[Info-vax] Bare metal definition, was: Re: VMS port to x86

[Simon Clubley]

On 2012-03-27, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
> On 2012-03-26 23:11, Jerry Eckert wrote:
>> On Mar 26, 3:19 pm, Simon Clubley<clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-
>> Earth.UFP>  wrote:
>>>
>>> In the embedded world, bare metal has a specific meaning. When your
>>> application is directly addressing the hardware it's running on
>>> without any operating system between the application and the hardware,
>>> the application is running in bare metal mode.
>>>
>> vtAlpha isn't targeted at embedded systems developers; I don't see why
>> one would expect the vendor to adhere to the terminology used in a
>> completely different market segment.  The term "bare metal", as used
>> by vtAlpha, accurately describes the nature of the product from the
>> host system administrator's perspective -- they provide a box with no
>> OS and install the application product.

I would expect it because the terminology is not tied to the market
segment, but is tied to the technology in use, regardless of the target
market.

We don't change the definition of operating system (for example) to mean
different things depending on the market segment. We include different
capabilities in the operating system depending on the market segment
but we don't change the definition itself.

Furthermore, how does the use of this hidden layer affect the realtime
capabilities of the emulation it provides ? If people are told it's bare
metal, then they may expect a much more deterministic response time than
they would expect from something running on a hidden OS.

In virtualisation there have been security issues with the guest operating
system been able to break through the virtualisation layer and compromise
the security or functionality of the virtualisation environment. Does
this hidden Linux layer also pose security risks, if say, a path exists
from the network to the Linux layer and a remote exploit is discovered in
the underlying Linux version ?

It would seem to me that if the Linux layer is network accessible then it
would have to be updated on a regular basis for any security issues, just
as my normal Linux servers and clients have to be.

If the box is been sold as a black box, is this updating done (assuming of
course the underlying functionality causes such updating to be required) ?

>
> Cool. So I can just call my target audience "foobars", and then I can 
> redefine known terms to mean what I want? Sounds like an excellent 
> opportunity to sell non-stop servers, machines that produce gold, and 
> oracle databases here...
>

I agree. If the use of the term "bare metal" doesn't mean anything to
someone outside of the embedded world, then why is it used in the
advertising material for these products as a positive selling point ?

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world