Category: Operating Systems

RAID was once the redundant array of inexpensive disks, but it has come to be known as a redundant array or independent disks. The disks are often used in servers to ensure that data will not be lost as it is written to more than one place at the same time. RAID system have been broken up into a number of different levels may be used, and the systems that are created with RAID disks protect against data loss, expand storage and provide higher performance because of how the disks are laid out. RAID systems were started at Level 0 where there are no mirrored disks, but there are many places to store data. The storage is expanded similarly in a Level 1 disk, but it is mirrored to ensure redundancy.

Varying Levels

There are several other levels that use combinations of data striping that places the same data on different disks, and they will ensure that there is no data loss. Each level uses a different variation of disks and mirrors to improve performance, and each one provides some level of redundancy and performance speed. Someone who is utilizing a RAID system will find that they may have data rewritten in an instant if it is lost. Any failure in the system will cause the data to be copied from another disk, and the data is restored instantly. The data is pulled from different disks in sequence, and the speeds increase as the data is pulled from one disk to another. Someone who has not used RAID before will find it much faster than other systems of the same type.

Avoiding Single Drives

Single drives caused a number of losses data because they did not back up themselves in any way, and RAID systems came along as an alternative to the single disk drive. The single disk could be lost forever, but another disk in the RAID system will pick up the slack. Someone who is unaware of the data storage system they are using may still be on a single disk system, and they must begin using a RAID system as soon as possible. They are used most often on servers, and someone who wants to make the change will find many different products use RAID in varying styles and levels. Choose the level that makes the most sense, offers the most protection, and increase speed.

Berkeley Software Distribution created their own version of what they liked about Unix. They could not use the Unix name because that would have infringed on the trademark of Unix, but they were essentially creating their own version of Unix to ensure that they could have the best results from their own vision of how it should have worked. This was directly descended from the BSD that they created first, and this was an open source version of the program that ensured others could expand on it. Anyone who was working with BSD at this time was submitting their own information on their experiments with their system, and they created a community for open sourcing that became influential in many other parts of the computing world. There is a security team that works on this project, and it will work on the security of everything that has been built using their basic programming.

How Did It Start?

Students at Cal were able to improve on the original AT&T Unix when they were given a license by the company. This was the beginning of this massive company, and it would give birth to many different improvements that would help to influence other companies who were working on the same things. DEC was working on a version of Unix, and these companies were attempting to roll out their improvements as fast as possible. While Unix was taken up by Compaq and then HP, the Free BSD Project has remained a Berkeley institution that still works on storage and programming to their day. There are many operating systems that are working out of the Free BSD platform, and that is why the company must provide the security support that they do. They know that they are valued by their customers, and they provide the same service they did when they started.

Changing From AT&T

The Free BSD team was asked to change from coding that came from AT&T after a lawsuit against another company, and they became completely independent after that happened. They were able to offer more to their customers because they did not feel the constraints of the old AT&T code, and they have been working ever since to build their own server base that will work for their customers. They have built an expanding system that will be useful in a number of operations, and they remain open source because they want to give their customers the best chance of improving on what they have. The Free BSD Porject has improved more every year than any other company simply because they are providing a community of support where the software will improve much faster because there is no bureaucracy involved. They have moved past corporate America to the community model that is found all over the Internet today.

Ultras is a unique version of the original Unix processor that was created by DEC to ensure that it could expand its operations on the computer market. They had many new ideas that they wanted to try, and they were interested in branching into things such as mini computers that were used by scientists and in the manufacturing and testing industries. The company attempted to maintain both the Unix and the Ultrix brand at the same time, and they eventually gave way to Unix because it had more potential. The Ultrix platform is still around because there are systems that run well on it, and it did have Y2K additions that ensured it could be used after the implementation of Y2K protocols even after it had been discontinued. The company wanted to be as diverse as possible, and that is where Ultrix was born.

The Purpose

Ultras was developed internally as a system that could be set iced and supported more easily than others. The company was using inter-processor communications that allowed for better services, and they were creating many versions of Ultrix that would be pared down over time as they learned what their customers wanted. There were many variations in the beginning, and they began referring to their final few versions as combined names. This was to ensure that the customers who used their products knew what they were getting. Ultras had very specific purposes in many parts of the computing world, and the company was hoping to create something that could be serviced and supported for many years with very few upgrades or additions. They were running on multiple processors to ensure that there was more storage space, and they were hoping to mirror much of what was going on with Unix. This parallel would come to an end when Ultrix had its last release in 1995, but it did not die out completely.

The Last Version

4.5 came out in 1995 with some extra additions that were made to patch holes for Y2K, and this was the point at which Unix had become Digital Unix and later the Tru64 Unix that came later. Ultras has not died out completely because there are many companies that trusted the brand for many years. Anyone who wants to have access to any sort of information on Ultrix must go through HP because the company took over Compaq which took over DEC and has all the pertinent information on the system. It was innovative for its time, and it inspired people to use multiple processors to ensure that they could have expanding storage that would come along with things such as RAID systems and many others.

SunOS was branded as a Unix product when it was created by Sun Microsystems, and it has spawned a number of different versions that were created by Sun to serve a number of different purposes. They are one of the more active companies in Silicon Valley, and they have been quite active in releasing new versions of the SunOs prototype that came out in the mid 1990s. The sunOs platform has changed many times over the years as Sun has partnered with more than one company to create better versions of their product. They created Open Windows to ensure that users had the best interface experience, and they changed the name to Solaris when they added many new functionalities to the platform.

What Did SunOS Do?

SunOS was the storage and operating platform that Sun believed could compete in the marketplace. They started with a basic version of SunOS, and the realized that they needed to make many changes to keep up with the rest of the market. The only way to do this was to ensure that they had new things to add, and there came a time when they partnered with AT&T to create something that became known as Solaris. They began to bundle their products with Open Windows for a better interface experience, and they added patches to ensure that their system would be useful with Y2K compliance. There are many new versions that came out until the company switched over almost completely to Solaris. This change gave the customer more things to do overall with the platform, and it allowed Sun to expand their services more to offer storage capacity and speed that they could not have offered with older versions of the program.

Solaris

SunOS 5 is known as Solaris to anyone who is in the know in computing, and it allows the user to link with Open Windows without any trouble. The person who is planning on using this platform got Open Windows, the SunOS platform and the Open Network Computing platform that was created by Sun. They wanted to ensure that they gave their customers something that felt special, and changing the name to Solaris gave them the opportunity to rebrand the product. People who worked for Sun still called the products by their release names, but the company externally called everything Solaris because they wanted to maintain the branding that they had done with this product.

SunOS exists today as Solaris, and it is the basis of a number of computing platforms that were started with Sun processors. The company has ensured there is storage space for their customers using their products, and they have included extra products that make the system easier to navigate.

Tru64 Unix was once known as Digital Unix, and it is now under the ownership of HP. The company picked it up from Compaq, and it belonged to DEC before that. There are many people who still prefer to use Tru64 Unix even though it is discontinued, and they find that it offers much better performance given their personal needs. Systems such as OSX and iOS have been made based on this product, and many people turn to it because they want to go to the source of these modern systems.

The Competition

DEC joined with HP and IBM to create the Unix system, and it was from this that it was born. They wanted to have an operating system that was completely unique from other storage systems that were coming out at the time. their aim was to create something that would be easy to expand, upgrade and build upon. They were successful as the system came to be known as Tru64 Unix long after it had begun. The 64-bit processing made it capable of doing quite a lot, and it inspired many other systems that came after.

Shared Storage

The Digital Unix product became something that was pitched as a part of the new digital revolution in computers. There were many people who wanted to have new digital products because everything in the 90s was called digital to make it sound as advanced as possible. Later on, 64-bit technology was considered much cleaner, and that is when the company chose to move on from the digital name to call it Tru64 Unix. This was an improvement that ensured the product would perform that much better, and it was used many times over to inspire yet more systems that would come after.

The shared servers of today were built on. Tru64 Unix because there was room for many people to be in the clusters that were created in these servers. Every person who belonged to the server or storage unit could see their own data, and they were protected from the others by the processing power of the Tru64 Unix system. It was eventually discontinued when it was no longer powerful enough to manage all the data that was introduced into newer systems, but it had made its mark by creating a way to share space on servers that were popular at the time. The TruCluster was migrated to other products by HP, and the Tru64 Unix system still has its hands on certain products that have been created by this company. Someone who has questions about Tru64 Unix may contact HP as they are not yet done using its technology to advance their systems.

NetBSD is the place where Theo de Raadt started before he went on to found the OpenBSD Porject. NetBSD was started as a version of the original BSD because they believed that there are many things that could be changed to benefit their customers. There were many who believed that developing in-house without any assistance was a wise choice, but the men who started this project were insistent that they would take input from their open source community. The people who submitted their changes were given the credit they deserved, and these four men worked quite hard on the clear coding they wanted to see and the portability that they believed was necessary across every kind of computer that could be used. They knew at the time that the world of computers would change, but they did not know how much it would change. The only way to respond was to make their program secure.

Portability

The portability of the NetBSD Program became its hallmark as it has been used on a number of computing systems over the years. The men who started the company wanted to know that they could reach everything from someone’s homemade system to the mini-computers that were popular at the time. Each step they took to reach new customers was a way to reach the world at-large, and they continued to work on portability while they created coding that was easier to read. Someone who had questions about adapting to a new system would have been addressed at the time because the NetBSD team wanted to have as many different applications for their technology as possible. The portability gave way to many uses for their systems, and they eventually split over the direction of their company and their brand.

Building In Third Party Software

The portability of the platform was only the beginning of what they wanted to do. There were many new software applications coming out that could be used with a program such as this, and someone who had questions about how the third party software could be adapted to a new program could use the package sourcing additions that were made to the NetBSD platform. This is what made the programming useful to anyone who wanted to be even more adaptable to their own work in programming, and someone who wished to make changes to the platform could do so because it has been open source since the beginning.

Virtualization became a part of the NetBSD program because it allowed the company to expand their storage that much more for each customer. They moved quickly to offer the best storage to all their customers, and their work in virtualization made them cutting edge in that field.