The Genode project has released version 11.11 of their OS framework, which allows the construction of spezialized operating systems out of building blocks including 8 different kernels, plenty of device drivers, and an increasing number of system services.
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Member since:
2007-07-27
I like the idea of the hypervisor being a micro kernel. The hypervisor should be tiny. But I did not get the part about Noux, is that the hypervisor? It seems that it can even run VIM? Then it is not a tiny hypervisor?
There is a similar project called SmartOS. It is KVM, Solaris kernel and Containers, ZFS, DTrace and nothing else, basically. This way Solaris can act as backend and provide ZFS. Each guest runs in a container, so if a guest is hacked, he will only be in a container, which is safe.
SmartOS claims to give much higher performance than running bare metal. For instance, WinXP 32 bit only has access to 3.5GB RAM and can not use 10GBit Nic. But Solaris can use 16GB RAM as ZFS cache and use 10GBit NIC.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/15/kvm_hypervisor_ported_to_so...
"With I/O-bound database workloads, he says, the SmartOS KVM is five to tens times faster than bare metal Windows and Linux (meaning no virtualization), and if you're running something like the Java Virtual Machine or PHP atop an existing bare metal hypervisor and move to SmartOS, he says, you'll see ten to fifty times better performance - though he acknowledges this too will vary depending on workload."
Member since:2007-03-26
SmartOS claims to give much higher performance than running bare metal. For instance, WinXP 32 bit only has access to 3.5GB RAM and can not use 10GBit Nic. But Solaris can use 16GB RAM as ZFS cache and use 10GBit NIC.
Yeah, but then who would run a 32bit copy of a 10 year old OS as their VM host? It's as pointless a comparison as comparing Win3.1 to OS X.
Anyhow, apples and oranges aside, SmartOS does look a great project, so I'm going to give this a test drive now. Thanks for the recommendation
Edited 2011-12-01 11:09 UTC
Member since:2007-07-27
True. But consider other 32bit OSes, such as... latest Linux for instance.
Youre welcome. :o)
Member since:2007-03-26
Member since:2009-05-27
To clear up the confusion about NOVA and Noux a bit:
NOVA is the microkernelized hypervisor and represents one of options to use as base platform for Genode.
Noux is a user-level component that offers the UNIX system-call API as RPC service. It can be used on top of any of Genode's base platforms. For example, you could run Noux side by side with virtual machines (running in the Vancouver VMM) on top of the NOVA hypervisor. But you could also run it atop a normal Linux OS (another possible base platform). In fact, using Noux, you can execute VIM natively on (almost) all of the microkernels supported by Genode.
The Figure at http://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/11.11#section-3 illustrates the role of Noux. In this figure, the hypervisor/kernel is not displayed. It would sit underneath core.
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2005-07-13
Member since:2009-05-27
Member since:2006-01-22
Member since:
2011-12-04
Member since:2009-05-27
You are indeed more than welcome! Actually, the time to start getting involved couldn't be better because the project is currently planning to open its development process.
Even though the Genode source code is released at regular intervals accompanied with the documentation about what has happened (release notes), until now, most of technical discussions, issue tracking, planning, and revision management was done internally at our company. Over the next three months we are going to change that with the goal to make the project more approachable to people outside the company.
So if you are interested in getting involved, please don't be shy! Joining the mailing list is possibly a good start. For meeting in person, I'd like mention that the Genode project will participate in a devroom specifically dedicated to microkernel-based OSes at FOSDEM 2012. See https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/microkernel-devroom/2011-November...