SUSE Continues Broad Platform Support for OCFS2

OCFS2 Remains the Cluster File System Choice for All SUSE Certified Hardware Platforms

Guest post – Kai Dupke, Senior Product Manager, SUSE

Oracle’s decision (Oracle Doc ID 1253272.1) to limit its support for OCFS2 to Oracle Unbreakable Linux on Intel hardware has no impact on SUSE customers and you may continue to run OCFS2 on all SUSE certified platforms. We continue to provide OCFS2 with the flexibility and support you require.

SUSE includes OCFS2 as part of the SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension and supports it across the x86, x86_64, Itanium, IBM POWER, and IBM System z architectures. As an open source product delivered under the GNU General Public License and included in the mainline kernel, OCFS2 is fully supported by SUSE and included in its own products independent of Oracle; a point that Oracle makes clear here.

In fact, SUSE and Oracle have jointly developed OCFS2 since March 2005 and SUSE has provided commercial support for OCFS2 since July 2005, when it was included as part of the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP2. Since 2005, SUSE’s commitment to OCFS2 has only increased. SUSE engineers have led development efforts for OCFS2 in the areas of POSIX locking, directory indexing, full user space cluster integration, in particular with the Pacemaker project, quota support, and performance improvements. SUSE’s dedication to ensuring that OCFS2 remains the premiere cluster file system for enterprise Linux deployments across multiple hardware architectures will continue. While Oracle’s decision to limit customer choice may be disconcerting for its customers, there is another vendor supporting OCFS2, particularly on IBM System z: SUSE.