OSv

This article is about the operating system. For other uses of "OSV", see OSV (disambiguation).

OSv

Developer	Cloudius Systems
Written in	C++
Working state	Alpha
Source model	Open source
Initial release	September 16, 2013 (2013-09-16)
Marketing target	Cloud computing
Available in	Multilingual
Update method	?
Platforms	x86-64 using the KVM, Xen, VMware, and VirtualBox hypervisors. (arm64 on KVM is under development)
Kernel type	Monolithic (OSv kernel)
Userland	POSIX, Java, Ruby
Default user interface	CLI, web
License	BSD license (free software)
Official website	{{#property:P856}}

OSv (stylized OS^v) is a cloud computing focused computer operating system released on September 16, 2013. It is a special-purpose operating system built to run as a guest on top of a virtual machine, thus it does not include drivers for bare-metal hardware. It is a slim, bare bones unikernel including just the functionality necessary to run Java or POSIX applications. For this reason, it does not support a notion of users (it's not a multiuser system) or processes - everything runs in the kernel address space. Using a single address space removes some of the time-consuming operations associated with context switching. It uses large amounts of code from the FreeBSD operating system, in particular the network stack and the ZFS file system. OSv can be managed using a REST Management API and an optional command line interface written in Lua.

External links

• Slides introducing the basic concept
• Official website
• GitHub project
• OSv—Optimizing the Operating System for Virtual Machines—paper presented at the USENIX Annual Technical Conference in 2014
• Original announcement