Audience
Enterprises in need of an operating system-level virtualization solution to manage their networks and applications
About FreeBSD Jails
Since system administration is a difficult task, many tools have been developed to make life easier for the administrator. These tools often enhance the way systems are installed, configured, and maintained. One of the tools which can be used to enhance the security of a FreeBSD system is jails. Jails have been available since FreeBSD 4.X and continue to be enhanced in their usefulness, performance, reliability, and security. Jails build upon the chroot(2) concept, which is used to change the root directory of a set of processes. This creates a safe environment, separate from the rest of the system. Jails improve on the concept of the traditional chroot environment in several ways. In a traditional chroot environment, processes are only limited in the part of the file system they can access. The rest of the system resources, system users, running processes, and the networking subsystem are shared by the chrooted processes and the processes of the host system.