% solution can spawn its own problems, that require 80% more time to solve. Let's hope we've learned from the last watershed spec publication, and get all the details in the new blade server specs. Especially if we're all going to use them.
Forbidden 360 ...argrgrgrgh. drool (Score:2, Interesting)
When it left, it went from Michigan to Georgia, then on boat to Taiwan, where it's probably polluting groundwater to this day.
IIRC RCA wasn't the only company to mimic IBM's systems as I thought that was the business model for Amdahl.
go marketing... (Score:1)
This should make it somewhat easier to build a Blade computer, hence, it would appear that IBM Blade-compatible appearing on Blade servers for the next 5 years is the goal.
IBM isn't that nice. (Score:5, Interesting)
If they're trying to make that point.. well, it's just historical revisionism.
Yes, ISA was open. That's why IBM tried to push the MicroChannel bus architecture.
As for mainframes.. IBM invented what we now call FUD to battle Honeywell and Amdahl and the like.
And I'd like to see someone try and build a mainframe clone today. IBM has some seriously secret stuff in those boxes. My father is a mainframe veteran, and he knows some of this stuff. He can't say what, though, because he's under an NDA.
So if you're trying to float the idea that IBM builds hardware to open specifications and always has.. you're just wrong.
Right, chassis & mngt module not open (InfoWor (Score:1, Informative)
Re:IBM isn't that nice. (Score:1)
MM
--
Re:IBM isn't that nice. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:IBM isn't that nice. (Score:2)
Build your own blades. (Score:1, Interesting)
In the end I found it cheaper to just rent servers, and let the isp worry about the space. But if I owned a datacenter, I would be building my own racks.
open the specs, lets get back to building render farms.
Re:What exactly is a blade? (Score:1)
Essentially, it's a computer, but usually shares some common PC aspects with other "blades" (i.e. the power supply, disk storage).
RCA S/360 clone (Score:1)
OS/360 b
Re:RCA S/360 clone (Score:2)
I wouldn't be impressed unless... (Score:2)
Oh... wait...
Wait a minute (Score:2)
Sony tried to copy the IBM [seds.org] PS [seds.org]/2 [digidome.nl] using the same principles it just took them 14 years.
Heck of an improvement though...
RCA Spectra 70 (Score:2)
Re:RCA Spectra 70 (Score:1)
IBM *did* share OS/360... (Score:2)
The RCA "compatible" mainframe was compatible only at the problem program level. OS programs (supervisor state code) were markedly different because the I/O subsystem wasn'
Re:IBM *did* share OS/360... (Score:2)
If you have used the IBM blade frame, (Score:1, Interesting)
already got one (Score:2, Funny)
Heading Should Be ... (Score:2)
'nough said.
AIK
IBM *was* Open Source - Both Hardware and Software (Score:4, Informative)
Similarly, the hardware diagrams were standard manuals that existed in every datacentre. I remember browsing through them shortly after I finished school (a hundred years ago or so) and thinking, "there really isn't much to these mainframe computers; nothing much more than the final exam in electronics." But based on those diagrams, and other info, our datacentre was the first in the world to put the 9th megabyte on an S 370/168!
And yes, at the time, I did get questioned about how on earth we could have so much work that we needed a 9th megabyte on a 168.
WARNING: PARENT IS "LASTMEASURE" BOMB! DON'T CLICK (Score:2, Informative)