IBM to demo Linux cluster improvements for DB2

Computerworld - Looking to get a leg up on Oracle Corp. and make its open-source database offerings more enterprise-worthy, IBM is boosting the clustering capabilities of its DB2 software for the Linux operating system.
At next week's LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in New York, IBM plans to preview enhancements to the scalability, reliability and integration capabilities of its DB2-based Linux clusters. In particular, there will be a new Linux-based DB2 partition adviser for database administrators who want to automate cluster management operations, according to Gary Schneider, director of Linux business development and information management at IBM.
The partition adviser will let managers rapidly partition and optimize the performance of databases running over multiple machines, a task that might previously have taken weeks because it required manual tweaking. The adviser provides a setup wizard to help administrators scale out database configurations and will give companies an alternative to using Oracle's Real Application Cluster technology, said Schneider.
In addition, IBM will port DB2 to run in a Linux environment on its high-end pSeries Unix machines, he said. That move will boost the performance and workload capacity of the database, particularly for customers running clusters carrying a heavy workload.
Users and third-party software writers will be able to download and preview the 64-bit code this quarter.
Until now, only 64-bit Linux for Intel processor-based machines was offered. To further boost performance on servers with multiple CPUs, IBM will add support for Version 2.6 of the Linux kernel, which has enhanced symmetrical multiprocessing technology.