At the end of 2020, CentOS suddenly announced the timetable for stopping maintenance of CentOS7, 8 and other series versions, which shocked the industry.
and Linux have always been the top pillars of the server operating system market. The sudden change in the CentOS distribution life cycle not only prompted many industry users to think: "What kind of alternative should I choose after CentOS stops maintenance?" It also drove the server operating system market to accelerate the brewing of new changes.
has especially entered the era of multiple computing power. Multiple heterogeneous computing scenarios have exploded. The operating system needs to form a new closed loop in technology, ecology and business: the underlying hardware can adapt to multiple computing power and multiple scenarios, and the operating system layer can bring together more developers to accelerate the formation of a new developer ecosystem; the application layer can support multi-industry and multi-scenario applications, and ultimately connect upstream and downstream to meet the new needs of users.
Recently, Inspur Information officially launched the server operating system Inspur KOS, marking another heavyweight participant in the Linux server operating system market. So, why did Inspur Information, which ranks second in the global server market, launch the server operating system Inspur KOS at this time? Compared with other operating system products, what are the advantages of Inspur KOS? Facing the future, how will Inspur Information continue to build the open source and open ecosystem of Inspur KOS?
The wave of information is well prepared
"Let a hundred flowers bloom" is the most appropriate way to describe the server operating system market. In addition to the various Linux versions of
, the major open source company Red Hat, there are also Debian, Ubuntu, etc. There are also operating system products launched by domestic manufacturers such as Kirin, Tongxin, and Deepin. With so many products on the market, as a complete server manufacturer, why did Inspur Information launch Inspur KOS at this moment?
Obviously, Inspur information is well prepared. According to Zhang Dong, Vice President of Inspur Information, the advent of the intelligent computing era and the explosion of multiple heterogeneous computing scenarios will bring significant challenges in collaboration, operation and maintenance, and ecology, and will put forward higher requirements for basic software such as operating systems.
is first of all a collaboration challenge. Currently, many users are facing the challenge of multiple heterogeneous computing environments. The computing environment is moving towards "x86+ARM+GPU+NPU" multiple computing forms. How to fully utilize the computing performance and ensure the adaptation and compatibility of various software and hardware has become a common challenge that users need to deal with. For example, many AI application scenarios are typical heterogeneous computing scenarios, involving various computing devices such as GPU+APU+FPGA+NPU. The operating system layer needs to play a cooperative scheduling role to fully explore the computing power performance.
The second is the challenge of operation and maintenance. The data center is moving towards an intelligent computing center, which means that the equipment scale, computing power density, and equipment complexity are no longer what they used to be. As a result, operation and maintenance generally face a lot of challenges. "The monitoring data for chips and device components is not rich and comprehensive enough; in addition, there are many types of device components, and it is difficult to reversely track and locate faults, and the cause of the fault is often not found; the automation level of the operation and maintenance software is not high, and manual processing is still required." Zhang Dong said bluntly.
The third is the ecological challenge. While technological diversification provides richer choices, it can also easily lead to ecological discretization. For example, middleware for AI applications is decentralized, and various AI frameworks coexist commonly.
"From the perspective of user needs, they do not need to care about the underlying hardware and architecture. They only need to be able to realize the upper-level business system and long-term stable operation and development." Zhang Dong said, "From the perspective of a complete machine manufacturer, Inspur Information is application-oriented and system design-centered. The complete machine + operating system + other basic software are regarded as a whole. A system integrating software and hardware provides users with the best overall system experience."
Therefore, Inspur Server Operating System Inspur KOS was born and became the key to Inspur Information's integrated system of software and hardware collaboration.How competitive is
Inspur KOS?
As we all know, Linux occupies an important position and share in the server operating system market, but there are also many companies with complex products and versions. It is not easy to stand out in such a competitive market.
Inspur Information launched the server operating system Inspur KOS at this time, which made the industry question: How competitive is Inspur KOS? In fact, as early as more than ten years ago, Inspur Information had accumulated rich experience in operating system research and development through minicomputer operating systems, cloud operating systems, etc.
At present, Inspur KOS has been widely used in many industries such as government affairs, finance, communications, energy, transportation, medical care, etc., with a cumulative installed capacity of more than 200,000 units, which has verified the market competitiveness of Inspur KOS from the side.
According to Zhang Dong, the four major features of Inspur KOS: stability, reliability, efficient collaboration, all-weather operation and maintenance, and broad compatibility are key guarantees to help users establish the integration of diverse heterogeneous computing power and achieve the best results from software and hardware collaboration. The
server operating system is the "soul" of digital infrastructure. It is responsible for the scheduling and coordination of various resources in the data center, and provides extensive support for various scenarios and applications. Therefore, the stability, reliability and security of the server operating system are of great importance and are directly related to whether the entire digital infrastructure can continue to operate stably.
In fact, thanks to Inspur Information’s years of accumulation in minicomputer operating systems, Inspur Information has moved many RSA features of minicomputers to Inspur KOS, giving Inspur KOS advantages in terms of stability and reliability. For example, Inspur KOS has a critical data redundancy mechanism that can mirror the core data memory to ensure the reliability of business-critical data, and the enhanced fault tolerance capability can downgrade fault-tolerant UCE that causes system downtime, significantly reducing the system downtime rate.
Inspur Information Cloud Computing R&D Director Yan Bingheng said that Inspur KOS supports hot replacement of core components such as CPU and memory, as well as hot upgrade of kernel and application software, effectively ensuring business continuity. In addition, Inspur KOS also implements a full-stack trusted chain, covering all aspects of hardware and software, and has passed domestic security certification.
"The stability and reliability of Inspur KOS have been verified in the cloud, data and intelligence integration practice of the world's largest single cluster with 1,000 nodes," Zhang Dong revealed. "The version of Inspur KOS we push to users must be the most stable version that has been verified by a large number of server hardware."
Efficient collaboration is undoubtedly another major challenge for current server operating systems. Facing the complex software and hardware environment brought about by multiple heterogeneous computing, the server operating system not only needs to provide extensive adaptation and compatibility, but also needs to give full play to the performance of the software and hardware, and even needs to be optimized and enhanced for different application scenarios.
To this end, Inspur KOS adopts a resource scheduling mechanism design across application, computing power, and chip levels, and deeply perceives the computing power demand characteristics and load characteristics of applications to achieve the best match between business and computing power; at the same time, Inspur KOS realizes optimization and enhancement of virtualization, cloud native, artificial intelligence and other scenarios. For example, Inspur Information integrates technologies optimized for GPU and AIPU into Inspur KOS to improve the use and development efficiency of artificial intelligence scenarios.
"For AI scenarios, future computing power scheduling becomes a model, and Inspur Information will continue to upgrade the latest achievements in the AI field into the operating system." Zhang Dong said bluntly.
In response to the complex challenges brought by the operation and maintenance of massive equipment, Inspur KOS can provide all-weather automated and intelligent operation and maintenance capabilities. Inspur Information integrates in-depth monitoring, expert diagnosis rules, cloud operation and maintenance service access and other capabilities with Inspur KOS to comprehensively display the operating status of the underlying chips and components to the complete system and software. By accessing the Inspur InService cloud operation and maintenance service, Inspur Information realizes fault prediction, real-time alarms, one-click repair reporting, resource expansion, technical support and other full-scenario all-weather operation and maintenance capabilities.
Zhang Dong said: “Inspur KOS embeds a variety of operation and maintenance tools that Inspur Information has accumulated over the past many years. Combined with hardware expert support and remote services, it can bring a better operation and maintenance experience to users."
In terms of compatibility, thanks to the leading server market scale, extensive user groups and rich upstream and downstream industry chain , Inspur Information Inspur KOS has completed a large number of compatibility certifications, covering mainstream chips, boards , databases, middleware, etc.
It is reported that the current Inspur KOS R&D team has more than 100 people. Inspur Information plans to launch an Inspur every six months KOS innovative version will launch a long-term stable version in two years, and provide maintenance services such as system upgrades, bug and vulnerability fixes.
open source and open: Inspur Information is serious about
open source being the best model for resource allocation, and openness being a more advanced business ecosystem. However, the cessation of maintenance of CentOS8 and other series versions is a reminder to all operating system open source projects: if the open source project cannot attract more partners in the industry chain to participate, contribute and maintain, then it may eventually become passive water and lose the original intention of open source and open source.
Over the past many years, Inspur Information has been a staunch supporter of open source and openness, and a market beneficiary. From open source hardware organizations such as OCP and ODCC to the current operating system Inspur KOS, Inspur Information has proved with practical actions that open source and openness are of great benefit to the long-term development of the industry.
It is reported that Inspur Information will join forces with the Dragon Lizard community to jointly promote the prosperity of the operating system ecosystem. Inspur Information has joined the Dragon Lizard community and become a governing unit. Inspur Information will also set up a joint laboratory with the Dragon Lizard Community to give full play to the upstream and downstream advantages of Inspur Information's industry chain, work with upstream and downstream partners to conduct extensive compatibility and testing of software and hardware, jointly promote operating system innovation, and feed back relevant innovation results to the open source community .
"Inspur Information hopes to join hands with upstream and downstream partners in the industry chain to build operating system ecological standards and industry solutions, strengthen the power of the open source community, and jointly promote the prosperity of the operating system industry ecology. " Zhang Dong added.
Generally speaking, Inspur Information's server operating system Inspur KOS launched this time is another heavyweight action under its open source and open strategy. Today, when data centers are fully evolving into intelligent computing centers, the advent of Inspur KOS provides a key guarantee for creating an integrated system of software and hardware collaboration and providing the best experience. Facing the future, under the guidance of the open source and open strategy, what kind of report card will Inspur Information Inspur KOS deliver? Let's wait and see!
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