Some of the changes in the upcoming release of Windows Server 2008 are a response to features and performance advantages that have made Linux an attractive option to Microsoft customers. One of these is the fact that Linux has less of a surface area, which led customers to believe that Linux is inherently more secure, Bill Laing, the general manager for Microsoft's Windows Server division, told eWEEK. "Having less surface area does reduce the servicing and the amount of code you have running and exposed, so we have done a lot of work in 2008 to make the system more modular. There are more than 30 components not installed by default, which is a huge change," Laing said. "We also have server core, which doesn't have the GUI, so I would say that is a response to the options people had with Linux that they didn't have with Windows."
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Member since:2005-11-10
Actually if you have ever used ESX and installed it you would know that it runs on a stripped down redhat kernel.
That is how you can provision bare metal. VM doesn't have their own kernel for runnin on bare metal I am sure you know that.
Even the installer is based on Anaconda.
But Open VZ is open source and works well.
Member since:2005-07-10
OpenVZ is not virtualization. It is OS partitioning. The same kernel is used for all the virtual instances.
We are talking about Hypervisor or VMM based Virtualization here.
To answer your question: ESX is not based on Linux. It uses Linux for initial boot and then for the management of it's virtual machine. But the underlying real kernel that is scheduling VMs etc is vmKernel. This is the reason it is not open source.
Member since:2006-01-14
Member since:2006-02-08
Member since:
2005-07-10
Yes I am aware of that but it is not open source and it is a not full blown Linux. It is a custom linux kernel.
They could very well take any other open OS to build it like BSD or Solaris. They used Linux due to wider driver support.
Correction: I was wrong. According to wikipedia, they use Linux kernel only for their service console. So I don't think it really built on Linux. That clears my doubt on why it is not open source.
Edited 2007-05-19 03:34