DG/UX

Last updated
DG/UX
Data General logo.svg
Developer Data General
Written in C
OS family UNIX System V with additions from BSD
Working stateHistoric
Initial releaseMarch 1985;39 years ago (1985-03)
Latest release 5.4 Release 4.20 (MU07) / April 2001;23 years ago (2001-04)
Available in English
Platforms Eclipse MV minicomputer line, AViiON workstation and server line
Default
user interface
IXI X.desktop environment

DG/UX is a discontinued Unix operating system developed by Data General for its Eclipse MV minicomputer line, and later the AViiON workstation and server line (both Motorola 88000 and Intel IA-32-based variants).

Overview

DG/UX 1.00, released in March, 1985, was based on UNIX System V Release 2 with additions from 4.1BSD. By 1987, DG/UX 3.10 had been released, with 4.2BSD TCP/IP networking, NFS and the X Window System included. DG/UX 4.00, in 1988, was a comprehensive re-design of the system, based on System V Release 3, and supporting symmetric multiprocessing on the Eclipse MV. The 4.00 filesystem was based on the AOS/VS II filesystem and, using the logical disk facility, could span multiple disks. DG/UX 5.4, released around 1991, replaced the legacy Unix file buffer cache with unified, demand paged virtual memory management. Later versions were based on System V Release 4.

On the AViiON, DG/UX supported multiprocessor machines at a time when most variants of Unix did not. The operating system was also more complete than some other Unix variants; for example, the operating system included a full C compiler (gcc) and also a logical volume manager. The OS was small and compact, but rich in features. It was simple and easy to install and did not require vast resources of memory or processing power. For example, a six-way Pentium Pro-based AViiON would support several hundred users using text terminals.

The volume manager built into the OS was simple, but very powerful. All disk administration could be performed online, without taking any file system offline. This included extending, relocating, mirroring or shrinking. The same functions could be performed on the swap area, allowing in-place migrations of disk storage without downtime. DG/UX 5.4 supported filesystem shrinking, "split mirror" online backup, filesystems up to 2 TB, and filesystem journaling in 1991. Few vendors offered similar features at that time.

DG/UX had a high-performance and stable clustered filesystem. The Clariion storage nas was connected by high-voltage scsi controllers, and scsi-hubs. Each server had double scsi-controllers for failover reasons. Both controllers where master on the same bus, at the same time these filesystems where NFS-mounted form the cluster-master's floating ip. The data was written from each cluster node directly by the scsi bus, but the orchestration, the i-node tables, where written by the NFS-mount from each cluster members.

Later versions added support for processor and memory affinity to support their high-end multiprocessor NUMA AViiON system.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IBM AIX</span> Series of Unix operating systems from IBM

AIX is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HP-UX</span> Operating system

HP-UX is Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on Unix System V and first released in 1984. Current versions support HPE Integrity Servers, based on Intel's Itanium architecture.

Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP network. iSCSI facilitates data transfers over intranets and to manage storage over long distances. It can be used to transmit data over local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), or the Internet and can enable location-independent data storage and retrieval.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Data General</span> Minicomputer manufacturer, 1968–1999

Data General Corporation was one of the first minicomputer firms of the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).

Apollo/Domain is a series of workstations that were developed and produced by Apollo Computer from c. 1980 to 1989. The machines were built around the Motorola 68k series of processors, except for the DN10000, which has from one to four of Apollo's RISC processors, named PRISM.

Aviion was a series of computers from Data General that were the company's main product from the late 1980s until the company's server products were discontinued in 2001. Earlier Aviion models used the Motorola 88000 CPU, but later models moved to an all-Intel solution when Motorola stopped work on the 88000 in the early 1990s. Some versions of these later Intel-based machines ran Windows NT, while higher-end machines ran the company's flavor of Unix, DG/UX.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Network-attached storage</span> Computer data storage server

Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. The term "NAS" can refer to both the technology and systems involved, or a specialized device built for such functionality.

Pyramid Technology Corporation was a computer company that produced a number of RISC-based minicomputers at the upper end of the performance range. It was based in the San Francisco Bay Area of California

OpenSSI is an open-source single-system image clustering system. It allows a collection of computers to be treated as one large system, allowing applications running on any one machine access to the resources of all the machines in the cluster.

In distributed computing, a single system image (SSI) cluster is a cluster of machines that appears to be one single system. The concept is often considered synonymous with that of a distributed operating system, but a single image may be presented for more limited purposes, just job scheduling for instance, which may be achieved by means of an additional layer of software over conventional operating system images running on each node. The interest in SSI clusters is based on the perception that they may be simpler to use and administer than more specialized clusters.

The Write Anywhere File Layout (WAFL) is a proprietary file system that supports large, high-performance RAID arrays, quick restarts without lengthy consistency checks in the event of a crash or power failure, and growing the filesystems size quickly. It was designed by NetApp for use in its storage appliances like NetApp FAS, AFF, Cloud Volumes ONTAP and ONTAP Select.

The VERITAS File System is an extent-based file system. It was originally developed by VERITAS Software. Through an OEM agreement, VxFS is used as the primary filesystem of the HP-UX operating system. With on-line defragmentation and resize support turned on via license, it is known as OnlineJFS. It is also supported on AIX, Linux, Solaris, OpenSolaris, SINIX/Reliant UNIX, UnixWare and SCO OpenServer. VxFS was originally developed for AT&T's Unix System Laboratories. VxFS is packaged as a part of the Veritas Storage Foundation.

A NetApp FAS is a computer storage product by NetApp running the ONTAP operating system; the terms ONTAP, AFF, ASA, FAS are often used as synonyms. "Filer" is also used as a synonym although this is not an official name. There are three types of FAS systems: Hybrid, All-Flash, and All SAN Array:

  1. NetApp proprietary custom-build hardware appliances with HDD or SSD drives called hybrid Fabric-Attached Storage
  2. NetApp proprietary custom-build hardware appliances with only SSD drives and optimized ONTAP for low latency called ALL-Flash FAS
  3. All SAN Array build on top of AFF platform, and provide only SAN-based data protocol connectivity.

Data General AOS was the name of a family of operating systems for Data General 16-bit Eclipse C, M, and S minicomputers, followed by AOS/VS and AOS/RT32 (1980) and later AOS/VS II (1988) for the 32-bit Eclipse MV line.

In Unix-like operating systems, a device file, device node, or special file is an interface to a device driver that appears in a file system as if it were an ordinary file. There are also special files in DOS, OS/2, and Windows. These special files allow an application program to interact with a device by using its device driver via standard input/output system calls. Using standard system calls simplifies many programming tasks, and leads to consistent user-space I/O mechanisms regardless of device features and functions.

NonStop Clusters (NSC) was an add-on package for SCO UnixWare that allowed creation of fault-tolerant single-system image clusters of machines running UnixWare. NSC was one of the first commercially available highly available clustering solutions for commodity hardware.

OS4000 is a proprietary operating system introduced by GEC Computers Limited in 1977 as the successor to GEC DOS, for its range of GEC 4000 series 16-bit, and later 32-bit, minicomputers. OS4000 was developed through to late 1990s, and has been in a support-only mode since then.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dell Fluid File System</span> Filesystem by Dell

Dell Fluid File System, or FluidFS, is a shared-disk filesystem made by Dell that provides distributed file systems to clients. Customers buy an appliance: a combination of purpose-built network-attached storage (NAS) controllers with integrated primary and backup power supplies attached to block level storage via the iSCSI or Fiber Channel protocol. A single Dell FluidFS appliance consists of two controllers operating in concert connecting to the back-end storage area network (SAN). Depending on the storage capacity requirements and user preference, FluidFS version 4 NAS appliances can be used with Compellent or EqualLogic SAN arrays. The EqualLogic FS7600 and FS7610 connect to the client network and to Dell's EqualLogic arrays with either 1 Gbit/s (FS7600) or 10 Gbit/s (FS7610) iSCSI protocol. For Compellent, FluidFS is available with either 1 Gbit/s or 10 Gbit/s iSCSI connectivity to the client network and connection to the backend Compellent SAN can be either 8 Gbit/s Fibre Channel or 10 Gbit/s iSCSI.

ONTAP, Data ONTAP, Clustered Data ONTAP (cDOT), or Data ONTAP 7-Mode is NetApp's proprietary operating system used in storage disk arrays such as NetApp FAS and AFF, ONTAP Select, and Cloud Volumes ONTAP. With the release of version 9.0, NetApp decided to simplify the Data ONTAP name and removed the word "Data" from it, removed the 7-Mode image, therefore, ONTAP 9 is the successor of Clustered Data ONTAP 8.

References