conference logo

Playlist "May Contain Hackers 2022"

illumos SmartOS, specialized Type 1 Hypervisor

drscream

Overview of **SmartOS** - an illumos based distribution with **focus of virtualization**. Must be named technologies used by SmartOS: ZFS, Crossbow, Zones, DTrace, Bhyve. The talk will show you the benefits of SmartOS; Configuration and management of SmartOS virtualization technologies; Tooling on top of SmartOS.

SmartOS is a specialized Type 1 Hypervisor platform based on illumos. It supports two types of virtualization:

- OS Virtual Machines (Zones): A light-weight virtualization solution offering a complete and secure userland environment on a single global kernel, offering true bare metal performance and all the features illumos has, namely dynamic introspection via DTrace
- Hardware Virtual Machines (KVM, Bhyve): A full virtualization solution for running a variety of guest OS's including Linux, Windows, *BSD, Plan9 and more

Virtualization in SmartOS builds on top of the foundational illumos technologies inherited from OpenSolaris, namely:

- ZFS for storage virtualization
- Crossbow (dladm) for network virtualization
- Zones for virtualization and containment
- DTrace for introspection
- SMF for service management
- RBAC/BSM for auditing and role based security
- And more