SmartOS: The Complete Modern Operating System
SmartOS is the only OS purpose-built for a multi-tenant cloud environment. It incorporates five powerful novel OS technologies — CPU Bursting, KVM, ZFS, DTrace and Zones— into a single operating system, Open-sourced by Joyent in 2011, SmartOS offers a unique combination of carrier-grade reliability, superior application performance, and flexible development environments.
CPU Bursting on Demand
A SmartMachine running SmartOS on the Joyent Cloud automatically and effortlessly scales up to 800% in response to unexpected usage spikes by tapping unused compute resources in the cloud. This scaling of the virtual CPU and all related processes occurs instantly and does not require special scripting or spinning up additional instances.
The High Performance KVM Hypervisor
SmartOS uses second generation, hardware-assisted Kernel-Based Virtual Machine (KVM) virtualization to run applications under Windows and Linux, more efficiently and transparently than any other virtualization solution. KVM offers the fastest boot-times and extends DTrace introspection capabilities to Windows and Linux.
Reliable Data Storage with ZFS
SmartOS uses ZFS: the most reliable and resilient file system for enterprise and carrier applications. With storage pools, copy-on-write filesystem snapshots, adaptive replacement caching (ARC), and end-to-end data validation, ZFS delivers 100% data resiliency. Other clouds charge for premium storage. Joyent Cloud offers it by default at no extra charge.
Superior Analytics with DTrace
The backbone of Joyent Cloud Analytics, DTrace provides unique visibility into the system stack from top to bottom, allowing developers and systerm adminstrators to optimize for efficiency and pinpoint problems without taking applications out of production. A point-and-click heatmap UI enables admins to click on pixels showing high latencies and drop down immediately into the responsible process.
Zones Keep You Safe
Joyent Cloud is the only public cloud to deploy Zones, a technology that acts as a digital “steel-wall” to ensure that tenants in our cloud cannot break out of their virtual servers and attack other occupants. Zones provides the best internal security in the cloud, bar none.
