Hi!
Will there be an adoption toolkit, to let the people use the S10 brand while
testing it, and starting the migration process?
Thanks a lot, and best regards,
HeCSa.
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 8:28 AM, Jerry Jelinek gerald.jeli...@sun.comwrote:
Enclosed is a first draft of a spec. for the S10
brand which we plan to submit for a PSARC
inception review. Please send us any comments
or questions.
Thanks,
Jerry
---
S10C: A Solaris 10 Branded Zone for Solaris.Next
Gerald Jelinek, Jordan Vaughan
Solaris Virtualization Technologies
[A note on terminology: This document uses the terms Solaris 10 and
Solaris.Next very frequently. As such, the abbreviations S10 and
S.next respectively are used interchangeably with the longer forms.
The term virtualization is abbreviated as V12N.]
Part 1: Introduction
Each new minor release of Solaris brings with it the well known problems
of slow user adoption, slow ISV support and concerns about compatibility.
The compatibility concerns will be more pronounced with the release of
S.next since it's anticipated that there will be greater than normal
user-visible changes (e.g. the packaging system, etc.).
Fortunately, since the last minor release of Solaris (Solaris 10), V12N
techniques have become widespread and V12N can be used as a solution to
ease the transition to the new version of Solaris. Zones[1] combined
with a brand[2] are particularly well suited for this task since the host
system is actually running S.next, whereas this is not necessarily the
case with other V12N solutions. In addition, zones are usable on any
system which runs S.next, which is also not the case with other V12N
alternatives.
We already have a proven track record delivering this sort of
zones/brand based solution to enable running earlier versions of Solaris
on S10 [3, 4], so in one sense this case breaks little new ground.
However, the earlier 'solaris8' and 'solaris9' brands were used to host
releases that are very static as compared to hosting a zone running S10.
In addition, S.next can be expected to continue to change rapidly for
the forseeable future. Given this, a 'solaris10' brand for S.next poses
additional challenges for projects on both the S10 and S.next sides of
the system. Many of these challenges are outside of the scope of an
architectural review and include developer education, testing and
procedural changes. However, the existence of this brand could
potentially impact future projects in various ways and at a minimum will
require ARC consideration for future reviews. The existence of this
brand can be seen as a potential tax on all projects which work on both
sides of the user/kernel boundary for both S10 and S.next.
The benefits of the brand are as follows:
For customers:
- Provides a solution to cope with compatibility differences between
S10 and S.next
- Protects investment in S10 infrastructure, training, and internal
support
- Minimize the cost of consolidating Solaris 10 systems
- Enables deployment of new technologies in S.next (e.g., crossbow)
while still running applications on S10, thereby limiting risk to
production environment
- Avoids or delays required application recertification
For Sun:
- S.next is adopted sooner
- Provide a Solaris compatibility environment for S.next
- Sun is a solution provider easing the burden of getting to S.next
- Provide cross-platform virtualization solution for S.next across
all hardware (it is the only V12N solution on M-Series)
This has been identified as a required feature for S.next.
=== Project Overview ===
As with the earlier 'solaris8' and 'solaris9' brands, this project
delivers the following:
- A Branded Container which emulates Solaris 10's user environment,
based on the BrandZ infrastructure provided with zones.
This brand is called 'solaris10'. Only Solaris 10u8 and
beyond will be supported and tested in the zone.
- A mechanism for archiving existing Solaris 10 systems and for
redeploying those archives into the branded zone. This
process is referred to as p2v and uses the same techniques
as the 'solaris8' and 'solaris9' brands.
In addition, the following additional capabilities will be provided
as compared to the 'solaris8' and 'solaris9' brands.
- This brand will be supported on all hardware architectures
that run S.next (sun4v, sun4u and x86). The specific platforms,
particularly sun4u, will be the same as are certified for S.next.
- A virtual to virtual or v2v mechanism for archiving existing
Solaris 10 native zones and for redeploying those archives into
the branded zone on S.next will be provided. The process will be
very similar to the existing zone migration [5] feature except that
the zone's brand will be changed as part
