4 ms·

I highly recommend this talk, talking about Jails and Zones. Jails was first, but Zones took a lot of lessens from it and went further. https://www.youtube.com

I highly recommend this talk, talking about Jails and Zones. Jails was first, but Zones took a lot of lessens from it and went further. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgN8pCMLI2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgN8pCMLI2U

pjmlp 2y ago
Historically, HP-UX 10 Vaults might have been there first.
- kragen 2y ago
  probably lynn wheeler will tell you cp/67 was there first: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#72 https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#72
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Certainly, I was only focusing on the UNIX side of the history.
    - kragen 2y ago
      understandable!
  - p_l 2y ago
    CP-67 was a hypervisor, a different model altogether to the chroot/jails/zones/linux namespace evolution, the sidequest of HP Vaults and various workload partitioning schemes on systems like AIX, or the grand-daddy of chroot line, Plan 9 namespace system.
    - kragen 2y ago
      yes, i agree, except that doesn't chroot predate plan9 by almost a decade?
      - p_l 2y ago
        Thank you, somehow I missed the part of the history! Yes indeed, chroot() starts in 1979 patches ontop of V7 kernel. Plan9 namespaces probably evolved from there as Research Unix V8 was BSD based.
        kragen 2y ago
        thanks! i didn't have any idea 8th edition was bsd-based
- panick21_ 2y ago
  From what I have read, it was nowhere near as comprehensive and integrated. I only read about them once, so I don't really know.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    I would say it was easy enough for traditional UNIX admins. We used it for our HP-UX customers in telecoms, using our CRM software stack, based on Apache/Tcl/C.
dprice1 2y ago
Rereading the zones paper now makes me cringe, but I was in my 20s, what can I say. I think the argument we made that holds up is that this was designed to be a technology for server consolidation, and the opening section sets some context about how primitive things were in Sun's enterprise customer base at the time. I have a lot of admiration for what Docker dared to do-- to really think differently about the problem in a way which changed application deployment for everyone. Also I can tell you at the time that we were not especially concerned about HP or IBM's solutions in this space; nor did we face those container solutions competitively in any sales situation that I can recall. This tech was fielded in the wake of the dot-com blowout-- and customers had huge estates of servers often at comically low utilization. So this was a good opportunity for Sun to say "We are aligned with your desire to get maximum value out of the hardware you already have." It's a blast to see this come up from time to time on HN, thanks.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  > Rereading the zones paper now makes me cringe, but I was in my 20s, what can I say. Still a nice paper! > to really think differently about the problem in a way which changed application deployment for everyone. Could that also have been done with Zones? In terms of the developer experience? Seems to me Docker just thought about the develop-and-deploy pipeline differently.
  - dprice1 2y ago
    Yes, technology wise, I think it could have been done; once I left Sun/Oracle I stopped paying attention, so I can't speak to what else was done later.
  - solarengineer 2y ago
    I had done the packaging work (like what Docker has done) as part of experiments with Belenix. I used puppet and rpm5 (that I had ported to Belenix) to ensure idempotency, and used ZFS snapshots for the layers. Unfortunately, life happened and I did not take the work live.
    - 2y ago

pjmlp 2y ago

Historically, HP-UX 10 Vaults might have been there first.

kragen 2y ago
probably lynn wheeler will tell you cp/67 was there first: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#72 https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#72
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Certainly, I was only focusing on the UNIX side of the history.
  - kragen 2y ago
    understandable!
- p_l 2y ago
  CP-67 was a hypervisor, a different model altogether to the chroot/jails/zones/linux namespace evolution, the sidequest of HP Vaults and various workload partitioning schemes on systems like AIX, or the grand-daddy of chroot line, Plan 9 namespace system.
  - kragen 2y ago
    yes, i agree, except that doesn't chroot predate plan9 by almost a decade?
    - p_l 2y ago
      Thank you, somehow I missed the part of the history! Yes indeed, chroot() starts in 1979 patches ontop of V7 kernel. Plan9 namespaces probably evolved from there as Research Unix V8 was BSD based.
      - kragen 2y ago
        thanks! i didn't have any idea 8th edition was bsd-based
panick21_ 2y ago
From what I have read, it was nowhere near as comprehensive and integrated. I only read about them once, so I don't really know.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  I would say it was easy enough for traditional UNIX admins. We used it for our HP-UX customers in telecoms, using our CRM software stack, based on Apache/Tcl/C.

dprice1 2y ago

Rereading the zones paper now makes me cringe, but I was in my 20s, what can I say. I think the argument we made that holds up is that this was designed to be a technology for server consolidation, and the opening section sets some context about how primitive things were in Sun's enterprise customer base at the time. I have a lot of admiration for what Docker dared to do-- to really think differently about the problem in a way which changed application deployment for everyone. Also I can tell you at the time that we were not especially concerned about HP or IBM's solutions in this space; nor did we face those container solutions competitively in any sales situation that I can recall. This tech was fielded in the wake of the dot-com blowout-- and customers had huge estates of servers often at comically low utilization. So this was a good opportunity for Sun to say "We are aligned with your desire to get maximum value out of the hardware you already have." It's a blast to see this come up from time to time on HN, thanks.

panick21_ 2y ago
> Rereading the zones paper now makes me cringe, but I was in my 20s, what can I say. Still a nice paper! > to really think differently about the problem in a way which changed application deployment for everyone. Could that also have been done with Zones? In terms of the developer experience? Seems to me Docker just thought about the develop-and-deploy pipeline differently.
- dprice1 2y ago
  Yes, technology wise, I think it could have been done; once I left Sun/Oracle I stopped paying attention, so I can't speak to what else was done later.
- solarengineer 2y ago
  I had done the packaging work (like what Docker has done) as part of experiments with Belenix. I used puppet and rpm5 (that I had ported to Belenix) to ensure idempotency, and used ZFS snapshots for the layers. Unfortunately, life happened and I did not take the work live.
  - 2y ago