In-Depth

LinuxWorld Wrap-Up

LinuxCare and MySQL AB announce products for Big Iron

• By Stephen Swoyer
• 01/28/2003

MySQL AB announced the official availability of its namesake database, MySQL, for Linux images hosted on S/390 or zSeries mainframe hardware. MySQL is also available for Linux systems in distributed environments.

In a strict mainframe play, Linux service and support specialist LinuxCare Inc. announced the general availability of Levanta, designed to help enterprise IT organizations work around common issues associated with the consolidation of multiple Linux servers on IBM’s z/VM operating system.

Levanta provides best practice configurations with instance templates that are said to be suitable for many Linux server consolidation scenarios. LinuxCare says that administrators can use Levanta to control how a Linux solution is assembled, configured, and updated on z/VM.

Levanta provides a Web browser portal that facilitates many common management tasks, such as creating or modifying Linux images; starting up or shutting down Linux images; and creating user or group accounts. For managers who are more comfortable working in command-based environments, Levanta offers support for a Linux command line interface (CLI) as well as for mainframe environments such as CMS CLI, along with a 3270 CLI. The intention, LinuxCare indicates, is that each of an IT organization’s administrative teams can work in the environment that it’s most comfortable with.

LinuxCare says that Levanta integrates with z/VM’s DirMaint directory management tool to facilitate administration of the z/VM user directory.

The company notes that it has added several new customers since it first introduced Levanta in August 2002. In a prepared release, Boscov Department Stores' manager of technical support Joseph Poole notes, "We are expanding our Linux on zSeries environment to support our e-commerce initiative and needed the management tools to support it." Poole adds, "Levanta by Linuxcare allows us to do this without having to hire additional system administrators."

Also at LinuxWorld, MySQL hyped the availability of its namesake database on S/390 and zSeries, and announced official support for MySQL on AIX. “We have now added AIX to the list of native, fully supported platforms for which we can offer our 24-hour support options," noted MySQL CTO Michael Widenius, in a statement.

MySQL is an open source software (OSS) relational database that’s used to power the Web sites of Yahoo.com and Slashdot.org, among others. MySQL actually announced the availability of its OSS database for zSeries mainframes during the week prior to LinuxWorld.