Virtualization software that’s all the rage today – chiefly VMware, Microsoft Virtual Server, and Xen – lets a single computer run multiple operating systems. Now, a newer variety of virtualization is emerging that employs a lighter-weight approach so that a single operating system can be sliced into independent sections. While details of the concept are just beginning to emerge, it’s likely only a matter of time before it shows up in Windows and Linux.
time to drop the monolithic linux kernel for some componentbased one lol.
well its possible to make even mswindows lightweight, but that isnt it by default.
redesign it!
or http://www.google.nl/search?q=exo+kernel
A read of http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/understandlk/
might be enlightening for you.
Linux provides modules, which support binding of code into the kernel at run-time, without the messaging overhead of an academically correct modular kernel.
People need to learn that kernel modules don’t change the structure of the kernel one bit. It’s still a giant monolith, modules or no.
Wow, I’m really interested now in the Exo Kernel. Looks pretty sweet.
Yeah I agree, I’m actualy doing research on them. You can compile and run the MIT one if you are interested.
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/exo/distrib.html
And check out the preformance gains
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/exo.html
Of course, those performance gains are relative to various obsolete OSes.
If the OS doesn’t provide the right abstractions for applications, there are several possible solutions. The exokernel approach is to throw away all the abstractions and let the apps bang on the hardware directly (and if app developers aren’t smart enough to code to the hardware, too bad). The mainstream approach is simply to add new abstractions (e.g. sendfile) to the existing OS. It’s not clear to me that there is any practical advantage in the exokernel approach.
Exokernel apps can just use libraries. There’s no real expectation to have the app programmers bang on the hardware every time they write an app. This isn’t much different than the way graphical apps on Linux work anyways. Xlib is pretty basic, and no apps really use it directly. They use toolkits and other libraries to program against a more abstract interface that knows about things like buttons and menus.
In many ways, an Exokernel is quite similar to a Hypervisor – both provide minimal multiplexing functionality for the hardware and present very lowlevel interfaces with little abstraction of the hardware itself.
Whilst they achieve slightly different purposes, there is various work to split up an OS into multiple virtual machines. For instance, we added the ability to run device drivers in separate virtual machines under Xen. These virtual machines could be restarted in the background whilst the device was in use (!) in the user-facing OS, so that some driver crashes that might have hung the machine can be recovered from.
‘ Microsoft – whose financial incentives are opposite to SWsoft – disagrees completely. “We look at it as each one of those instances is an operating system license,” Neil said. ‘
What Microsoft is saying is clearly impossible. How would be able to pull off this billing model? By having the OS to phone home every time you try to run a new instance, and bill you later?
This would fit nicely with the new drive towards subscription revenues (e.g. Windows Live), but is very intrusive, difficult to implement and likely to be resisted by customers.
Realistically, I think they will end up restricting the number of instances by modifying the kernel for the various versions of Vista (e.g. Home: no virtualization allowed, Professional: up to 10 instances, Vista Ultimate: up to 50 instances).
In any case, the long term trend is a sort of decoupling from the “triple one” (one cpu, one pc, one os). So the Windows (retail) licencing model is obsolete.
This is not the small problem it might seem: phone companies in Europe say that one of the main obstacles to the take-up of smart phones is customer lack of familiarity with the kilobyte billing.
One up for open-source (as usual, recently).
Steff
Microsoft – whose financial incentives are opposite to SWsoft – disagrees completely. “We look at it as each one of those instances is an operating system license,” Neil said. ‘
What Microsoft is saying is clearly impossible. How would be able to pull off this billing model? By having the OS to phone home every time you try to run a new instance, and bill you later?
No, they just limit the maximum instances count – if you want run up to 10 instances (simultaneously), pay for 10 OS licences. Discounts available
The link in the article to Sun doesn’t seem very informative, it makes me think of the FreeBSD jail functionality and that’s been around for some time now. Not to mention that I’ve heard AIX had this for a long time as well.
Are they hyping something that’s new to Windows but old to other OS’?
Chroot jails lack their own IP stack among other things.
That’s true, but it’s also one of the things that makes jails more like a lightweight virtualisation to me than running another complete OS.
… like Zones?
I know this is way off topic but I’m puzzled as to why headlines for news stories can be so ungrammatical. I know that people try to use as little words as possible for more effect but would it have really killed to have put an and in that headline? As it reads now, it’s a little ambiguous.
It’s a standard journalistic practice. Headlines don’t use the same grammar that standard spoken English or standard written English use.
Yeah I know. I think it’s silly though.
“Leaner Virtualization Coming to Windows, Linux” could mean
“Leaner Virtualization Coming to Windows and Linux” or
“Leaner Virtualization Coming to Windows from Linux” or
“Leaner Virtualization Coming to Windows, not Linux” or
“Leaner Virtualization Coming to Windows because of Linux”
I’m sure there could be a few more different meanings…
But it’s always supposed to be interpreted as “Windows and Linux”. That’s the great thing about a standard.
Yeah but it’s a silly standard. Would it be that much more effort to put and in there instead of a comma?
….people try to use as little words as possible…
I wonder if they try to use small words, or just fewer of them regardless of length…?