Posted by Fraser Campbell
Tue, 07 Nov 2006 03:29:00 GMT
Today the Linux-VServer project announced a new development release. Release 2.1.1 includes these major feature additions:
- Per CPU Fair/Hard Scheduler
- Per Context System Time
- Dentry Accounting and Limits
- Lock Accounting and Limits
- Slab and Page Fault Accounting
- Context Privacy (Admin)
- Context Locking (reactivated)
- Context Capability Masking
- Full JFS Filesystem Support
- Full OCFS2 Filesystem Support
Announcement is at http://linux-vserver.org/Announcements/20061106. The patch applies to stable kernel 2.6.18.2.
Posted in Containers, Linux-VServer | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Thu, 12 Oct 2006 14:28:00 GMT
Kir Kolyshkin provides a good write-up on his blog detailing the OS-level virtualization patches that are going into the 2.6.19 kernel.
I mentioned these patches last week in News from 2.6.19 article but Kir certainly provides more detailed coverage. Also I couldn’t agree more with Kir, it is great to see that the patches are coming from a variety of contributors – better code and a wider understanding are sure to result.
Read Kir’s post at http://community.livejournal.com/openvz/10141.html.
Posted in Kernel, Containers | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Thu, 05 Oct 2006 14:00:00 GMT
Some good news is appearing in the changelogs for the upcoming 2.6.19 kernel. Quite a few features useful for virtualization and general clustering:
- GFS2 cluster filesystem is likely to be added (see http://sources.redhat.com/cluster/)
- OCFS2 cluster filesystem will lose it’s “experimental” monicker
- groundwork for container based virtualization (namespace patches for utsname and SYSV IPC)
- some paravirt patches also appear likely to be included (paravirt will allow paravirtualized kernels to run under multiple hypervisors – eventually)
- UML patches (doesn’t look like anything major)
- reiser4 – nah just kidding – maybe in 2.6.20
You can read Andrew Morton’s email titled Patch: 2.6.19 -mm merge plans for details on other potential kernel improvements.
It’s great to see that the kernel will soon include 2 production ready (?) cluster file systems. It would be good to hear from anyone who has extensive testing with either OCFS2 or GFS2, I myself have done some minor testing with OCFS2 and found that if the stars were correctly aligned it functioned as expected.
Posted in Kernel, Containers | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Fri, 21 Jul 2006 04:02:00 GMT
There are currently 4 major competing implementations of containers – OpenVZ, Linux Vservers, linux-jail and an implementation apparently out of IBM (led by Eric Beiderman).
Yesterday Eric Beiderman presented “Multiple Instances of the Global Linux Namespaces”. Today there was a container BOF where use cases and implementation details were discussed.
Making the kernel container-capable requires allowing multiple instances of global names (think 2 processes with PID 1 for example). Needless to say there are many subsystems that need modification to be fully container-capable.
Read more...
Posted in OpenVZ / Virtuozzo, Containers, Linux-VServer | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Tue, 30 May 2006 02:44:00 GMT
It has been announced that Mandriva Corporate Server 4.0 will include OpenVZ virtualization technology. Obligatory press release snippet:
Mandriva, the publisher
of the popular Mandriva Linux operating system, and the OpenVZ project
today announced that the OpenVZ operating system virtualization software
will be included as part of the Mandriva Corporate Server 4.0.
OpenVZ is operating system level server virtualization software
technology, built on Linux, which creates isolated, secure virtual
environments on a single physical server—enabling greater server
utilization and superior availability with fewer performance penalties. The
virtual servers ensure that applications do not conflict and can be
re-booted independently.
See full press release here.
Posted in OpenVZ / Virtuozzo, Containers | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Fri, 07 Apr 2006 03:07:00 GMT
Lots of interesting news came out of LinuxWorld Boston this year …
Virtual Iron
Virtual Iron dropping development of their own hypervisor as reported here is a huge shift. A few other items of interest on the Virtual Iron story:
- Virtual Iron will focus entirely on supporting servers with VT or Pacifica extensions
- high speed interconnect can be anything (i.e. gigE, 10gigE or Infiniband). VFe 2.0 and earlier had supported infiniband only
This should help accelerate deployment and development of Xen, Virtual Iron has a good name, established products and many partnerships.
OpenVZ / Virtuozzo
OpenVZ announced zero downtime migration without the need for expensive SAN or NAS storage. SWSoft (make of Virtuozzo/OpenVZ) also announced their Datacenter Automation Suite. A quote from their press release:
After delivery, administrators use a web-based portal that allows departments and end users to configure and maintain these services. All resources and applications can be tracked to individual departments and users, so costs can be assigned to the appropriate business unit. The Datacenter Automation Suite can be easily extended through a flexible API.
I can see the drooling at the office already over that one, hi guys ;-)
Virtuozzo was announced as Best Virtualization Solution.
Dell
Dell CTO Kevin Kettler suggested (not that it’s new) that virtualization will play large roles in both enterprise servers and desktops. On the desktop side virtual machines will be used for secure, purpose specific machines – perhaps an Internet browser.
Xensource
Xensource announced that they are no longer developing their XenOptimizer product and that they will instead focus on XenEnterprise.
XenSource has licensed Microsoft’s Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) format to offer the ability to import virtual machines created with Microsoft Virtual Server.
Microsoft funded some of the original research behind Xen and at one time there was a para-virtualized Windows running on Xen. Those days are long gone but could they be coming back? Might Microsoft jump on the Xen bandwagon themselves? Why reinvent the wheel and wait until 2008 (or is it 2009) to enter the hypervisor market?
It has become quite clear from the Xensource press releases that they wish to focus on the Windows market.
Holger Dyroff, one of Novell’s SUSE bigwigs had the following comment:
“Both Novell and XenSource are key contributors to the Xen open source project. XenEnterprise is a good solution for companies who want to predominantly deploy Windows on Xen. If you want to deploy Linux on Xen, then SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 is the platform of choice.”
Various articles on the Internet suggest that Xen is entirely focused on the Windows market – we aren’t so sure about this but certainly the Linux market will be tough since all of the enterprise vendors are likely to integrate many Xen management features.
Microsoft
This is certainly the funniest news (and least significant) – Microsoft will now support Linux virtual machines on their Virtual Server product.
Do check Microsoft’s knowledgebase article here if getting Linux support from Microsoft is of interest to you.
Posted in Xen, Virtual Iron, Novell / SuSE, OpenVZ / Virtuozzo, Containers | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Sun, 02 Apr 2006 16:08:00 GMT
Debian unstable has recently seen the addition of prebuilt kernel images supporting the VServer project. You can get a list of the available kernel packages by searching the Debian package system here. At the moment 6 different kernels are available for various iterations of x86 and ppc hardware.
This is great news since it should mean Debian’s next version (Etch) will ship with container-style virtualization out of the box. Etch was “hopefully” scheduled for release at the end of this year but there’s a very good chance it could slip into 2007 – by 2007 we will be considering at least the 2.6.20 kernel and there’s a good chance that a lot of virtualization code will have been merged by then (not necessarily fully vserver compatible).
Posted in Debian, Containers, Linux-VServer | no comments | no trackbacks
