OpenVZ Pushing for Linux Kernel Inclusion

RomanianClimber writes to tell us News.com is reporting that SWSoft is trying to get OpenVZ into the Linux kernel. OpenVZ is an operating system level server virtualization solution, built on Linux. From the article: "In this, it has a major ally: Red Hat, the top seller of the open-source operating system, which plans to add the software to its free Fedora version of Linux for enthusiasts. The companies' move to make OpenVZ partitioning standard in Linux is timely, said Pund-IT analyst Charles King."

Comments

Perspective

[kbahey]

SWSoft are the makers of Virtuozzo a commercial product that allows hosting companies to offer Virtual Private Servers.

A rival technology is Xen from Cambridge University, which is free.

Virtuozzo and OpenVZ

[gantry]

Although Virtuozzo is "built on top of OpenVZ", is Virtuozzo's kernel component a publicly available version of OpenVZ, built without using any proprietary patches or modules?

http://openvz.org/documentation/tech/virtuozzo states "Differently from OpenVZ, Virtuozzo(TM) is developed and designed to run production workloads in 24×7 environments ..."

and goes on to list, among Virtuozzo's advantages over OpenVZ:

"Higher VPS density. Virtuozzo(TM) provides efficient memory and file sharing mechanisms enabling higher VPS density and better performance of VPSs.

"Improved Stability, Scalability, and Performance. Virtuozzo(TM) is designed to run 24×7 environments with production workloads on hosts with up-to 32 CPUs."

Why should Linux accept a kernel patch if (unlike Linux itself) it is not designed to run 24×7 environments with production workloads on hosts with up-to 32 CPUs?

OpenVZ/VServer versus hardware virutalization

[jonabbey]

OpenVZ doesn't care about processor virtualization features. OpenVZ (like VServer) is all about implementing a system like FreeBSD jails. In this model, there's only one kernel running, but different sets of processes are isolated from each other through operating system features. The separation applies to things like the 'ps' command and the /proc interface in general, as well as things like sockets and networking.

With OpenVZ/VServer, you can set up security and network separation so that certain processes will think of themselves as on 'internal-web-server', while others will think of themselves as 'external-web-server', and the two sets of processes would not be able to interact with each other in ways other than through the same kind of networking connections that they would use if they were on separate pieces of physical hardware.

Something like Xen or VMWare achieves this virtualization by simulating separate processors, memory, and I/O space hardware. OpenVZ/VServer doesn't incur this overhead, but does require much more significant modifications to the Linux kernel, as lots of system calls have to be modified to enforce the process group separation rules.

Re:Top seller

[Burdell]

RHE is based on CentOS

You've got that backwards. CentOS takes the RHEL SRPMS released by Red Hat, rebuilds the binaries, and reassembles them into a distribution.

The Linux devs should reject it's inclusion

[TheLink]

All the current x86 virtualization stuff is going to be out of date soon. It will be just adding kludges to the kernel to implement stuff that required by virtualization deficiencies in old x86 stuff. If you need those kludges, Xen should be enough.

This is because Intel and AMD are going to allow new and far more efficient ways of doing virtualization, with hardware assistance (lookup Intel Vanderpool and AMD Pacifica).

So, I don't see much long term gain for the effort for all the minuses.

You risk lower quality and increased maintenance costs. And you might also increase exposure to patent claims (but I bet IBM can smash anyone to pulp especially with virtualization patents).

You will still need developers to work on Vanderpool and Pacifica stuff, and I think you'd get better "bang for buck" with that (plus I think it will be a lot more fun).