Challenges and opportunities of the operating system ecosystem in the cloud-native era

In the context of the rapid development of cloud computing, the industrial upgrade of server operating systems is no longer limited to the physical server level. Market boundaries are expanding, and new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing are The development of technology also puts forward new requirements for the flexibility and intelligence of operating systems. At the
2023 Dragon Lizard Operating System Conference, Wang Xu, director of the Dragon Lizard community and senior technical expert of Ant Group, shared a keynote speech on "Challenges and Opportunities of Operating System Ecology in the Cloud Native Era" and shared Ant Group's experience in Dragon The result of collaboration among the lizard community. The following is the original text shared:

(Picture/Wang Xu, director of Long Lizard Community and senior technical expert of Ant Group)

On behalf of Ant Group, I serve as the leader of the Ant Cloud native infrastructure and operating system team. I also serve as a director in the Dragon Lizard community and the vice chairman of the Ant Open Source Technology Committee. Today we talk about the role of software and operating systems in the cloud native era.

Everyone has noticed that Red Hat stopped releasing the entire software distro, including SRPM, in the traditional CentOS way. A big reason is that in this era, the entire software supply chain has undergone very big changes. Variety. We know that in the past, when everyone purchased a software, operating system, etc., all the software packages in the operating system had already completed the maintenance and guarantee of the software supply chain. This work was completed in the operating system. In such an era, the operating system represents the channel for all everyone's software distribution, naturally ensuring the supply chain. Everyone who purchases it will pay for it. Such a chain is very complete and very sufficient. Therefore, while Red Hat maintains CentOS, it also maintains a complete set of business models. Business and open source form a closed-loop model.

Nowadays, everyone is promoting intelligence. The current provision of intelligent computing power also uses the cloud native CloudNative resource computing power supply system. In such a system, the entire architecture becomes more complex than before. There is only a very small part, that is, the Host OS part is the same as before. It is provided to the Host OS through the Package Repository. Corresponding to the traditional OS field on the left side of the above figure, it is actually very small now; and most of the running The software all runs in containers and is pulled from the mirror warehouse. Image production is completed on the development side. The applications developed by these developers themselves use the content of Base OS and the corresponding Package Repository of Base OS, and are finally sent to the image Repository. In such an environment, there is a very significant change. The entire container image link is not an operating system purchased through the purchaser of the running infrastructure. The previous sharing
"Domestic Server Operating System Development Report (2023) "It is also mentioned in that the largest purchasers include Internet companies, government affairs, etc. In addition to producing their own software, these companies purchase the part themselves. Compared with applications from other channels, the host operating system purchased from The portion is already very small. Therefore, they naturally reduce their desire to buy an operating system, or the part of the operating system they buy is not worth it, unlike the original operating system that included everything.

Under such circumstances, most of the entire operating system or the entire software supply chain system has been integrated on the software production side, while there is relatively little management and control on the running side. So in this case, the management of the cloud native software supply chain on the right side of the picture above has become more complicated, and the proportion of the operating system pulling software packages has been seriously reduced, which is also to a large extent. Let Red Hat discover that CentOS is beginning to become less important in its business model, because indeed the purchase of RHEL is not that important to users. But in this case, it does not mean that the software supply chain is not important. On the contrary, in the case of cloud native, there are very rich software types and various image sources. Especially for companies with strong financial background, the software supply chain Maintenance is very important and has strong security requirements. In addition, we have various requirements for the software supply chain such as compliance and trustworthiness. Customers also need the entire system to be trustworthy.

Based on this, we need a complete trusted chain and supply chain security. In a cloud-native scenario, the operating system is indeed needed to make changes that are different from the previous environment. This is why as a financial-related The reason why Internet companies need to participate in the operating system community is because we also need to ensure the security of our own supply chain. In the new era, we do not just purchase such an operating system to ensure supply chain security as before. On the contrary, we need to participate in the complete production process. This is why we not only participate in the Dragon Lizard community, but also Participated in cloud native SIG related development and did some co-construction work with the upstream community. I believe that under future trends, all software users with supply chain needs will actually need such a more community-oriented operating system maintenance.

As the Ant Group, the governing unit of the Dragon Lizard Community, we have participated in a lot of work in the community. On the more basic side, there are many container and virtualization-related technologies in the operating system that we are developing together with the community. Participate in the corresponding technical SIG. Before joining Ant Group, I started a container business, working on secure containers, and launched the Kata containers project. Cloud native has a lot to do with virtualization technology, so we have made a lot of contributions and cooperation in operating system virtualization and cloud native ecology, such as mirroring technology. Mirror acceleration is actually a content-aware technology called Nydus. It not only uses Dragonfly for P2P acceleration technology, but also uses Lazy Load for zero-latency mirror acceleration. Of course, these mirror acceleration technologies are also used in the acceleration of large models today. At the same time, this kind of content awareness also includes our demands for the supply chain, which is related to content distribution, reliability, and security.

The cooperation between Ant Group and the Dragon Lizard Community involves open source technologies such as large-scale parallel databases and graph computing. Security and trustworthiness are the focus, and Ant Group has done a lot of work in TEE and Intel TDX-based areas, such as confidential container development. These collaborations are fully supported by the community and enhance the operating system and security aspects.

Ant Group and the Dragon Lizard Community adhere to the principles of “openness, equality, collaboration, and sharing” and carry out in-depth cooperation. We also hope that Ant Group’s participation will help the Dragon Lizard Community achieve better progress.

Video replay and courseware acquisition: 2023 Dragon Lizard Operating System Conference live broadcast replay and technical PPT are online, please click
to watch~

Technical PPT: Follow the Dragon Lizard public account [OpenAnolis Dragon Lizard] and reply to "Dragon Lizard Courseware" to obtain it.

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