[CentOS] Virtualisation

Mon Mar 5 15:16:57 UTC 2007
Adam Thompson <athompson at sjsd.net>

CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> writes:
>Matt Shields wrote:
>> Not totally acurate.  All VMWare servers (including ESX) are
>> customized versions of RedHat Enterprise linux.
>AFAIK this is not true, ESX has its own "kernel".
>Ralph

ESX Server is a "split-brain" product, much in the same way RTLinux
implements hard a real-time kernel that runs the regular Linux kernel
as a non-realtime process.

ESX server has its own microkernel ("hypervisor", technically) that
runs a version of Linux as the "service console".  In other words, ESX
uses Linux to access the console hardware (display, kbd, mouse, etc.),
but does not use Linux to provide virtualization services.  I don't
know exactly how disk and network I/O are handled.

And yes, the version of Linux is derived from RHEL, but it is
emphatically NOT RHEL, nor is it a re-compile like CentOS, nor is it a
"clone" of any sort.  It's probably fairly accurate to call it a "fork"
of a custom rebundling of RHEL from some point in the past.

-Adam Thompson
 Divisional IT Department,  St. James-Assiniboia School Division
 150 Moray St., Winnipeg, MB, R3J 3A2
 athompson at sjsd.net / tel: (204) 837-5886 x222 / fax: (204) 885-3178

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