Hello! Great points Scott. If I may add my very personal view, I would say that I see even more reasons for going RedHat-only on the host node.
It seems to me that RedHat made a remarkable work of bringing lower-level features to Linux (think of KSM, KVM, the merging of the FUSE enhancements from OpenVZ and so on), whereas the Debian team did the same on a higher level (I'm not a Debian expert but their APT package manager comes to mind as an example of a remarkable addition), not to mention Canonical's huge success on desktops. So I agree that on the host node a RH-derived kernel looks like the best fit: at the end of the day, the host doesn't run higher level apps. Also, before reading Scott's points, I sent another message to the list proposing the idea of merging an online memory tester (specifically, RAMpage) into the VZ kernel. I see it as a good example of what we're discussing here: a potentially valuable addition for the *server* market that works at a very low level, thus difficult to be ported to (and maintained on) different kernels. As far as I'm concerned, I would be happy to trade multiple kernels support in exchange for more rock-solid features added to the VZ kernel. (my 2 cents, of course) Best, Corrado Fiore ___________________________________________ > On 4 Jun 2016, at 6:25 AM, Scott Dowdle <dow...@montanalinux.org> wrote: > > Greetings, > > The sub-subject of this should be: OpenVZ/Virtozzo 7 packages distro packages? > > ----- Original Message ----- >> Is it possible to build kernel packages/userspace utilities for >> debian jessie as well ? >> >> Right now there is only kernel/userspaces utilities for debian wheezy >> and userspace only for debian jessie. > > Before I start my semi-rant, I want to make it clear that I'm just a user and > I have no idea what Virtuozzo's plans are. Clear? Ok. Now to start. > > Will there be packages OpenVZ/Virtozzo 7 packages for other distros? I don't > think it is a good idea. As you know, V7 is its own distro... rebuilt from > EL7 (CentOS). It supports both containers and KVM virtual machines... and > offers its own library based tools as well as integrates with libvirt (and > the goal is to upstream the libvirt stuff although I don't know the status of > that). There are a lot more userland tools than the small handful of things > used in OpenVZ Legacy. I believe there are also some lower level distro > packages that have been modified to meet the needs of V7. > > The host node is for running VMs and containers... not other services... not > user accounts... just for virtualization. The strength of say Debian... is > that it is built for a wide range of arches and has a very, very big package > collection. None of that is needed for a V7 virtualization host. Debian is > a "universal OS" aka general purpose. What Virtozzo is offering is a distro > built just for the purpose. > > The work involved in building all of the V7 packages for other distros would > be significant. Then what about the (probably very small number of) distro > packages that V7 would want/need to replace? What about testing it? Both > KVM VMs and containers? How big is that test matrix going to be? Your > distro already has libvirt and KVM packages but you aren't going to try and > use those are you? You want the ones tested with V7. > > Red Hat bought Qumranet... and is the main driving force behind KVM, libvirt, > a significant chunk of every mainline Linux kernel's development (#1 > identifiable company on most all kernel releases)... they ship and support > KVM. They have their own virtualization products built on top of it (well > several if you count OpenShift and all of its flavors and RHEV). They are > the main driving force behind gcc and glibc, etc. They sponsor a lot of > work. RHEL and the EL clones are supported for a long time. Their kernels > are supported for a long time. It is the most appropriate platform (in my > opinion) for building on top of especially when that product is related to a > core competency of EL which is KVM, libvirt, etc. > > When you have a product that has a lot of packages and requires it to all > work together well... trying to shoehorn those all onto multiple distros is a > lot of work. There are two basic approaches... bundle everything you use... > and totally ignore what the underlying distro provides... OR support a > limited number of distros and build specifically for them (the Zimbra > approach... with the number of supported distros dwindling over time). I > don't think either of those would be a good approach giving the nature of a > newish company with a new major release coming out. > > How long is it taking Virtuozzo to get the product to the market after EL7 > was initially released? How long of a lifespan does it have left on that > platform? Compare that to the lifespan of other distros. If V7 was targeted > at a Debian release how much life would that version of Debian have left in > it? It seems to me that about half of the distro lifespan would be devel > time leaving only half of it for deployment time. > > Are Red Hat, Gentoo, SUSE users demanding that Proxmox VE make packages for > them? Not really. Proxmox VE is derived from Debian and can probably be > used easily on any Debian-based distro that uses the stock Debian repos... > but anything else... forget about it. > > Now having said all of that... if you can make a compelling argument on why > Debian (for the host node) would be a better distro to build upon for this > use case (or any other distro), I'm all eyes/ears. > > Or if someone wants to take all of the code and built packages on their own > for other distros that's fine... but expecting Virtuozzo to do it I think is > asking too much. > > TYL, > -- > Scott Dowdle > 704 Church Street > Belgrade, MT 59714 > (406)388-0827 [home] > (406)994-3931 [work] > _______________________________________________ > Users mailing list > Users@openvz.org > https://lists.openvz.org/mailman/listinfo/users _______________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@openvz.org https://lists.openvz.org/mailman/listinfo/users
