I have been playing with Linux containers via Docker (docker.io) and I have fallen in love. However, Docker is new and I don't know when it will be production ready. Since this containers idea has been borrowed(?) from Solaris, I have been looking at options for running one of the Solaris descendants. SmartOS seems to be directed at servers and I would love to give it a spin on Digital Ocean.

I agree.

I would like to know if it is possible to deploy to Solaris also?

+1 DTrace ftw

+1

+3

++

+1 we are using DTrace on Joyent.
Not having SmartOS available on DO is preventing us from switching. :-(

+3

I'd even be interested in running SmartOS (or any other Illumos-derived OS) in a VM

Waiting for SmartOS.

Digital Ocean probably *should* base their entire platform on SmartOS with the battery-backed RAM disks and SSDs at RAIDz3.

However, I want Digital Ocean to provide SmartOS as a guest-OS within their existing KVM infrastructure.

I just left a similar comment on a forum thread but...

The thing about SmartOS is that it has vastly more secure containerisation that does *not* need hardware virtualisation - nested or no. I've run SmartOS under KVM with no problem at all for about a 10% hit. Obviously bare metal is better but let's stay in the realm of the possible here :)

For the uninitiated: SmartOS zones/containers *are* Linux compatible and are capable of hosting either containers or entire virtual Linux boxes.

A thing to note is that it needs to be able to boot off a usb/iPxe/CD image even if a formatted drive is connected. However, OmniOS doesn't have this limitation and has just gained the Linux compatibility stuff ... so that might be a good deal easier to implement.