Crazy thought... ...you could create a Linux LPAR or VM that manages a large LVM pool with thin-provisioned volumes, and export these volumes as filesystems over NFS or as block devices with AoE.
Then you could build your "thin" Linux VM guests with a small boot volume (possibly even a read-only shared one) and their "/" filesystem mounted over the NFS or AoE (given that you've configured your kernel/initramfs to support the chosen protocol). The LVM thin snapshot mechanism could even be used on the storage host to create fast-copied Linux guests with a shared base image that is only amended in a copy-on-write manner for those portions of the volume which are changed by that guest as it runs. Given a big memory cache on the storage host, this could even help provide the benefit of shared in-memory caching of all the common OS/application binaries included in that base image. And the model from Mike MacIsaac's "Sharing and Maintaining *" papers could be adapted over this model to provide on the mainframe a lightweight provisioning experience much like what can be had with container systems like Docker/CoreOS on distributed - except with the security benefits of full virtualization under z/VM. On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 11:34 AM, David Boyes <[email protected]> wrote: > SFS pretty much does exactly that -- for CMS users. You can provide access > to files stored in SFS for Linux via the CMS NFS server. Not exactly > high-performance (dispatching 2 or 3 virtual machines to handle each > transaction is kinda heavyweight), but it works. > > Working on something better. 8-) > > > I would like z/VM to provide a capability to add up DASD devices into a > kind > > of large pool and place image files like qcow2 (or something similar) in > it. > > Wether this image is presented as ECKD or something different to the > virtual > > machine doesn't really matter to me. I don't know wether this wish is > > realistic, but i like this feature on my Linux/x86 environment - > although i am a > > System z guy for 20 years by now. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or > visit > http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For more information on Linux on System z, visit > http://wiki.linuxvm.org/ > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
