On Thu, Jan 31, 2002 at 08:42:17AM -0600, Kinnear, Mike wrote: > We are in the process of creating a production LINUX world within a z/VM > environment on an IFL. We are planning to create 20-30 instances for various > test and production application reasons. Is there any way for these various > guests to share the kernel or any other software? I have read a Marist doc. > on using DCSS to use for the IPL code, but not for any operating system > software. We are concerned about redundant data storage and more > importantly, software maintenance and management of the basic operating > system and key utilities. We already are experiencing a management nightmare > due to various application needs to install patches and updates and trying > to determine what fixes we should put where and when.
Sharing /usr read-only is very easy and lets you keep a single template instance. If you want to make sure everybody's RPM db, etc., then stay in sync you probably will need NIS to distribute that info. If you get tricky about it you can share most code: Rick Troth knows a lot more than I do about sharing things besides /usr, but the space-savings you get from simply having everyone mount /usr read-only is huge compared to how easy it is to do. Adam
