MCH2022

illumos SmartOS, specialized Type 1 Hypervisor
2022-07-25, 23:00–23:50, Battery 🔋

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

Server Ninja with 15+ years industry experience specialising in Unix and Linux cloud-based environments. IT Consultant and automation expert with business analyst know-how to optimise processes.