HP-UX Containers (SRP) A.03.01 Administrator's Guide

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14 Container types
HP-UX Containers supports deployment of containers of different types on the same system. In order
to choose the container type best suited for your workload, you should determine which container
properties best meet your needs.
14.1 System containers
System containers provide additional virtualization and private namespace capabilities over workload
containers that give users the look and feel of a private operating system instance. Most applications
can be deployed in a system container environment using default installation values.
Each system container has:
• A unique host, node, and domain name
• Local users and groups
• Local NIS or LDAP domain
• Local password policies
• Local file system view (private or shared)
• Local system services (for example, init, sshd, pwgrd, syslogd, and inetd)
• Private network interface
• Private IPC namespace
• NFS client and AutoFS support
14.2 Workload containers
Workload containers provide a lightweight workload hosting environment. All workload containers
share file system view, hostname, IPC namespace, and service daemons with the global view,
providing a restricted view of these resources, rather than a virtualized view. This restricted view of a
workload container can be customized to meet the workload’s requirements.
Like all containers, a workload container has a private directory under /var/hpsrp that is only
accessible by that container. Because workload containers share the entire file system with the global
view and other workload containers, they may share application directories with other workload
containers, for example, /opt/my_application is shared across all workload containers. See
16.1 File for a detailed layout of a workload container file system access.
Workload containers can be created very quickly and require little disk space. Upfront application
deployments may require customization compared to other container types, however ongoing
maintenance of a workload container will typically be less than other container types as most system
administration activities for workload containers are shared with the global view.
14.3 Comparison of system and workload types
The following table compares the properties for workload containers, system containers with the
private file system subtype, and system containers with the shared file system subtype. These subtypes
are described in the following section.
Property Workload
Container
System Container
(private FS)
System Container
(shared FS)
Disk space consumed per
container
Negligible 9 GB 4.5 GB