Digital Equipment Corp is to increase the number of nodes in a cluster of Unix AlphaServers from four to eight this June, by increasing the capacity of its TruCluster commercial software, originally launched last April (CI No 2,892, No 2,899). To support eight nodes, Digital is upgrading its operating system to Digital Unix 4.0C. Mark […]
Digital Equipment Corp is to increase the number of nodes in a cluster of Unix AlphaServers from four to eight this June, by increasing the capacity of its TruCluster commercial software, originally launched last April (CI No 2,892, No 2,899). To support eight nodes, Digital is upgrading its operating system to Digital Unix 4.0C. Mark Silverberg, Digital’s Unix product marketing manager based in Nashua, New Hampshire, said a second feature of the upgrade will be speedier communications between machines in the cluster. DEC’s memory channel interconnect, licensed from Encore Computer Co (CI No 2,899), currently pumps data at 100Mb per second, and will be ramped up significantly. The majority of sales of TruCluster configurations are to customers writing their own applications on top of Oracle Parallel Server. Applications that are being reworked to run on TruCluster include Peoplesoft Inc’s financials, SAP AG’s R/3 business suite and Oracle Corp’s financial applications. Versions are due to ship later this year. DEC is to continue with its own Unix kernel development, saying that it is not interested in the Santa Cruz Operation Inc and Hewlett-Packard 3DA next generation Unix collaboration. Digital Unix is not being converted for Intel, although the firm may re-evaluate its stance when the 64- bit P7 Intel chip comes out. DEC says it grew its Unix business by 50% in the last year; half of the AlphaServers it ships are with Unix, the other half split between Windows NT and OpenVMS. There will be at least two more minor releases to version 4.0 of Digital Unix. The next major release is in the first half of 1998.
