Larry Pieniazek:
That might be an argument for going with Solaris
Zones... we already use
Solaris, and it doesn't introduce any new OS in the virtualised machines. I
know Solaris isn't quite as cool as other OS's... :)
i'd inclined to agree that from a management point of view, Solaris would be
the best choice. but when the login server ran Solaris, we had the problem
that people didn't know how to use it (most of our users are only familiar
with Linux); that would probably be even more of a problem when users are
expected to run the entire system. (e.g., compiling software...)
i'm also considering Linux (BrandZ) zones under a Solaris host; this has the
advantage that users see Linux, but it's integrated with Solaris and is much
lighter than other Linux virtualisation solutions (like Xen). the downside
is that only Linux 2.4 is currently emulated, which restricts the Linux
distributions that can be used (Debian 4.0 and CentOS 3.x will work, but more
recent versions won't). 2.6 emulation is being worked on, but isn't ready
for production yet...
- river.