Xen for Human Beings

[Reinhard Tartler]

I'm CC'ing ubuntu-sounder at lists.ubuntu.com, let's please continue this
thread there. This is getting more and more into a chatter than
development discussion.

On Wed, Apr 26, 2006 at 10:36:46AM -0700, Erast Benson wrote:
> > good plan btw! Have you looked at solaris zones? I think it would be a
> > good way to model the xen virtual machines after them.
> >
> > have fun! :)
> 
> Yes, Solaris 10 zones are nice but limited in the way that it can only
> "run" another instance of the same version of Solaris. It is useful to
> some extent and runs without *any* performance loss.

Sounds very similar to what linux vserver patches provide. [1] The kernels
in debian/unstable seem to already provide such a kernel variant.
 
> But upcoming BrandZ[1] (Solaris 11 zones) will have additional syscall
> layer which will allow to run OpenSolaris-based distribution like
> NexentaOS[2] without *any* performance loss and Linux-based distributions
> with minimal performance loss (5-10%), which is way more efficient than
> Xen/VMware/etc..
> 
> BrandZ patches are freely available now and we are planning to include
> them into the NexentaOS once they are part of an official build.

Well, from what I understand, they offer (on i386 only) some syscall,
to enable x86 binaries to run on a solaris kernel. Right? Does this mean
you can debootstrap ubuntu 5.10 or ubuntu 6.06 in a solaris brand and
use all functionality? What about tools like iptables, tc and iproute2?

Gruesse,
	Reinhard

[1] http://linux-vserver.org/