On Oct 9, 2007, at 11:30 AM, Dave Schroeder wrote:
On Oct 9, 2007, at 10:10 AM, Dan Shoop wrote:
On Oct 8, 2007, at 7:36 AM, Dave Schroeder wrote:
Perhaps someday Apple will work to allow Mac OS X Server
virtualization on its own hardware...
Of course you realize that Mach already incorporates
virtualization from the kernel, right?
...and we can effectively use that to run multiple instances of Mac
OS X Server, a la traditional VMs, Solaris zones, or LPARs how?
It doesn't really matter what Mach is capable of if such
functionality doesn't translate to a supported, high-level
featureset in the product.
Hey, it's further along than the non-products that aren't being
offered commercially ;)
The support for hosting OSen is already there and being used today in
every copy of OS X you run. It's just that OS X only launches one OS
on top of Mach. It *could* launch more instances.
As for translating into a commercial "product" that would probably
violate the license agreement for Mach.
As for someone deciding to work on it and develop the technology into
something useable, that's a mater for developers so interested.
That's what FOSS is about. Or creative people at educational
institutions that promote computer sciences. It's how we got Mach to
begin with and VMs is something Mach's been doing for some time.
So the point really seems to be that there isn't enough of a demand
for virtualized OS X. Why? Today's big IT discussions are about SOA.
In part the reason VM has caught on so hotly as of late was to
consolidate services on hardware, something *nix based systems do
very well already. Windows on the other hand doesn't lend itself to
running multiple services -- or even a single instance of any service
-- on one box. It's what led blade computing too. Windows crashes
more than anyone would like. The only other's using VM are those with
multiple OSen they want to run b/c they have multiple applications
that they need those OSen for. (e.g. running Solaris, Linux and
Windows).
If people are looking to run multiple copies of OS X on a single box
they might want to look closer at what they're asking for. There's
probably reasons why not to in most cases.
