"Recently there's been a lot of news about OpenSolaris, more specifically in reference to the great progress made by virtualization technologies in it. In this article, I will examine some of these technologies, and compare them with the state of the art on other platforms."
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Member since:2007-10-10
Here's at least one good reason why branded zones can
be useful:
http://blogs.sun.com/ahl/entry/dtrace_for_linux
Here's another one:
http://blogs.sun.com/dp/date/20070905
(Somewhat bizarre that the article failed to mention
LDoms at all BTW)
Member since:2006-12-28
Member since:2007-03-30
> I always thought that Branded Zones where a stopgap solution untill something more robust come alone, i.e. Xen.
I don't think anyone on the inside would admit that, but I do think what you said is pretty much the case.
I deduced as much when I heard that there were no plans to ever update the linux branded zone from kernel 2.4 support.
Member since:2005-11-05
</>"I deduced as much when I heard that there were no plans to ever update the linux branded zone from kernel 2.4 support."[/i]
Where did you here that from?
See here for the current status of the experimental support: http://opensolaris.org/os/community/brandz/todo/linux_2_6/
Edited 2007-10-10 02:00
Member since:2005-07-07
Member since:2006-09-12
While zones are great, and Crossbow is a very exciting, and needed, development for zone security, I would not agree that OpenSolaris has everything I could want for my virtualization needs...
I guess I have to be the first to point out that Xen is only for x86 and x64, not SPARC. Neither Solaris or OpenSolaris have a technology for SPARC like VMware's VMotion or AIX's Partition Relocation, where you can move running images between hosts. To be sure, that feature becomes indispensable once you start using it.
Member since:
2006-12-28
Tully everything you could want for your virtualization needs, OpenSolaris is fast becoming an excellent addition to the Solaris line. Although it will take some time for Xen to be fully support in Solaris 'proper', it's great to see the progress the OpenSolaris project is making.
One thing that I, personally, would avoid is the Branded Zones solution. If I can already run Linux using a fully hardware virtualized environment, with hardware acceleration to boot, why would I want to run it using OS virtualization? I always thought that Branded Zones where a stopgap solution untill something more robust come alone, i.e. Xen.
Still, questions aside, thanks to the OpenSolaris project for all the hard work!