At LinuxWorld, Oracle announced certification of five platforms with different combinations of Linux Red Hat and Novell SuSE Linux distributions on various hardware and storage platforms.
The validated configurations include Dell Power Edge 1950,2000,2050 running RHEL4 OS with EMC CX3 family servers; IBM AMD based server family running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (RHEL) with Network Appliance Filer; IBM Single Chassis EM64T based servers running RHEL4 with IBM System Storage DS4XXX; HP DL380 servers running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (SLES9) with HP Storage Network EVA 4000 family; and the HP DL585 servers running SLES9 with HP Storage Network EVA 4000 family.
Oracle claims this program is far more extensive than previous efforts, such as when it certified specific Oracle database versions on Solaris. We had product certification on the OS, but you still had to test the components, said Monica Kumar, Oracle director of product marketing for Linux and open source.
We do more with Linux because the hardware manufacturer no longer owns the OS, explained Kumar. In other words, while earlier programs relied on a dual validation, such as Sun certifying specific versions of Solaris on specific SPARC servers, that’s not the case in the Linux market. And the same goes with networked storage, which is not necessarily a captive buy anymore with the server provider.
In the future, Oracle will allow partners to run the certifications, even if they aren’t hardware or OS providers. According to Kumar, the open source nature of Linux makes this possible.
Also in the future, Oracle may open source some of its own validation testing tools to further encourage partners or even customers to conduct validations.
