The support for high availability and scaling services under Linux continues to grow. At this stage, Linux is well accepted as the middle layer of a scaled service, for example the stateless compute power for a web farm. Technologies such as layer 4 switching and intelligent DNS implemented under Linux are helping to push Linux towards the front-end of such services. In the long term, emerging technologies will help Linux to fulfill all the requirements for a highly available, scaled service.
While high availability and scalability is much more than building big web farms, these technologies to do this provide a good starting point to build more advanced solutions. Generic frameworks to implement high availability upon are beginning to take shape and should enable much more powerful solutions to be developed in the future.