Hi, 1. LDoms are half firmware and half virtual I/O. The hypervisor partitions cpu threads and memory. It also provides a back-end channel for communications called logical domain channels or LDC's. The control/service domain runs its own Solaris instance with the LDM software. This software controls the hypervisor configuration and uses LDC's to proxy I/O requests from guest domains for networking and storage to the native I/O drivers. This is similar to the VIO concept in LPARs. There are different kinds of LPARs, depending on the generation of the Power platform you are using. Check out this link: http://www-941.ibm.com/collaboration/wiki/display/virtualization/VIO
As such, the comparison by IBM is not entirely true. An even more telling comparison is here: http://blogs.sun.com/jmeyer/entry/power6_goes_thud_part_vi In the end, the big selling point for LDoms is that it costs less. The software is free, you only need the hardware which is considerably cheaper than a Power6 or Power5 system. 2. With LDoms today on the T2000, you can create a split PCI-E configuration which enables you to have two I/O domains. On the UltraSPARC-T2, you can assign an NIU to a guest domain. In the future, we'll have Hybrid I/O, NPIV, and PCI-E SIG support. PCI-E hybrid I/O support will permitindividual PCI-E leaf devices to be assigned to different domains. LDoms are a new technology, but it is quickly evolving. With the price-point and the fact that you don't need an external box like you do with certain LPAR configs (HMC), it's an attractive solution. Especially when you consider the roadmap for Sun's CMT and ROCK processors. Octave *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Octave J. Orgeron Solaris Systems Engineer http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/sysadmin/ http://unixconsole.blogspot.com unixconsole at yahoo.com *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* ----- Original Message ---- From: matias <[email protected]> To: ldoms-discuss at opensolaris.org Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 3:06:17 PM Subject: [ldoms-discuss] Control and I/O domain questions Hello LDOMs experts, I have the following questions: 1- Control and I/O domains run a complete Solaris instance? IBM is touting that their approach is better since their I/O and control LPARs run "firmware" (whatever that means) is it true? 2- Is there a plan to support "physical I/O" (the other advantage IBM claims againts LDOMs)?. If so when? Thanks in advance. Regards! blogs.sun.com/maitas/ _______________________________________________ ldoms-discuss mailing list ldoms-discuss at opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/ldoms-discuss ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
