Inside VMware's 'Virtual Datacenter OS'

snydeq writes "Neil McAllister cuts through VMware's marketing hype to examine the potential impact of VMware's newly pronounced 'virtual datacenter OS' — which the company has touted as the death knell for the traditional OS. Literally an operating system for the virtual datacenter, VDC OS is an umbrella concept to build services and APIs that make it easier to provision and allocate resources for apps in an abstract way. Under the system, McAllister writes, apps are reduced to 'application workloads' tailored through vApp, a tool that will allow developers to 'encapsulate the entire app infrastructure in a single bundle — servers and all.' The concept could help solve the current bugbear of programming, parallel processing, McAllister concludes, assuming VMware succeeds."

Comments

Re:encapsulation and abstraction

[Martin Blank]

I see VDC OS as a possibly bigger headache for those of us in security. Where I work, we already have issues with the ESX systems. VMWare's virtual switches are more akin to virtual hubs. Efficiently segregating the individual servers from each other within the same virtual network is difficult if not impossible.

Some solutions may be coming up for this. We've talked to Checkpoint and Reflex about their technologies to address these issues. Even so, I can't help but think that virtualization providers are in a race to make the sweetest, softest, gooiest center possible for attackers. It's only the threat of host compromise and VM escape that has allowed us to convince management to not approve multi-homing an individual host across multiple DMZs. I don't know how much longer that will last, though.

Re:It's just that all current OS's are lacking

[the_B0fh]

See, all these baby trolls who think they know it all. Before you mod parent as troll, go read about LPARs.

Why can't mod points be given only to intelligent modders?