Yury Tarasievich wrote: > Regarding the vkernel work and other exciting things happening: how > (if at all) will this affect the scope of the application base > supported by dragonfly?
In addition to what Matt and others wrote, I have a few ideas for what kind of things vkernels might be useful. For example, an admin could easily emulate a network on a single machine. Given the fact that each vkernel has its own TCP/IP stack, own routing table, packet filter etc., you can set up a network testing machine. You run several virtual network components (routers, switches, fire walls, file servers etc.), each its own vkernel, and interconnect themp with virtual vke/tap interfaces and bridges. That's a whole lot better, cheaper and faster (once you have set up vkernel templates for your virtual components) than stacking physical hardware and plugging real RJ45 cables. There are people doing such network testing and evaluation with vmware on Linux or with qemu on FreeBSD. It should certainly be possible to do the same with DragonFly's vkernels. Another use of vkernels is, of course, to build secure environments. Just like the jail(2) feature, but with an even stronger separation from the host system. I think the vkernel feature will be appreciated by people who are sufficiently paranoid. Of course, a vkernel costs a lot more resources than a jail, especially because you have to assign a certain amount of RAM to the virtual machine. While you can run hundreds of jails at once on a single machine with moderate RAM, you probably can run only a dozen vkernels (or less) on the same machine, depending on what you need to run inside them. I'm sure people will find more uses that vkernels. Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way.
