Install OpenVZ on CentOS to create a virtual container
This week’s TechMail is Install OpenVZ on CentOS to create a virtual container which discusses using the OpenVZ virtualization software. I have to admit, I’ve become extremely fond of OpenVZ. I stumbled upon it as the open source version of Virtuozzo which is used by a lot of VPS providers and I completely understand why. All I really need or want (for the most part) is a glorified chroot or BSD jail and OpenVZ fills this really nicely, without the overhead of full hardware virtualization. It’s easy to use, easy to maintain and run, and for Linux-on-Linux virtualization I think it blows away everything else I’ve tried for remote servers (vmware server? no thanks!). The fact that it’s very light-weight and very configurable have given this thing a permanent place on my internal server. I just wish it more closely followed the upstream kernel releases, but other than that, I’m loving it.
Felix Kaechele
Well you still have the overhead of all the virtual machines running their own init processes and such. But that still is less that hardware virtualization
Apr 21, 2009 @ 13:09:09vdanen
Yup, very true. I have two openvz containers running now, so 3 sshd processes, 3 inits, 3 MTAs, and 3 syslogs. I think that’s all that’s duplicated. I do plan to re-tool my Annvix runit packages and use runit in the containers to make the init overhead really really small tho. =)
Apr 21, 2009 @ 13:17:53