Operating system innovation

Add comment January 23rd, 2007

There’s been quite a buzz in the last few months about virtual appliances, with VMware’s Appliance Marketplace and Certification program, and Microsoft’s embrace of vm’s for evaluation software. One happy outcome from my point of view is a revival in operating system innovation. There have been some nifty new OS designs emerging as packaged virtual machines lately:

• Liquid VM is a new BEA product that runs Java with a minimal OS – one with under 200 primitives rather than the thousands in a typical OS API. This Java Virtual Machine is radically smaller than a conventional OS. It’s claimed to perform twice as fast as Java in a virtualized conventional OS, while being much simpler to operate and having fewer potential security holes.
• Transitive is a company that provides software to allow programs compiled on one type of processor to run on another. They provided the engine for Apple’s Rosetta system, for example. They recently released their Quick Transit SPARC-to-Linux package as a VMware virtual machine. In essence, their VM extends x86-based Linux to run SPARC-based Solaris programs, in native SPARC object form. The combination of Linux and their software provides a hybrid Linux+Solaris operating system environment, on any x86 platform. It’s great for enterprises that have SPARC apps that are too expensive to rewrite, but that need to move to newer, faster, and more maintainable hardware.
• rPath uses the Conary packager for Linux to build a custom Linux distribution for any application, automatically. This custom Linux installs only the pieces of the operating system that are those necessary to support the application, resulting in an OS that is smaller, easier to maintain, and more secure. (Some appliances are really small; an LAMP VM clocks in at 190MB.) rPath’s rBuilder can be used to construct virtual or physical appliances, and to generate customer update packages after the appliance is installed.

These innovative approaches are greatly helped by virtualization. The OS in a virtual appliance runs on constant and simplified “virtual hardware”, so it needs none of the complex driver sets and hardware configuration logic of a conventional OS. And the appliance OS has only one application to support, so the irrelevant parts of the OS can be stripped away or disabled, making the appliance smaller, faster and more secure.

OS’s had been converging, and in my opinion, getting boring. In a geeky way I find these new approaches pretty exciting.

After a break

Add comment January 23rd, 2007

It’s been a couple of months since the last post here. While at VMworld, we considered blogging, but there was so much coverage by the press, bloggers, and VMware itself, that it felt redundant. As usual, VMworld left us feeling there were loads of new developments to keep track of; and meanwhile, we had some new customers that kept us busy. Finally we have some breathing room.

So starting today we resume. You can expect comments on virtualization applied to technical areas, like system testing, networking, and software distribution (“virtual appliances”). And observations about our customers’ applications, like on-demand computing, sensor and mobile networks, and software-as-a-service. Thanks for tuning in!