Operating Systems Still Matter In a Containerized World

New submitter Jason Baker writes: With the rise of Docker containers as an alternative for deploying complex server-based applications, one might wonder, does the operating system even matter anymore? Certainly the question gets asked periodically. Gordon Haff makes the argument on Opensource.com that the operating system is still very much alive and kicking, and that a hardened, tuned, reliable operating system is just as important to the success of applications as it was in the pre-container data center.

Comments

Of Course They Do!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stripped to the bone, an operating system is a set of APIs that abstract the real or virtual hardware to make applications buildable by mere mortals. Some work better than others under various circumstances, so the OS matters no matter where it's running.

Re:Of Course They Do!

[DivineKnight]

I can't wait for programmers, sometime in 2020, to rediscover the performance boost they receive running an OS on 'bare metal'...

Re:Of Course They Do!

[philip.paradis]

Modern virtualization doesn't have the overhead the GP cited; the 20% RAM loss and 30% CPU capacity loss numbers cited by the AC you responded to are absurd fabrications. I use KVM on Debian hosts to power a large number of VMs running a variety of operating systems, and the loss of CPU bandwidth and throughput with guests is negligible due to hardware virt extensions in modern CPUs (where "modern" in fact means "most 64-bit AMD and Intel CPUs from the last few years, plus a small number of 32-bit CPUs"). Using the "host" CPU setting in guests can also directly expose all host CPU facilities, resulting in virtually no losses in capabilities for mathematically-intensive guest operations. As far as memory is concerned, far from resulting in a 20% loss of available RAM, I gain a significant amount of efficiency in overall memory utilization using KSM (again, used with KVM). On a host running many similar guests, extremely large gains in memory deduplication may be seen. Running without KSM doesn't result in significant memory consumption overhead either, as KVM itself hardly uses any RAM.

The only significant area of loss seen with modern virtualization is disk IO performance, but this may be largely mitigated through use of correctly tuned guest VM settings and updated VirtIO drivers. The poster you replied to is ignorant at best, and trolling at worst.

Advert?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this just an advert for Docker?

Re:People seem to be forgetting what a server is

[DivineKnight]

More along the lines of "they never knew what a server was, and would artfully dodge your phone calls, elevator meetings, and eye contact to avoid accidentally imbibing any knowledge that might furnish them with this understanding; all they know is that the slick salesman with the nice sports car and itemized billing said they'd magically do everything from their end and never bother them, and they believed them."

Everything new is old

[starfishsystems]

"The operating system is therefore not being configured, tuned, integrated, and ultimately married to a single application as was the historic norm, but it's no less important for that change."

What? I had to read this a couple of times. The historic norm was for a single operating system to serve multiple applications. Only with the advent of distributed computing did it become feasible, and only with commodity hardware did it become cost-effective, to dedicate a system instance to a single application. Specialized systems for special purposes came into use first, but the phenomenon didn't really begin to take off in a general way until around 1995.

Re: People seem to be forgetting what a server is

[frikken lazerz]

The server is the guy who brings me my food at restaurants. I guess people aren't eating at restaurants anymore because the economy is tough.