SmartOS is a specialized Type 1 Hypervisor platform based on illumos. It supports two types of virtualization:
- OS Virtual Machines (Zones, Containers): A light-weight virtualization solution offering a complete and secure userland environment on a single global kernel, offering true bare metal performance and all the features illumos has, namely dynamic introspection via DTrace
- Hardware Virtual Machines (KVM, Bhyve): A full virtualization solution for running a variety of guest OS’s including Linux, Windows, *BSD, Plan9 and more
SmartOS is a “live OS”, it is always booted via PXE, ISO, or USB Key and runs entirely from memory, allowing the local disks to be used entirely for hosting virtual machines without wasting disks for the root OS. This architecture has a variety of advantages including increased security, no need for patching, fast upgrades and recovery.
Virtualization in SmartOS builds on top of the foundational illumos technologies inherited from OpenSolaris, namely:
- ZFS for storage virtualization.
- Crossbow (dladm) for network virtualization.
- Zones for virtualization and containment.
- DTrace for introspection.
- SMF for service management.
- RBAC/BSM for auditing and role based security.
- And more.
| Working state: | Active |
| Desktop: | - |
| Init Software: | - |
| Package Management: | pkgsrc |
| Release Model: | Fixed |
| Platforms: | x86_64 |
| Home Page: | www.tritondatacenter.com/smartos |
| Developer: | Triton |
| This article is part of our Big List of Active Linux Distros which is currently under development. |
What's a Linux distribution ("distro")? |
| A distro provides the user with a desktop environment, preloaded applications, and ways to update and maintain the system. Each distro makes different choices, deciding which open source projects to install and provides custom written programs. They can have different philosophies. Some distros are intended for desktop computers, some for servers without a graphical interface, and others for special uses. Because Linux is an open source operating system, combinations of software vary between Linux distros. |