First open sourced in 2016, VMware Project Photon, a minimal lightweight Linux distribution designed for container initiatives and cloud native applications, recently received a host of updates from its core development community. With this update, the open source project now supports a number of bare metal platforms including, for the first time, support for ARM64.
Other updates to Project Photon OS 3.0 include:
- BaseDocker image for ARM64 and a base image for Raspberry Pi3 have been added(as part of the support for ARM64 bit processors)
- Various installer improvements
- Base operating system package updates including Linux Kernel 4.19 LTS, Glibc 2.28, systemd 239 and Python3 3.7
- Driver Development Kit: Easily add your custom device drivers
- EdgeX packages to support adoption of open, interoperable IoT components
This updates Project Photon OS to the current versions of most key components and sets it up as a strong base OS, both for containerized workloads and bare metal use.
The project also introduces three “sizes” of VMware Project Photon, each for a different application or use case:
- Minimal: targeted at IoT devices that have limited compute and memory capabilities
- Developer: includes packages to build, test and deploy containerized applications
- Edge: includes packages relevant to an edge gateway device
Here are some other features of Project Photon:
- Optimized for VMware vSphere environment: The Linux kernel is tuned for performance when Project Photon OS runs on vSphere
- Support for application container: VMware Photon OS includes the Docker daemon and works with container orchestration frameworks, such as Mesos and Kubernetes
- Efficient lifecycle management: VMware Photon OS is easy to manage, patch and update
- Security hardened: The kernel and other aspects of the operating system are built with an emphasis on security
VMwarePhoton 3.0 continues to focus on security with support for Kernel Self-Protection Project (KSPP), Secure EFI boot and support for user and group authentication with AD or LDAP.
We invite open source community members, developers, VMware partners and enterprise customers to collaborate on Project Photon OS. Please visit Project Photon OS on GitHub for documentation and details for contributing by clicking here.
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