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OpenVZ

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

As mentioned above the type of virtualization used in OpenVZ is quite different from bare metal hypervisors. There is no single layer on which all the other virtual machines run. The concept of OpenVZ is a bit different. It allows the physical server to run multiple operating systems in isolation. OpenVZ itself runs on top of an OS whose kernel is shared by all other running operating systems. These different isolated systems are known as containers or virtual environments or virtual private servers.

One limitation of OpenVZ is that it runs only Linux operating system both as host and gusts. Where host is the OS on which OpenVZ runs (whose kernel is shared) and guests are your Linux running virtual machines. This architecture might not do well if most servers you are running have Windows OS. This architecture also means there are multiple failure points. Nothing would work if either your host OS crashes or your OpenVZ layer crashes.

On the other hand, not having hypervisor between hardware and running isolated OS means lower overheads which in turn means better performance. To get a taste of OpenVZ do check out this month's DVD that contains its live ISO. Just burn the ISO of this virtualization platform onto a CD/DVD and boot from it. Once you are live, visit http://tinyurl.com/yfbzgeh to know about different commands for creating new virtual environments or adding applications to the already created environment. Here is a list of some common commands that you can run:

1. vzctl create 101 --ostemplate debian-3.1-i386-minimal: Here debian template is already installed, you can find how many VEs are running.

2. vzlist —a: to start a VE type.

3. vzctl start 101: When compared with Xen we found this one to be a little less user friendly, as one needs to run commands to carry out every action which might not go well with everyone.

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