Lustre announce - Apr 2006 - Lustre 1.6.0/end of Linux 2.4 support

CFS Customers and Lustre Users,

We have planned for some time for Lustre 1.6.0 to mark the end of  
general support for Linux 2.4 kernels. We clarified this position at  
the recent Lustre Users Group meeting and would like to broadcast the  
message every more broadly now.

Lustre 1.6.0, scheduled for release in June, 2006, will be our first  
version supporting only Linux 2.6.  Lustre 1.4.8, also scheduled for  
release in June, will be the last production release offering support  
for Linux 2.4. Note that this kernel support policy applies to both  
clients and OSS/MDS servers.

There are compelling reasons to update to the modern 2.6 kernel,  
including more deterministic Lustre performance and dramatically  
reduced chance of disk fragmentation. CFS encourages all customers to  
upgrade at their earliest convenience, and especially before they  
upgrade to Lustre 1.6.0.

We understand that not everyone has migrated their applications and  
cluster environments to Linux 2.6 yet, and we are very interested to  
understand all of the sensitivities that our support policy affects.  
Please feel free to contact me directly with any feedback or  
questions regarding kernel requirements.

Thanks in advance,
Peter Bojanic