VFS ROADMAP (and vfs01.patch stage 1 available for testing)

[Matthew Dillon]

:Matthew Dillon wrote:
:
:>     It is my intention to allow system resources to be partitioned off so
:>     your workstation could be a standalone box but also provide resources
:>     (such as a disk partition, memory, cpu, and networking services) to
:>     a cluster, or to several clusters.  
:> 
:
:After reading this description, it struck me that this sounds kind of 
:like a jail ... a multi-machine jail.
:
:Or...if clusters are separated enough from the machines they're running 
:on, could you perhaps turn it around and get jail functionality for free 
:  with a cluster defined on just one machine?
:
:Or is that kind of thinking way off base of the vision?  Either way, 
:what you describe sounds terribly cool.
:
:	Barry

    Yes, I think you could.  The cluster abstraction would be
    a superset of the jail abstraction.  So much so, in fact, that the
    jail concept would be obsoleted.   e.g. the cluster will partition off
    cpu, network, and memory resources.  In fact, I think the cluster
    abstraction might even end up running a subset of the kernel itself as
    a loadable module... kind of a kernel within a kernel.   This would
    automatically isolate resource monitoring and related activities and
    sysctls to just what is visible within the pseudo-kernel, and the
    'real' kernel (or the 'parent' of the pseudo kernel) would control
    the actual hard resource allocation and scheduling.

    It will be a while before my thoughts solidify on how best to 
    implement a cluster (and input is always welcome).  

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxx>