PowerLinux Turbo LAMP: Turbo-charge Your Open-Source Applications!

So, what the heck is LAMP anyway, and how do you optimize it?

LAMP is an acronym that stands for the Linux operating system, Apache HTTP server, MySQL database and the PHP programming language. The term describes a solution stack for building and running the most robust and dynamic Web and mobile-enabled applications, and it’s estimated that more than half of the Web sites in the world currently run on some version of the LAMP stack. The big challenge with LAMP is that there aren’t standards for consistency in platform implementations, which can make for complicated implementation, difficult performance tuning, and complex ongoing management and maintenance. Also, whom can you call for support?

Linux is the only operating system that is growing in the marketplace. I know based on my personal conversations that many of our Power Systems clients have a Linux strategy; they are actively discussing it, are planning to move workloads to it, or they’re already running it in their enterprise. Clients are also seeing the value of solutions from the Open Source community, because of the choices and flexibility that they provide.

IBM recognized both the trend toward Linux on Power and the challenges of managing open-source solutions, and about two years ago formed the non-profit OpenPOWER Foundation with strategic partners in order to bring innovations for Linux on Power to market faster than ever. OpenPOWER currently has almost 150 participating partners from different industries, including Google, Tyan, Nvidia, Redis Labs and Rackspace, and it’s already delivering real-world solutions such as CAPI-attached flash storage.

One of the most exciting new innovations to come from the OpenPOWER Foundation is the next evolution of LAMP, the Turbo LAMP stack. It initially started out as a cooperative effort between IBM (systems), Ubuntu (Linux and Apache), MariaDB (MySQL-compatible DB), Zend (PHP) and Mellanox (high-speed networking). They also collaborated with other industry leaders like Magento (e-commerce), Lagrange Systems (for their CloudMaestro product), Apigility (mobile and APIs) and Drupal (content management).Their goal was to develop the easiest way to deploy and manage the best performing and most reliable LAMP environment in the industry. The IBM Power Systems platform was the logical choice; it provides an enterprise-class infrastructure with scalability, performance, reliability, security and stability that x86-based servers can’t match. The latest-generation POWER8 processors were specifically optimized for modern workloads like big data, analytics, cloud and mobile computing.

Turbo LAMP employs IBM Power Systems servers with POWER8 processors in an integrated and compatible LAMP stack that delivers the performance and scalability demanded by today’s Web, cloud, mobile and big data solutions, while providing better price-performance and lower operational costs. Most x86 LAMP workloads will port right over and run on POWER8, only faster than ever before!

To get more information, please see the following videos:

Sirius’ PowerLinux Turbo LAMP Video

If you have any questions, would like to see a POWER8 demo, or would like assistance getting a Turbo LAMP environment up and running, please contact your Sirius client executive or Power Systems engineer.