The company’s OpenServer variant of Unix is a radically modernized version of Xenix, which was developed by SCO and, believe it or not, Microsoft, which used to be a big Xenix user back in the old days.

The OpenServer Kernel Personality (OKP) for UnixWare allows companies using the entry Unix version from SCO, which accounts for the vast number of installs and turnkey systems that SCO’s partners have put into company sites in the last decade, to move those applications to bigger servers running UnixWare and run those OpenServer applications unchanged. The OKP layer riding on top of UnixWare can make use of the Reliant high availability clustering software SCO created for UnixWare. It can scale across as many as 32 processors in a single system image (just like UnixWare), and can bring to bear various performance improvements that SCO has created for UnixWare that are not in OpenServer. UnixWare also supports hot plug CPU, hot plug PCI, and hot add memory, which OpenServer most definitely does not. The OKP runtime will be able to make use of these features behind the scenes because it is one layer above the hardware than OpenServer is on an actual server.

SCO is positioning the OKP layer as a means for companies who have outgrown OpenServer on a uniprocessor machine to move to bigger iron. But the company, just like every other IT vendor, is also chasing a server consolidation strategy in its customer base, and OKP can be used to consolidate many OpenServer instances onto a single UnixWare machine.

OKP offers Xenix compatibility and supports applications written for OpenServer 5.0.4, 5.0.5, 5.0.6, and 5.0.7 (the latter being the current release). Applications written in the SCO UNIX or SCO OpenDesktop predecessors to OpenServer can usually run in OpenServer 5.0.4, which means that there is a pretty good shot that they will run in the OpenServer runtime environment. A lot will depend on how closely customers’ code is written to the iron.

Customers with a UnixWare 7.1.3 license can download the OKP add-on from the Web right now. UnixWare licenses packaged since August 1 also include OKP. SCO says that for a limited time, customers with OpenServer 5.0.4 through 5.0.7 can upgrade to the business or departmental editions of UnixWare 7.1.3 at a low-cost promotional price that is $150 to $200 lower than the normal upgrade price.

Source: Computerwire