The Linux Foundation Releases Carrier Grade Linux 5.0 Specification

Increased emphasis on high-end data reliability and security across industries inform latest Carrier Grade Linux requirements

SAN FRANCISCO {The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit}, April 6, 2011 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the availability of Carrier Grade Linux Version 5.0 specification (CGL 5.0).

The Linux Foundation’s CGL workgroup has been collaborating on CGL gaps and requirements since 2002, and today’s release of CGL 5.0 covers several specification categories that include Availability, Clustering, Serviceability, Performance, Standards, Hardware, and Security. Also, a number of requirements have been dropped from the specification due to the mass adoption and ubiquity of CGL and its inclusion in the mainline Linux kernel, which allows these specifications to become consistent fixtures across distributions.

Since CGL was first introduced, the demands on data that is transferred among networks have significantly increased. Telecom carriers today must be able to handle a variety of content types, including streaming video, audio and packet traffic, for example, with no service interruptions.

The new requirements in CGL 5.0 intended to address this mature marketplace include:

• Increased focus on highly reliable, highly available filesystems including data protection, data portability, and backup and redundancy requirements.

• Carrier and data-center security gaps, including Role-based Access Control and data access auditing and tracing.

• Expanded diagnostics and debugging support including per-thread identifiers for debugging and a system black box.

• Online system tuning features allowing applications to determine and optimize themselves for the specific system architecture on which they are running.

To review the full CGL 5.0 specification, please visit: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/cgl.

There are six CGL distributions today from major Linux distributors including Novell, MontaVista and Wind River, all of which are registered as CGL-compliant. Registration for CGL 5.0 begins today.

“The Carrier Grade Linux workgroup is a testament to the power of collaboration to help advance Linux and accelerate its adoption,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “CGL today is a recognized industry standard on which the world’s leading telecom companies rely to build their networks. The CGL workgroup members have significantly contributed to the adoption of Linux in the telecom market.”

Collaboration on CGL began in 2002 with the goal of making Linux deployable for telecom equipment manufacturers who were being faced with new service and bandwidth expectations while still needing to keep down investment costs. They also needed a more flexible approach that could take advantage of new technologies such as multi-core CPUs.

The Linux Foundation CGL workgroup members together established the CGL specification and contributed hundreds of source code contributions to Linux and other open source projects to enable the success of Linux in this space. A number of the workgroup member companies “open-sourced” proprietary technology to create projects to help minimize gaps in Linux, further enabling the adoption of Linux among telecom equipment and infrastructure manufactures.

The CGL workgroup has produced five major versions of specifications to define the required capabilities for Linux in carrier-grade telecom equipment since the original CGL 1.0 release in 2002. The result today is that Linux distribution suppliers are able to demonstrate that they meet the needs of telecommunications companies by disclosing how their products address the requirements.

Industry Comments
Huawei
“Linux today is a preferable foundation on which to build telecom equipment thanks to the collaboration between the community members and companies who have participated in the Carrier Grade Linux workgroup,” said Bruno Zhang, Director of Central Base Platform, Huawei Technologies Co.,Ltd. “CGL 5.0 will certainly reaffirm that position for Linux.”

MontaVista
“The CGL specification is a shining example of a highly successful standard in Linux and open source which has resulted in many carrier class features becoming a standard part of upstream Linux-based projects,” said Dan Cauchy, VP of marketing and business development at MontaVista Software. “The release of CGL 5.0 represents an important evolution of requirements. MontaVista has been delivering CGL compliant products for many years and we look forward to submitting our compliance registration.”
Novell
“The widespread adoption of Carrier Grade Linux reflects the ability of Linux to deliver on reliability, high-availability and security for telecom customers,” said Holger Dyroff, vice president, Business Development, Open Platform Solutions at Novell. “For the past eight years Novell has focused on Carrier Grade Linux, with several product generations of SUSE Linux Enterprise being CGL certified. We are pleased to adopt the CGL 5.0 standard as it represents the strength of Linux specifications and will help to drive the growth of Linux in the telecommunications market.”

NTT
“Carrier Grade Linux has become a technology inevitable for carrier networks and the telecommunications industry. CGL 5.0 addresses the needs of the entire telecommunications ecosystem, and reaffirms the strength of Linux to address evolving requirements in a fast-moving environment,” said Hisashi Komura, vice president, general manager, NTT Network Service Systems Laboratories, NTT Corporation.

Wind River
“Wind River has been CGL compliant since our very first Linux distribution and CGL continues to be a very relevant and important component of our Linux solution. There is an especially strong and ongoing demand for CGL compliance from our networking customers, across all architectures and geographies,” says Glenn Seiler, senior director of Linux Product Management at Wind River. “This latest version of the CGL specification encompasses input from all over the industry including the SCOPE Alliance, network equipment providers and platform providers.”

ZTE
“Carrier Grade Linux is recognized standard for next-generation communications networks and infrastructure,” said Mr. Zhongweidong, Open Source CTO, ZTE Corporation. “The Linux Foundation’s CGL workgroup is an example of how our collaborative development can accelerate technology and have an impact on an entire industry.”

About The Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2000, the organization sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and promotes, protects and advances the Linux operating system by marshaling the resources of its members and the open source development community. The Linux Foundation provides a neutral forum for collaboration and education by hosting Linux conferences, including LinuxCon, and generating original Linux research and content that advances the understanding of the Linux platform. Its web properties, including Linux.com, reach approximately two million people per month. The organization also provides extensive Linux training opportunities that feature the Linux kernel community’s leading experts as instructors. Follow The Linux Foundation on Twitter.

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Trademarks: The Linux Foundation, Linux Standard Base, MeeGo and Yocto Project are trademarks of The Linux Foundation. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds.