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Motorola aims high end Linux servers at telcos

Watch out Sun...

Motorola is to ship a high availability version of Linux aimed at carrier grade networking from May. The company's HA Linux will be available on Motorola Intel and PowerPC hardware, and promises 99.999 per cent (five nines) availability. HA Linux uses hot swap to achieve near-constant uptime, allowing CPUs, controllers, power modules and fans to be replaced without the machine having to be brought down. It runs on Motorola's CPX8000 family of platforms These currently use the Lynx OS, but Motorola sees Linux as the "platform of choice" for new telecommunications applications. But it's taken the company a long while to come to this conclusion. Faithful readers will recall, a long time ago, Motorola's first PowerPC platforms. They ran AIX, pending the arrival of the big one for Motorola PowerPC, Solaris. And then there were the Motorola Mac clones, which stopped happening the day Steve Jobs decided Apple had only been kidding about the licence. Subsequently Motorola Computer Group has retreated into embedded markets and carrier grade network servers, with Sun being the natural competitor in the latter area. But by going for Linux, Motorola may be on to a winner at last. It doesn't have OS baggage the way Sun does, so has the opportunity to push high spec Linux servers while Sun continues to circle round the question, apparently facing in several directions at once. ®

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