From owner-freebsd-jail@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jun 23 20:27:20 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-jail@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 14F7D1065676 for ; Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:27:20 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from tomh@motorsport.com) Received: from montecarlo.motorsport.com (montecarlo.motorsport.com [64.235.98.4]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B959D8FC15 for ; Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:27:19 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from tomh@motorsport.com) Received: from Cerbera (CPE000ded900fa2-CM001225449c2c.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com [99.254.169.57]) (authenticated bits=0) by montecarlo.motorsport.com (8.14.1/8.14.2) with ESMTP id n5NK6uvG060186 for ; Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:06:57 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from tomh@motorsport.com) From: "Tom Haapanen" To: Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:06:19 -0400 Message-ID: <0c1201c9f43e$166c8450$43458cf0$@com> MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 12.0 Thread-Index: Acn0PhKf0b0yhgoCTBahsDjazy9pnQ== Content-Language: en-ca Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Subject: Memory usage across multiple jails X-BeenThere: freebsd-jail@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Discussion about FreeBSD jail\(8\)" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:27:20 -0000 I have been using FreeBSD (and other forms of *BSD) a long time, but I'm new to the world of jails. I have been doing reading on them, but there is one question I have not been able to find an answer to, and that's the efficiency of memory usage when using multiple jails on a single system. With "conventional" virtual machines (VMware, Virtual Server et al), essentially each VM is opaque to the host OS, and thus has to be allocated X MB of memory, which that VM then manages internally. However, since jails are based on the FreeBSD kernel, and both host and guest OSs are identical, I am wondering whether there are any comparative efficiencies in memory utilization. Will the jails share the disk cache, for example, or does each jail allocate its own? Will other kernel structures (and code!) be shared across jails, or allocated multiple times? And what about userland applications, like httpd, for example? (I suspect userland would not be able to benefit, but that's just a guess.) Thanks for any insight into this ... Tom