Global Standardization Activities

Open Source Software Standardization
Trends—CGL and DCL
Naoki Uchida and Yoshifumi Manabe†Abstract
This article describes how OSDL (Open Source Development Labs) is promoting the increased use of
the Linux operating system, a typical example of open source software (OSS), and moving towards thestandardization of Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) for communication carriers and Data Center Linux (DCL)
for enterprise data centers.

1. OSDLOSDL (Open Source Development Labs) is a nonprofit organization established in 2000 to promote thedevelopment of Linux, a typical example of opensource software (OSS), and its use in industry [1], [2].
It is currently moving forward with the standardization of various Linux implementations: CGL (CarrierGrade Linux), DCL (Data Center Linux), and DTL(Desktop Linux). To achieve this, OSDL is publishing these standards so that distributors and the developer community can begin working on their implementation. It is also making US and Japanese testingand development environments available to developers worldwide. NTT began participating in OSDL asa carrier in February 2004 and has played an activerole in the standardization work being carried out by
the CGL and DCL working groups. In September
2004, CGL and DCL meetings were held at NTT’s
Makuhari building.
2. Carrier Grade LinuxCGL [3] is a set of public documents that Linux distributors and Linux kernel developers can use todevelop the kernel functions and associated libraries
needed for the next generation of network infrastructure. The activities of the CGL working group are
divided between three subgroups: a steering sub† NTT Cyber Space Laboratories
Yokosuka-shi, 239-0847 Japan
E-mail: manabe.yoshifumi@lab.ntt.co.jp

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group that determines the overall strategy, a marketing subgroup that promotes CGL, and a technicalsubgroup that studies technical specifications.
The CGL working group was the first OSDL working group to be set up. It published CGL1.0 andCGL2.0 specifications in September 2002 and October 2003, respectively, and various companies are
now offering distributions conforming to CGL2.0.
The most recent specification is CGL3.0 (formallyentitled OSDL Carrier Grade Linux Requirements
Definition, version 3.0), which was published in February 2005. CGL3.0 was developed for application tokernel 2.6 and expands upon the CGL1.1 and 2.0
specifications to define requests relating to the following six functional fields:(1) Availability: The specification aims to achieve
99.999% system availability by eliminating
downtime. This involves online operation,redundancy, monitoring, and software hardening.
(2) Serviceability: This involves operating standards to facilitate remote management, including SNMP (simple network management protocol), CIM (common information model),WBEM (web-based enterprise management),
IPMI (intelligent platform management interface), and HPI (hardware platform interface).
(3) Performance: The specification supports realtime operation, SMP (symmetrical multiprocessor) architectures for increased speed,
hyperthreading, and systems with large-scale
memories. This involves support for, among
other things, communication functions withNTT Technical Review

Global Standardization Activities

low latency.
(4) Clusters: The specification restricts the scope
to highly available clusters, which involves theelimination of single-point faults in both hardware and software.
(5) Standards: This involves industry standards,
such as Linux Standard Base (LSB) [4], the Service Availability (SA) Forum [5] interface specification, and POSIX, and standards that need tobe followed to promote inter-operability.
(6) Hardware: This involves supporting hot-swappable components and hardware components
based on a standard module design.
NTT’s contribution includes helping to draft thedefinitions of CGL3.0 requirements and working onan editor related to availability. This work is mainly
being carried out at our network service system laboratories in cooperation with NTT Software and NTT
Comware.
Distributions conforming to CGL3.0 are expected
to become available from major distributors from themiddle of 2006. At the time of writing, work is also
continuing on rationalizing the CGL1.1 and CGL2.0
documentation and on preparations for the release ofCGL3.1 with enhanced security features at SUPERCOMM 2005 in June.
3. Data Center LinuxThe purpose of DCL [6] is to identify the capabilities necessary for using Linux as a platform for mission-critical enterprise applications and databases
and to present technical and business approaches thatmeet these requirements. The DCL working group
was established in January 2002. It has the same configuration as the CGL working group.
The technical issues that need to be addressed whenusing Linux to run a data center were published in adocument entitled DCL Technical Capabilities version 1.0 in February 2004. An additional section onmarketing goals was later added based on feedback
from end users and independent software vendors,
leading to the most recent publication of DCL Goals
and Capabilities version 1.1 in February 2005.
The marketing goals are defined separately forseven categories:(1) Linux awareness and confidence: Provide end

Vol. 3 No. 7 July 2005

users and the managers of corporate IT (information technology) divisions with a message
advocating the use of Linux, etc.
(2) Global enterprise services and support: Provide a distribution that supports localizationand has worldwide support, etc.
(3) Workloads: Provide software stacks required asstandard, such as database and transaction management, HA (high availability) solutions, andEAI (enterprise application integration).
(4) Technical training and education: Provide education programs and technical certification programs for Linux developers and administrators,etc.
(5) Development community: Provide development
environments and tools to facilitate the development of Linux kernels and applications, etc.
(6) Total cost of ownership: Keep overall costs low,
including not only the initial acquisition cost
but also the cost of support and maintenance.
(7) Stability: Make Linux kernel and software
stacks stable, such as backward compatible atkernel upgrade.
Besides reflecting the new version 2.6 of the kernel,
the “Technical Capabilities” section of Goals andCapabilities version 1.1 was enhanced in four mainareas: security, hot-plugging, clustering, and storage
networking. In these technical fields, Special Interest
Groups (SIGs) were formed to fill the gaps between
the required capabilities and the existing technology
available to the development community. At NTT,
together with NTT DATA Intellilink Corporation, weare conducting tests on the reliability of file systems.
NTT will continue to play an active role in standardization centered on OSDL, and we plan to makefurther contributions to the development and promotion of open source software.
References
[1]
[2]

[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]

http://www.osdl.org/
Y. Manabe, Y. Kawarasaki, and T. Ikebe, “Linux for Telecommunication Carrier Systems,” NTT Technical Review, Vol. 2, No. 11, pp.
72-74, 2004.
http://www.osdl.org/lab_activities/carrier_grade_linux
http://www.linuxbase.org/
http://www.saforum.org/
http://www.osdl.org/lab_activities/data_center_linux

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Global Standardization Activities

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Naoki Uchida

Yoshifumi Manabe

Senior Manager, Open Source Software Producer, Department III, NTT.
He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electro-communications from the University of Electro-Communications, Chofu, Tokyo in 1983 and1985, respectively. In 1985, he joined NTT,Tokyo, Japan. Since then, he has been engaged in
the development of network services and IP services and research on the next-generation network. He is currently engaged in R&D strategy
planning for open source software. He is a member of the Institute of Electronics, Information
and Communication Engineers (IEICE) of Japanand a delegate of OSDL and the Service Availability Forum.

Senior Research Engineer, Supervisor, Open
Source Software Computing Project, NTT CyberSpace Laboratories.
He received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees
in information and computer science from Osaka
University, Toyonaka, Osaka in 1983, 1985, and1993, respectively. He joined NTT in 1985. His
research interests include graph theory, distributed algorithms, cryptography, and operating
systems. He is a member of the Association for
Computing Machinery, IEEE, the Information
Processing Society of Japan, and IEICE.

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