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Dell promotes Linux clusters… again

Oracle's 9iRAC given a home

Dell continues to forge stronger ties with Oracle with the introduction of some pre-packaged clusters pitched as replacements to multiprocessor Unix systems.

Dell and Oracle have been making joint cluster announcements together for some time now, so the push to ship bundles of Dell servers and storage systems with Oracle software should come as no surprise. The clusters will start at $18,000 and will run on Oracle9i RAC(Real Application Clusters) for either Red Hat Linux Advanced Server or Microsoft Windows.

The deal was important enough to warrant the presence of Michael Dell and Larry Ellison at an event in New York.

There was a time when Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy would be the usual suspect to stand beside Ellison at a press conference. Such days have passed, however, as Oracle tries to find as many partners in the Intel world as possible to get 9i RAC shipped out the door.

The 9i RAC software is supposed to be the key to linking up a bunch of cheap Intel systems with the needed clustering and failover accoutrements to make a viable SMP replacement. Linux clusters have long been popular in the scientific computing realm, but they still tend to be viewed with some skepticism in the business-minded data center.

Dell and Oracle claim 22,000 shared installations between them, a tiny percentage of which involve 9i RAC.

To help move things along, Dell and Oracle have expanded their sales agreements for the 9i database and RAC into Europe and Asia. The two companies have linked the portions of their services organizations focused moving customers off of Unix and onto Linux.

In a separate announcement, Dell said it has started manufacturing the EMC CX200 low end storage system. ®

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