Zones Roadmap Brainstorming Summary March 2, 2007

Solaris 8 Brand

Zone Observability
Really this is two problems:

    * Better observability needed inside of zones (i.e. better kstat
      virtualization)
          o Better compatibility with agentry
          o Existing stat tools become more useful
    * Better observability needed from the global zone
          o For system deployers and capacity planning
          o For ISVs who wish to do control plane stuff

Memory containment

    * Improve rcpad
          o Things are much better following DuckHorn but we may need to do
            more.
          o Current implementation can look broken when rcapd gets "stuck"
            doing work in the kernel
                + Parallelizing should improve performance
                + Estimate a few weeks of work
          o Improve rcapstat/rcapd interaction
                + Stats don't update often enough
    * Memory Sets
          o Need to resync with VM2 team: will VM2 use pools?

CPU containment

    * Unify pools and processor sets
          o Remove need to choose between pools mode and psets mode
    * Rewrite poold in C to remove the Java dependency
    * Consider unification of poold and intrd
    * libpool and poold - understanding newer processors
          o We have support for NUMA today, but not CMT
    * Unify poold, intr, and possibly more into cpumgmtd?

Refactor Zones Packaging

    * Today, zones are in SUNWzoneu and SUNWzoner
    * Suggestion is to move zones into core packages (SUNWcsu, SUNWcsr)
          o Various implementation simplifications result in libc
          o Makes zones available on all systems, not optional
          o Need to investigate whether this makes sense wrt. IPS project

user.* resource controls

    * Hugely useful for classic time-sharing, build-server sharing
    * default for "projects on the fly"

Enabling Agent-Based Control of Zones

    * Move configuration into SMF repository
    * Each zone becomes an SMF instance
    * Develop JMX based agent in concert with Visual Panels and SMC teams
    * Discuss agent requirements with 3rd parties as well.
    * Consider libzonecfg_public.so-- a refactored API which we could support

Accounting

    * "Zone" accounting records would vastly simplify calculating chargeback
    * Work with community to develop some free and open tools which consume
      exacct data. (the feedback we got from the field was that Xacct has
      vanished?)
    * Consider retiring SYSV accounting
          o If not, it may need some love

Storing zones on nfs servers

    * Now that we have attach this will be easier
    * Complexity of kernel work is basically unknown

Templates

    * Provide a set of pre-configured templates for users to choose from
    * Alter default template to be (more) fork-bomb proof:
          o 50% physical memory cap
          o 50% swap limit
          o 1000 LWPs max
          o ...
    * Master template idea: One place to set common resource controls for all
      of your zones.

Attach and patch / Attach and upgrade

Zones console improvements

    * Customers still asking for console logging
    * Add addition console login features

I/O bandwidth containment investigation