CoreOS: Linux for cloud computing and data centers

CoreOS: Linux for cloud computing and data centers

Bkjia has long been a popular operating system for cloud computing and data centers. However, since CoreOS was released, some people finally designed a Linux for cloud computing and data centers.

If you manage the cloud or data center at ordinary times, you may be running CentOS, RedHat Enterprise LinuxRHEL), SUSE Linux enterprise-level server SLES) or Ubuntu. It is true that these are excellent Server Linux distributions, but none of them were designed to be deployed on hundreds of thousands of servers at the same time. Now we have such a release: CoreOS.

In CoreOS, all applications run in the Docker container.

CoreOS has been developed for more than two years. It was designed from scratch to run data centers and cloud computing. But it is quite curious that CoreOS is not based on one of the traditional Server Linux families like Debian or RedHat. On the contrary, it is based on Google's desktop Chrome OS.

Why? Because CoreOS is designed to be light and small. Developers claim that CoreOS only needs 40% MB of memory to run, and the memory occupied during startup is less than that of normal Linux servers.

Brandon Philips, chief technology officer of CoreOS, explained in a media interview that CoreOS aims to "Expand and manage huge server infrastructure. It integrates the lite Operating System Based on the stable Linux kernel and the tool that runs services across machine clusters. All of this is packaged and can be run on your physical device or virtualization platform at any time, such as KVM, Amazon Elastic Computing cloud, Google computing engine, and more ."

In addition to reducing Linux's memory requirements, CoreOS also runs all its applications in the Docker container. Docker containers are based on the shared operating system kernel. Compared with virtual machine management programs, Docker containers are much lighter and more efficient. Instead of virtualizing the hardware as usual, containers are located on a single Linux instance. By using Docker containers instead of Virtual Machine hypervisor, the entire computing architecture from the processor, memory to the storage system is virtualized, and the system resources consumed by applications are much less.

The company claims that "Docker containers can be started very quickly in just several milliseconds !), This gives you unprecedented flexibility to manage loads across machine clusters. For example, let your build system create a container and start the container on a suitable number of CoreOS hosts, which is faster and more reliable, rather than running Chef on each of your VMS. After these containers are started, they will send a signal to your proxy system through etcd and start to send traffic to them ." The final result is that not only is the program running lighter, but the application responds faster.

There is also another major difference in how CoreOS/Docker processes programs. Instead of installing dependencies for a specific application such as Apache or Ngnix server, applications are now put into the Docker container, and then the container is installed on the CoreOS instance.

CoreOS also uses an interesting method to update its application and operating system: FastPatch. In this way, the entire operating system is updated as a single unit, rather than software packages. Indeed, CoreOS does not contain any common Linux software package update tools such as apt or yum ).

You can use the dashboard program CoreUpdate instead of the software package tool. This program allows you to update a single server, cluster, or data center at the same time.

The new operating system also comes with the built-in cluster function. Although any Linux system can be used in a cluster, CoreOS allows users to easily aggregate systems into a single resource pool. Instead of running services on a specific machine, services are submitted to the cluster, and then the Cluster Manager fleet determines where these services are running.

CoreOS's development team claims that the lite Linux server they designed is designed to provide ordinary companies with the same Linux brand as Amazon, Facebook, and Google use in their data centers. I am not sure that it is so good, but I have observed that it is indeed very good.

Not only technical personnel think that CentOS is quite competitive in the enterprise-level Linux field. Mike Abbott, general partner of the largest risk fund in the United States, said in a statement: "The technology behind CoreOS will change game rules. CoreOS is expected to solve the infrastructure problems that have plagued this field for years. This operating system not only can automatically update the server and add the latest software, but also shorten the downtime, enhances the security and elasticity of the Internet architecture."

KPCB not only supports CoreOS. The venture Capital giant has also injected $8 million in the first round of funding into the company, and has received additional investment from two existing investors, Sequoia Capital and Fuel Capital. The funds will be used for the company's development, product development, and promotion of the operating system.

Does it sound good to you?

The company uses Linux as a service to provide CoreOS. This managed Linux service level can be purchased by monthly subscription and provides the following features:

• Suitable for many platforms, including bare metal, Amazon, Google and Rackspace, and other platforms;

• Docker 1.0-runtime environment for containers encapsulated by applications;

• CoreUpdate-A hosted dashboard for comprehensive control over rolling updates; and

• FastPatch-easy and carefree patches and updates.

You can download CoreOS and use it on your testing platform. The Code uses the GPLv2 license and Apache 2.0 license, which can be obtained from GitHub. The company also promised that "operating system updates and security patches will never be taken hostage-they will always be provided to all CoreOS users ."

All in all, I would like to say that CoreOS sounds like an operating system software package that should be taken seriously by any professional enterprise-level Linux users. Although RHEL, SLES, and other releases are good, CoreOS seems to be able to make existing hardware more productive than other Linux releases.

Http://www.zdnet.com/coreos-linux-for-the-cloud-and-the-datacenter-7000031137/.