Wind River taps OpenSAFfire HA middleware for Linux customers

By Eric Brown
2011-05-10

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Wind River announced a partnership with GoAhead Software whereby the two companies will become "preferred integration partners," selling GoAhead's OpenSAFfire middleware to embedded Linux customers. The company also announced a "Wind River OpenSAF Quickstart" professional services and technical support package for its OpenSAF customers.

Wind River says it is now the preferred integration partner for GoAhead Software’s Linux-based OpenSAFfire high-availability middleware. GoAhead has returned the favor by making Wind River its preferred partner for selling commercial solutions related to the open source OpenSAF middleware standards, says the company.

In a separate announcement, Wind River announced a new "Wind River OpenSAF Quickstart" professional services and technical support package, for customers who are "using OpenSAF-based solutions for quick prototyping or are struggling with developing their own OpenSAF applications."

The OpenSAF high availability (HA) middleware standards are defined by the OpenSAF Foundation. The group was based on an OpenSAF project launched by Motorola in 2007, and evolved with a goal of maintaining consistency with Service Availability Forum (SAF) HA specifications.

HA technology is implemented by the telecommunications industry, as well as the high-end industrial automation and defense industries. It is often used in conjunction with Carrier Grade Linux (CGL)-ready Linux distros such as Wind River Linux, as industries increasingly turn to cheaper, more flexible, off-the-shelf COTS equipment running Linux.

There has recently been significant adoption of OpenSAF in the aerospace and defense and networking industries, says Wind River. The Intel subsidiary says it employs a group of OpenSAF maintainers and experts who contribute regularly to the project.

OpenSAFfire architecture
(Click to enlarge)

GoAhead's OpenSAFfire middleware, formerly called SAFfire, implements all major functions of SAF's Application Interface Specification (AIS), and includes enhancements to improve scalability, as well as hardware and software management, says Wind River. OpenSAFfire implements the SAF Software Management Framework and Platform Layer Management services, which together provide hardware abstraction to ease the management of supporting multiple hardware architectures as well as facilitate virtualization, says the company.

The new version 6.0 of OpenSAFfire offers a series of features GoAhead refers to as "Ignite." The Ignite features are said to include sample applications, components for rapid integration of legacy applications, and enablement for in-service upgrades.

GoAhead says that OpenSAFfire is "the only commercial distribution of OpenSAF." However, Wind River rival MontaVista claims to have been the first vendor to provide OpenSAF code in a commercial Linux product when it added OpenSAF 3.0 support to MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) 5.1. Its new MontaVista Linux CGE 6.0 bundles the latest OpenSAF 4.0 open source code, which offers updated OpenHPI and TIPC protocols.

Last month, in conjunction with the release of the Carrier Grade Linux Version 5.0 specification, the Linux Foundation (LF) announced a new HA Working Group that will help define an open source HA spec. Described as a meta-project built upon the work of many other HA projects, the group will prioritize features based on input from developers, vendors, and customers, says the LF.

OpenSAF was notably missing from the group's membership, which includes Corosync, DRBD, GFS2, Hawk, Linux-HA, Linux Virtual Server, Luci, OCFS2 (Oracle), Open Clustering Framework, and Pacemaker.

Stated Michael Krutz, vice president of worldwide solutions and services at Wind River, "Since becoming the first company to join the OpenSAF Foundation after its creation in 2008, Wind River has continued to actively contribute to the project and build expertise in OpenSAF. Wind River helps developers jump-start their projects and focus their efforts on differentiation, whether they select a commercial off-the-shelf solution such as OpenSAFfire or are using the open source route to create a prototype of an OpenSAF implementation."

Availability

More information on OpenSAFfire 6.0 may be found on GoAhead Software's OpenSAFfire page. The Wind River OpenSAF Quickstart package is available now, and more information can be found at Wind River's OpenSAF Quickstart page. Developers can also download a free, pre-validated layer package of OpenSAF for Wind River Linux at the Wind River Developers Network site.

Wind River will be a key sponsor of, and will field speakers at, the 2011 OpenSAF Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass. on May 17-18.

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