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This is running Linux binaries on Oracle Solaris (which they call SmartOS), and not the real thing that Oracle is still developing, but a fork from 2010 that is

This is running Linux binaries on Oracle Solaris (which they call SmartOS), and not the real thing that Oracle is still developing, but a fork from 2010 that is maintained by 1/10th of the developers it once had. https://www.openhub.net/p/illumos https://www.openhub.net/p/illumos. This would have been pretty rad 10 years ago, when the world still cared about Solaris. On a minor note: the post doesn't credit Oracle or Solaris, from where more than 90% of their SmartOS code comes from, until Oracle closed their code in 2010.

thinkingkong 12y ago
Thats because Oracle deserves no credit. The illumos project was created as a derivative of opensolaris which was created by Sun. The lineage is actually sort of mind boggling. If we want to be pedantic, we could complain about nobody is giving credit to BSD.
- jimpick 12y ago
  And Bell Labs.
pyre 12y ago
> until Oracle closed their code in 2010 At that point, why credit Oracle instead of Sun? Oracle finalized their deal to buy Sun in January 2010. How much did Oracle contribute between then and the announcement that they were closing their code? Edit: Oracle announced closing OpenSolaris on August 13, 2010. The last "release" of OpenSolaris was June 2009.
- bahamat 12y ago
  Oracle never publicly announced it. The last commit that I see copyrighted by Oracle is https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/commit/ea10ff14a02f7788b8ec27b4b21b925542a8cca6 https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/commit/ea10ff14a02f7... on August 18, 2010. After that, updates from Oracle silently stop. But your point stands well. Oracle only had a paltry 7-8 months of contributions. In my opinion, and I really don't know who would share this view, since Sun opened Solaris, illumos is now what Solaris was intended to be; it's not the illumos community that forked Solaris, it was Oracle.
CamTin 12y ago
This is cool RIGHT NOW because WHO THE HELL CARES WHAT THE UNDERLYING OS IS? For a user trying to bring something to market, here's what matters: 1) it's cheaper (theoretically, due to performance savings from not dealing with hardware virtualization), and 2) it looks like a docker host I honestly expected Docker Hub to expand into this kind of operation before anyone else, but Joyent, from out of nowhere, has done it instead. Why should anybody care that they're doing it with a Solaris-based kernel, Linux, on NetBSD, as MAME machines, VIC-20 cartridges, or with 1402 machine images and druidic spells? To the user, it's just a magical world where your Docker host always expands to whatever size you need it to (and you of course get a bill for the usage). The real test will be whether or not this is cost-competitive to deploying Docker swarms on other public cloud providers. If the performance and tenancy claims are as they claim (or even the same order of magnitude, which seems reasonable), and they're not insanely greedy with pricing, this could be the biggest tech since Linux itself.
- jgrowl 12y ago
  I was wondering how this would compete with docker swarm. Is my understanding right that docker swarm basically lets you run an agent on individual docker hosts whereas triton will let you run a single virtual docker host?
  - CamTin 12y ago
    Docker swarm basically lets you say "I want to deploy this image somewhere, you choose from the available actual machines" based on constraints that you've set up. You also had to actually set up the machines themselves (though docker-machine is intended to take some of the pain out of this). sdc-docker (the tech behind this, Triton) basically lets you just keep deploying containers without any regard for the actual underlying machines (or EC2 instances, DO droplets, Linodes) that you are actually deploying to. It's like docker-machine + docker-swarm but all automatic and managed by guys on the other side of the curtain, so you can just write the checks and keep the Docker goodness flowing.
    - nemothekid 12y ago
geofft 12y ago
The author worked for the Solaris team in Sun back when it was actually Sun and back when Solaris was actually being developed. Among other things, he was behind the invention of DTrace. He left the company shortly after the Oracle acquisition, after working for Sun for 14 years. I sorta feel like that gives him the right to credit or not credit Sun (and especially Oracle) as he sees fit.
- binarycrusader 12y ago
  Solaris is actually still being developed; I have no idea why you think otherwise. If anything, Oracle's been on a hiring spree since the acquisition and has grown the systems business considerably compared to Sun. If you think Solaris isn't still in development, just wait for the Solaris 12 announcement details.
  - geofft 12y ago
    I meant that with a bit of snark, which might have been completely misplaced. I did realize after writing that that Solaris is still under development. But most, if not all, of the Solaris that SmartOS incorporates (and DTrace and zones, specifically) was developed in the past at Sun, which is what 'redwood631 was referring to. That's also the only Solaris that I use personally (via OpenIndiana). I will keep an eye out for Solaris 12 though, but I probably won't be using it; I have enough closed-source OSes in my life already. :(
    - bahamat 12y ago
      Companies don't innovate, people do. All of the technologies that illumos (and Solaris) is now known for (ZFS, Dtrace, crossbow, zones, RBAC, SMF, FMA) were developed by small teams of engineers taking charge. And nearly all of the developers of those technologies are now in the illumos community and notably not at Oracle. Specifically, Dtrace is primarily the brain child of Bryan Cantrill of Joyent (co-developed with Adam Leventhal of Delphix and Mike Shapiro who left Oracle in 2010) and Jerry Jelinek of Joyent was one of the primary developers of Zones. Matt Ahrens and George Wilson, co-developers of ZFS along with Jeff Bohnwick, are now at Delphix with Adam. Though, as far as I know, Jeff is no longer involved with ZFS development. All major features of Solaris 11 were developed in OpenSolaris. Solaris 11.1 major features are improvements to SMF, the installer, and the addition of ASLR. Major features in Solaris 11.2 are "kernel zones", OpenStack and SDN [1]. That's very little to show for five years of development. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system)

thinkingkong 12y ago

Thats because Oracle deserves no credit. The illumos project was created as a derivative of opensolaris which was created by Sun. The lineage is actually sort of mind boggling. If we want to be pedantic, we could complain about nobody is giving credit to BSD.

jimpick 12y ago
And Bell Labs.

pyre 12y ago

> until Oracle closed their code in 2010 At that point, why credit Oracle instead of Sun? Oracle finalized their deal to buy Sun in January 2010. How much did Oracle contribute between then and the announcement that they were closing their code? Edit: Oracle announced closing OpenSolaris on August 13, 2010. The last "release" of OpenSolaris was June 2009.

bahamat 12y ago
Oracle never publicly announced it. The last commit that I see copyrighted by Oracle is https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/commit/ea10ff14a02f7788b8ec27b4b21b925542a8cca6 https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/commit/ea10ff14a02f7... on August 18, 2010. After that, updates from Oracle silently stop. But your point stands well. Oracle only had a paltry 7-8 months of contributions. In my opinion, and I really don't know who would share this view, since Sun opened Solaris, illumos is now what Solaris was intended to be; it's not the illumos community that forked Solaris, it was Oracle.

CamTin 12y ago

This is cool RIGHT NOW because WHO THE HELL CARES WHAT THE UNDERLYING OS IS? For a user trying to bring something to market, here's what matters: 1) it's cheaper (theoretically, due to performance savings from not dealing with hardware virtualization), and 2) it looks like a docker host I honestly expected Docker Hub to expand into this kind of operation before anyone else, but Joyent, from out of nowhere, has done it instead. Why should anybody care that they're doing it with a Solaris-based kernel, Linux, on NetBSD, as MAME machines, VIC-20 cartridges, or with 1402 machine images and druidic spells? To the user, it's just a magical world where your Docker host always expands to whatever size you need it to (and you of course get a bill for the usage). The real test will be whether or not this is cost-competitive to deploying Docker swarms on other public cloud providers. If the performance and tenancy claims are as they claim (or even the same order of magnitude, which seems reasonable), and they're not insanely greedy with pricing, this could be the biggest tech since Linux itself.

jgrowl 12y ago
I was wondering how this would compete with docker swarm. Is my understanding right that docker swarm basically lets you run an agent on individual docker hosts whereas triton will let you run a single virtual docker host?
- CamTin 12y ago
  Docker swarm basically lets you say "I want to deploy this image somewhere, you choose from the available actual machines" based on constraints that you've set up. You also had to actually set up the machines themselves (though docker-machine is intended to take some of the pain out of this). sdc-docker (the tech behind this, Triton) basically lets you just keep deploying containers without any regard for the actual underlying machines (or EC2 instances, DO droplets, Linodes) that you are actually deploying to. It's like docker-machine + docker-swarm but all automatic and managed by guys on the other side of the curtain, so you can just write the checks and keep the Docker goodness flowing.
  - nemothekid 12y ago

geofft 12y ago

The author worked for the Solaris team in Sun back when it was actually Sun and back when Solaris was actually being developed. Among other things, he was behind the invention of DTrace. He left the company shortly after the Oracle acquisition, after working for Sun for 14 years. I sorta feel like that gives him the right to credit or not credit Sun (and especially Oracle) as he sees fit.

binarycrusader 12y ago
Solaris is actually still being developed; I have no idea why you think otherwise. If anything, Oracle's been on a hiring spree since the acquisition and has grown the systems business considerably compared to Sun. If you think Solaris isn't still in development, just wait for the Solaris 12 announcement details.
- geofft 12y ago
  I meant that with a bit of snark, which might have been completely misplaced. I did realize after writing that that Solaris is still under development. But most, if not all, of the Solaris that SmartOS incorporates (and DTrace and zones, specifically) was developed in the past at Sun, which is what 'redwood631 was referring to. That's also the only Solaris that I use personally (via OpenIndiana). I will keep an eye out for Solaris 12 though, but I probably won't be using it; I have enough closed-source OSes in my life already. :(
  - bahamat 12y ago
    Companies don't innovate, people do. All of the technologies that illumos (and Solaris) is now known for (ZFS, Dtrace, crossbow, zones, RBAC, SMF, FMA) were developed by small teams of engineers taking charge. And nearly all of the developers of those technologies are now in the illumos community and notably not at Oracle. Specifically, Dtrace is primarily the brain child of Bryan Cantrill of Joyent (co-developed with Adam Leventhal of Delphix and Mike Shapiro who left Oracle in 2010) and Jerry Jelinek of Joyent was one of the primary developers of Zones. Matt Ahrens and George Wilson, co-developers of ZFS along with Jeff Bohnwick, are now at Delphix with Adam. Though, as far as I know, Jeff is no longer involved with ZFS development. All major features of Solaris 11 were developed in OpenSolaris. Solaris 11.1 major features are improvements to SMF, the installer, and the addition of ASLR. Major features in Solaris 11.2 are "kernel zones", OpenStack and SDN [1]. That's very little to show for five years of development. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system)