The way VB works today is nice and handy if you use it to test installations, but a bit awkward for use as a primary OS.
So, I thought, why not make a minimal Linux dist that boots quickly straight into VB, allowing you to decide which guests to run, as well as setting defaults. A way to get "multi boot"-like capabilities, except that you can boot into several OS's at once. We would not see or need an entire Linux OS with applications and all, just a boot loader that starts quickly and allows us to start and control virtual machines.
OK, then let's take it a step further. VB can freeze a guest OS and resume later. Let's say we have a cluster of servers. On these, we run several guests for load balancing. It would not be hard to make an interface to freeze a guest and resume it on another host. Suddenly, we have a setup where we can just move not only a process, but an entire guest OS between servers just like that, a simple assignment. If a machine fails, just start the guest OS on another machine. The line between the physical machines would be blurred.
Of course, this is not trivial, but all the major components exist. We have minimalistic Linux distros to start from. We have the capability to freeze and resume. We have a user interface, even if it needs to be extended somewhat. The main addition would probably be the ability to control all hosts from a single GUI.
Not trivial, but also not a monumental task, and it would turn VB into a VM-ware-killer.
Any thoughts?
VirtualBox OS?
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Technologov
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It seems to be already developedTroberg wrote:I'm not talking about building a complete OS, just tweaking an existing Linux distribution to provide a complete virtual machine cluster solution.
http://www.qumranet.com/wp/kvm_wp.pdf"Great minds think alike." : )Troberg wrote:So, I thought, why not make a minimal Linux dist that boots quickly straight into VB, allowing you to decide which guests to run, as well as setting defaults. A way to get "multi boot"-like capabilities, except that you can boot into several OS's at once. We would not see or need an entire Linux OS with applications and all, just a boot loader that starts quickly and allows us to start and control virtual machines.
I also had the first part of your idea recently. I installed gentoo with minimal components and used that. I haven't gotten it to work as well as I want, yet, though. : )
Edit: punctuation
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Technologov
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VMware ESX Server is just a RHEL 3 with some vmware binaries already installed and a tweaked kernel. You get *almost* the exact same thing if you install RHEL 3 (or CentOS 3) and choose the "minimal" option during installation and then install VMWare Server - minus several usability features.Technologov wrote:>It seems to be already developed
KVM is not an OS. It is a virtualizer, that is integrated into the kernel. No more and no less. In KVM's case, The OS is Linux.
VMware ESX Server is much closer to a real OS.
Distro to start?
I'm not by any means even decent at Linux yet, but I've been playing with DSL (www.damnsmalllinux.org) and its a 50mb ISO that you can load to memory (boot: dsl toram) and runs dang well. That'd be an awesome place to start for someone who knows something about it. Might even be able to just load it live, download VB and install it, then remaster the CD (to dvd maybe?) and could load a static image of the VM and save it to the local disk afterwards.. just an idea..