TKL appliance as OpenVZ? (and advice on choice of Virtual Environment)

I recently started using Proxmox VE (Thanks JedMeister!) and I would like to use a few appliances as OpenVZ installations (for performance, and ability to use it without VT-x), but the process of turning an installation to an OpenVZ template seems overly complicated. Has anyone else done this?

As an aside, does anyone know of a comparison sheet between different virtual environments / hypervisor OS's? I'd like to have a more comprehensive idea of what's out there.

Thanks!

Replies (3)

Not clear why they didn't put more thought into guest support

Reply 1 2010-11-03

but host support was a combination of timing and alternative emerging technologies from what I could gather. OpenVZ development had significantly flagged prior to and during the Ubuntu 10.04 development cycle and it wasn't until just after the 10.04 kernel freeze than an unstable OVZ kernel was released. OVZ devs requested an exemption to get the kernel in but Ubuntu devs declined (possibly on the ground that at that stage the kernel was still 'experimental'). Also as you may or may not be aware there is an emerging somewhat competeing technology currently in rapid development called LXC which was flagged as a replacement container virtualisation technology. IMO LXC is not yet quite baked and certainly not a full blown replacement for OVZ. I suspect in the future it will be

Anyway, no worries and good luck.

Thanks again! Why is

Reply 2 2010-11-03

Thanks again!

Why is Canonical not supporting OpenVZ? That seems like a strange decision.

If I give it a shot I will definitely post my results, but since all of the Hardy based applications are there (thanks for the link!) I probably wont attempt it.

Thanks for the in depth response👍

Hey Rich

Reply 3 2010-11-03

No worries mate! IMO OpenVZ is great for performance. Unfortunately converting ISOs into OpenVZ templates is a little tricky but it can be done. My experience with the older (Ubuntu Hardy/8.04 based) TKL appliances is documented in the TKL Dev wiki. There are also some precreated templates (some of which I have tested) that were uploaded by another community member late last year.

Due to some of the changes made in Ubuntu Lucid/10.04 and Canonical's decision not to offically support OpenVZ as either host or guest means that templates are not so easy to make from the newer TKL version. I am yet to have much of a play but have it on my to do list. Having said that though the current stable templates are rock solid in my experience and Ubuntu Hardy/8.04 will still be supported until 2013 so unless you need more recent versions of software for whatever reason, there's no reason why you can't just use the older ones.

If you wish to try your hand at creating a OpenVZ template of the TKL v11.0RC releases then the best how-to I've come across so far is this one. If you do, please document your results (even if you can't get it to work) as I'm sure it will be of use when I get to it.

As for performance comparisons, it seems that it depends on who does the testing. Most of the tests I have seen have been done by vendors and their product always seems to perform the best! ProxmoxVE is the only commercial/enterprise grade hypervisor that I have come across that is also free and open source. As long as your CPU supports virtual extentions I've found KVM seems to keep up with the best of them. WinXP definately performs better running on KVM in PVE than it does on VMware Server on Server2k3 - but thats probably not a completely fair comparison. IMO OpenVZ is unbeatable, with VMs using very little RAM or CPU and basically running as if native. Although I'm not sure if you could call me impartial (I'm a bit of a OpenVZ fanboy!) :)