THE AURORA FAQ
(Last update July 20, 1998)


This FAQ was created by Martin Alfredsson

Please note that most features/timetables discussed are rumors and may never surface.
Pages and texts Copyright ©, Martin Alfredsson 1997-1998 where not otherwise stated. Translations are owned by respective translators.

What is Aurora

Aurora is the codename for the next release of OS/2 Warp Server. Its a major upgrade of the NOS, much more major that the press (and IBM) has told us.

While IBM probably wish to keep customers calm in saying its "just a small upgrade" there are some radical new features that at last makes Warp Server an equal competitor to Netware and Windows NT server. Even some IBM'ers has slipped and told us that "Aurora is not an upgrade but a whole new product".

Aurora is now officially announced and IBM has told us that Aurora will go into beta sometime in october and will be released in the first quarter of 1999. The beta will be limited to a some 2000-3000 people so I expect that CD burners will start humming in late october ;-)

- IBM's official Aurora homepage
- The Aurora whitepaper
- Apply for a copy of the Aurora beta

Please note that this page is not finished so dont hesitate to tell me what I have missed and where I'm plain wrong.

What will be Aurora

This part of the FAQ is split into two sections. The "Official features" section describes the features that you can find listed on IBM official Aurora pages but it does not list features talked about in press by IBM NCSD executives. The "Rumored features" section lists features talked about in press and features I been told might appear from other chanels.

Official features:

JFS/Warp
JFS is a new filesystem for Warp but it has been availible on UNIX for many years. It's a 64 bit Journaling File System and it supports file sizes up to 2 terabytes. And the maximum partition size is raised to 2 terabytes allowing a file to be the same size as a partition.
JFS is a journaling filesystem and can restore a partition to a functional state in a matter of seconds or minutes. JFS provides a quickly-restartable, transaction-oriented, log-based, scaleable file system.
But, a JFS partition is NOT bootable. You still have to install Aurora on a HPFS (or FAT ;-) partition.

LVM
The Logical Volume Manager LVM takes over drive letter mapping. You can selectively assign drive letters to a volume of our choice. Select permanent or sticky drive letter assignments that allows hard drives to be moved or added without changing their drive letters. LVM lets you combine several partitions and even physical disks into a single logical drive (disk spanning). And with dynamic partition resizing partitions can grow without reformatting.
To allow you to use LVM Aurora provides a new version of the FDISK utility, called LVMDISK. LVMDISK is also used to create JFS volumes during installation.

SMP
Aurora will integrate SMP support into a 'single source' product code base. There will not be a separate SMP product. Aurora will install both the uni-processor and SMP kernels on your hard disk. The appropriate kernel will then be used by the OS. If additional processors are added, the upgrade process is simplified by a utility that points to the already installed SMP Kernel. Aurora is optimized for 8-way SMP systems but the architectural limits for the CPUs will be 64.

NFS
Network File System (NFS) will be supported in Aurora, allowing any UNIX (or other OS that supports NFS) drive to be mounted and made a sharable resource to OS/2 Warp Server's clients.

GUI ENHANCEMENTS
The whitepaper says, "The OS/2 Warp 4 interface, with enhancements based on customer feedback, provides a graphical interface for routine management tasks". It's still hard to say if this is a major change or just a few fixes.

COMMUNICATOR
As part of the "feature sweep from Software Choice" Netscape Communicator will be included in Aurora. One can wonder why a browser is included in a server OS ? It might be that IBM understands that lots of "administrators" will run Aurora on their desktops.

TCPIP
As it should, most of the enhancements and new stuff are in the TCPIP support. TCP/IP and MPTS will have lots of capacity and performance improvements compared with TCP/IP V4.1. TCP/IP in Aurora will use SMP and improve HTTP server connection management.
Aurora supports LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) ans ships with a toolkit for developing LDAP applications in C and Java.
Also DDNS and DHCP for all clients. The DHCP proxy in Aurora gives Dynamic IP on any industry standard DHCP client.

JAVA 1.1.6 (OR LATER)
Believe it or not ;-) but IBM will include Java 1.1.6 (or any later verson ready in time) with Aurora. Incuded is also the Java 1.1.6 toolkit.

Y2K AND EURO
Aurora is fully year 2000 ready and fully supports euro.

CID ENHANCEMENTS
Installation via CID is enhanced with a "Top Install" shell that will gather the data needed and output a ready to use CID file. All operating system services will be CID installable. Aurora's installation provides a utility to report the status so additional complications and errors can be prevented during installation.

I2O
Aurora will use the I2O (Input/Output Architecture) for device drivers compliant with this. I2O allows device driver developers to develop a driver in "hardware" and all that is needed in native code (OS/2 code) is a generic I2O driver. Aurora will ship with SCSI, Ethernet and Token Ring I2O drivers. But dont panic, you can still use all old OS/2 drivers.

VINCA SUPPORT
Aurora supports (but does not include ?) the Vinca Standby server. It allows you to have an extra servers ready online to take over if the main server fail. The Vinca software configures a server to respond to multiple names and sharing of those names and this "Active-Active" server configuration with bi-directional fail over enables two fully functional servers to protect each other. Theese servers do not need to be identical and can be managed remotely.

BACKUP
The "OS/2 Warp Server Backup/Restore V6.0" is included and the Personally Safe n Sound (PSnS) component now has a command line interface. You can back up to partitioned removable media, such as IOMEGA's JAZ and ZIP drives for faster backups/restors and the new "dual-device backup set" allows you to do incremental back up to one media and a full backup to another all at the same time.

WINDOWS NT SERVER MANAGEMENT
Something for the computer journalist to write about. Aurora allows you to manage a Windows NT server as if it was a Warp Server and all resources on the Windows NT machine appears seamlessly as Warp Server resources. The user logs on to the Aurora Server and the Windows NT server resources are there. No need for separate userid/passwords. But, to use this the Windows NT server must be part of a Warp Server domain, not the other way around.

SYSTEM MANAGEMENT
Aurora includes Tivoli's Lightweight Client Framework (LCF) Endpoint Agent for OS/2. Tivoli Framework LCF supports OS/2 as an endpoint for TCP/IP. The LCF endpoint agent for OS/2 makes Aurora "Tivoli Ready".
For clients Aurora includes Netfinity Manager and Client Services, Netfinity 5.2 that gives network administrators what they need to initiate and manage services for clients and servers.

VPN
Aurora's remote connection PPP server (Enhanced Remote Access Connection Server for OS/2 Warp Server) is enhanced with a integrated Virtual Private Network function.

Rumored features:

CLUSTERING
Has been mentioned in the press but is not mentioned in the Aurora whitepaper. Lets hope that IBM includes "many-ways" clustering in Aurora. Since clustering has been previewed on Warp Server it would be stupid of IBM not to add it.

INTEGRATED WEBSERVER
Lotus GO webserver has more or less been promised to be a part of Aurora. But there has been lots of talk about IBM including Apache in other server products lately. Why not include the whole Lotus Domino server !

ORION
Orion is a framework or rather a set of Java applications that will allow you to administer any IBM server from any OS with a current JVM. With Orion it should be possible to administer your Aurora server from a IBM Mainframe with MVS or administer a AS/400 from a Javabased PDA !!
I have been told unofficially several times that Orion will be included in Aurora (*) so either it just waits to be announced or Orion will not be finished in time.
(*) Allowing you to administer your Aurora server from any Java client.

C2 SECURITY
I suspect IBM's large customers has asked for this. C2 requires a secure file system and while 386 HPFS is adequate JFS/WARP will probably be used. This is an old rumor and I have not heard anything for quite a while so it may be that IBM have postponed or dropped C2.

NEW KERNEL
The kernel is rewritten to make all internal routines pure 32 bit (enhancing performance). The external interfaces to the Doscall APIs will not be changed to preserve compatibility. Thunk routines will be removed and new interfaces will be created in the Kernel to support 32 bit rutines but the external 16 bit APIs will still be supported for compatibility. This probably means that all (or at least most) of the 16 bit assembler code in the kernel is replaced with 32 bit C code. If IBM ever wanted to port Aurora to another processor this would help alot. I also assume that the SMP kernel is more or less completly rewritten since the old one (in Warp Server 4) contained lots of assembler code.

NEW API'S
Many API's has been enhanced to support the 64 bit filesystem and there are new API's for ADD32, IFS32 and the new (rumored) memory mapped file system support. Dont expect to many of them to be made public though.

NO MORE 512 MB LIMITS
Aurora will support full 4 GB(*) memory addresses for all 32 bit applications. Applications that use APIs that accept pointers as parameters can now allocate those parameters above the 512M line.
(*) Applications will probably get 2GB for code and 2GB for data.

NEW DEVICE DRIVER API'S
Aurora will include the ADD32 for 32 bit physical device drivers and the IFS32 (or FSD32) for 32 bit installable file system drivers. But rumors tells me that there will be no classes, toolkits etc for making 32 bit drivers :-(.
The new 32 bit IFSes and DDs must make themselves SMP safe. Kernel execution environment 32 bit locking services are provided for use by IFSs and DDs to become SMP safe. Kernel execution environment services are also provided to obtain necessary serialization for a 32 bit IFS or DD to call a non-SMP safe 16 bit DD. 32 bit DD and IFSes will enhance performance alot but without development kits only IBM will be able to use them :-(.
Old DD and IFSes (16 bits) will still be supported for compatibility reasons.

DVD CD-ROM
To be available on Software Choice before becoming a part of Aurora. But, there are no support for MPEG/DVD (DVD movies) planned by IBM. There is however at least one requester who is willing to pay IBM for developing DVD movie support for Warp 4. He is now waiting for a price quotation from IBM.

Aurora and WSOD.

Just as the current version of WSOD (WorkSpace On Demand) requires a Warp Server to boot from the next version of WSOD will require a Aurora server to boot from. The next WSOD will also support the latest IBM Network Stations, that means it will remoteboot Java OS for e-business !

What comes after Aurora ??

Is Aurora the last Warp Server? I have been told by IBM'ers that there will be a Java Server in two years time but that was before Aurora was announced. I dont think it will be possible to create a server on Java for many years but I think that IBM will replace many native mode administration and management tools with Java versions.

Its also interesting to note that IBM choose NOT to remove the Warp or OS/2 name from the product. Aurora has had many names, Server99, Warp Server for e-business and NC Server for e-business. IBM has talked long about dropping the OS/2 and Warp names but Auroras product name is apparently going to be Warp Server for e-business. IBM still thinks that the Warp name is worth keeping.

The Orion framework is supposed to allow you to administer any IBM server from any client (or server) with a current JVM. Orion is promised (unofficially) for Aurora and will be a method for IBM to simplify and unite their diverse tools for server management.

If Aurora becomes a success (sells well in the markets IBM wants it to sell) we should expect a upgrade in a year or two. Aurora (Warp Server) is currently the only PC based OS IBM's activly develops and they need a backend to support what they call old clients (OS/2), non IBM clients (Windows 9x, Windows NT) and thin clients WSOD and Java OS for business.

If successfull, Aurora might become the "divine dawn" of a long line of servers.

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