Photon OS (Project Photon)

Main article: Operating systems

Photon OS (Project Photon) is the facilitated operating system on Linux kernel.

2020: VMware Photon OS 4.0 Beta

On November 17, 2020 it became known that the VMware company announced release of the beta of the Photon OS 4.0 Beta operating system. This OS is used already in all virtual modules of VMware (Virtual Appliances) which implement different supporting services.

What new appeared among opportunities of the updated OS:

1. A core of real time for applications of a telecom and vRAN (Virtual Radio Network)

There comes the era of a 5G, and VMware made in Photon OS 4.0 possibilities of support of telecom real-time applications at the kernel level (Photon Real Time kernel). It will allow vRAN technologies (Virtual Radio Network) to use possibilities of Photon OS at development of infrastructure of a 5G operators.

2. Security

Photon 4.0 got support of such technologies for security as SELinux, Security Encrypted Virtualization – Encrypted Status and Intel Software Guard Extensions. The obligatory control system of access stitched at the kernel level allows SELinux to give to administrators granular and flexible access to resources. Also Photon OS allows from a box, at the level the politician, to provide needs of applications in isolation. Also SELinux for containers is supported that was tested for docker, containerd and runc.

Support of the Intel SGX drivers drivers allows applications to use the CPU resources for creation of "enclaves" - completely protected modules of execution unavailable at the hardware level to other processes.

3. Optimization of performance for the solution vSphere with Tanzu

Historically Photon of OS had a special context of a kernel of Linux-esx which was in a special way optimized for work on the ESXi VMware platform of the point of view of performance and the given opportunities. In the same Photon 4.0 also for the container environment of execution vSphere with Tanzu, for example, reduction of time of start for containers and applications appeared.

4. Improvements of the OS components

In Photon 4.0 more than 700 packets, including key components, such as tdnf, pmd, network config manager and many others were updated. Also the release includes previews features for which are expected in the final version of OS. Therefore it is recommended not to use Photon 4.0 beta for production environments.

In this release as in the past, OS extends in the binary prepacked format - boot ISO, the preset minimum OVA packet customized under VMware, an image of Amazon of AMI, an image of Google GCE, an image of Azure VHD and also the image of Raspberry Pi (tested for architecture of ARM64).

2016: Photon 1.0

On June 20, 2016 the VMware company released the first release of the version of the Photon operating system^[1].

OS has a possibility of start of the virtualized containers Docker (and other) in virtual machines from lightweight OS on the platform of the Linux distribution kit.

When using Photon OS each container is performed in the virtual machine, but not in normal, and created "on the fly" by means of Instant Clone technology.

VMware Photon OS provides opportunities for containers of applications:

• Means of fast updating (tdnf) which allow to scan and to timely update outdated application packages.
• A big set of libraries in repositories which are required for work of different applications on the Photon OS platform.
• 4.2 Photon OS system constructed on a core support the btrfs file system with all its opportunities in addition to overlayfs.
• Up to 26% of performance improvement in comparison with betas (based on microbenchmarks). Now load time of a core makes about 200 ms. OS borrows in RAM of 384 MB, and on a disk of 396 MB.
• It was much made in respect of security - it is carried out careful inspection of the source code Photon OS, the code was checked by different tools, the third-party companies for search of potential vulnerabilities were attracted.

In addition to Photon OS on the website of the company online documentation is available.

2015: Photon OS

On April 21, 2015 the VMware company announced release^[2].

OS is intended for start in the containers Linux of native cloud applicaions - the applications created for work in a cloud.

Project Photon supports all most popular formats of the containers Linux, including Docker, Rocket (rkt) and Garden from Pivotal. OS occupies about 300 MB of disk space, is quickly loaded and can be developed on platforms of vSphere (if own equipment) and VMware vCloud Air or Google Compute Engine (is used when using cloud infrastructure).

The Photon OS logo from VMware, 2015

At a development stage Photon OS can be used with different building tools in a different environment, somehow:

• VMware Fusion,
• VMware Workstation,
• HashiCorp Vagrant
• Atlas.

Then containers with applications are transferred to vSphere, vCloud Air or Google Compute Engine.

The source code of a system is published on GitHub.

Upon use of the code of a kernel of Linux OS in the Photon project and without responding to appeals of community - to publish the code of ready OS, in accordance with the terms licenses GPL2, in March, 2015 community of developers in Germany^[3] was going to maintain to VMware company the legal claim.

Additions to Project Photon

On May 7, 2015 the VMware company announced additional opportunities of Photon OS - Project Photon.

The company positions Project Photon as natural addition to Project Lightwave in a type the easy Linux operating system developed especially for container applications.

Further development of the project will help is transparent to transfer container applications from the developer to Wednesday of testing (dev/test). Among functions of the project:

• Support of a broad spectrum of container solutions.

• Protection of containers — Project Photon ensures the increased safety for container applications and also their isolation together with virtual machines, supporting authentication and authorization at any level due to integration with Project Lightwave. It increase in degree of protection of applications of the customer at the level of a container is possible.

• Flexible work with different versions and expansions — For the first time in the industry of Project Photon provides to administrators and corporate developers the flexible and expanded means of updating of containers. Support of rpm for systems tracing versions for images, and yum for management systems for lifecycle on the basis of packets (package) helps to facilitate management of updates.

For receiving bigger number of responses and stimulation of testing from customers, partners, researchers and community in the whole Project Photon and Project Lightwave are presented in the form of projects open source. Thereby developers have an opportunity of direct participation in projects for improvement of compatibility of products and implementation of new features. Project Photon is available to loading through GitHub.

Project Photon is presented in the container Vagrant form that users could test its opportunities on any platform. The container Photon Vagrant can be loaded through HashiCorp Atlas.

Helping the companies with achievement of high business results of VMware conducts joint work with market participants:

• CoreOS — Project Photon is delivered with the container rkt, the execution environment in CoreOS Linux in full accordance with the first version of the Application Container specification (appc). VMware supports appc to be convinced that containers will work at different platforms and aims to become the active participant of community appc.

• HashiCorp — Project Photon will be presented in the form of the container Vagrant and is available to loading on HashiCorp Atlas.

• Intel — VMware and Intel continue cooperation to provide support of initiatives in the field of security for cloud applicaions — from the equipment and infrastructure to the programming layer.

• JFrog — Project Photon and Project Lightwave will be available in the form of service as the JFrog Bintray distribution kits

• Mesosphere — Mesosphere Datacenter (DCOS) OS will be integrated with the VMware Photon and Lightwave projects for simplification of full-scale implementation of containers. Mesosphere DCOS will use possibilities of VMware for authorization and authentication to provide verification of processes and also to apply security policies to distributed systems and management tools containers.

• Pivotal – Project Photon, Project Lightwave and Lattice together will create easy and safe infrastructure, a full-scale working environment for support of cloud applicaions.

Representation - Project Photon starts Docker and the containers rocket, 2015

Notes