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On Mon, 2008-03-24 at 16:03 +0100, Enrico Weigelt wrote: |
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> Hi folks, |
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> |
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> |
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> after reading several articles about Mainframes and similar archs |
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> (even ancient ones like B7000), I wonder if Linux world could |
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> learn something from there. |
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> |
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> One very interesting point (IMHO) is the storage abstraction. |
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> AFAIK, Mainframes work on one large virtual memory (disks for |
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> swapping out RAM, tapes for swapping out disks, etc). |
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> This way you just allocate some piece of space (like some virtual |
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> partition) to an application (of guest). If you need more space, |
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> just plug in more disks and the OS will handle all this automatically. |
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> |
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> I'm currently planning to implement an similar approach for Linux |
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> (at least virtual block devices). |
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> |
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> What do you think about this ? |
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I am not certain this is the true for mainframes, at least not all of |
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them. But interestingly enough the Unununium project had a similar |
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philosophy, basically L1/2 cache, RAM, and disk were essentially the |
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same things, though with different price/performance ratios, and that |
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each should be indistinguishable for the user. |
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Personally I don't think that level of abstraction provides any great |
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benefit for the user, though from a strictly technical standpoint it is |
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at least interesting. |
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If you are speaking strictly of hot-pluggable memory/storage then Linux |
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has this already (if the hardware supports it), and at least Xen gives a |
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similar "mainframe" type feeling for allocating/deallocating |
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storage/memory for guests on-the-fly. |
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-a |
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-- |
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