OpenVZ is an open source operating system-level virtualization technology based on the Linux kernel and operating system. OpenVZ allows a physical server to run multiple isolated operating system instances. These are secure, isolated containers. Each container performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server.
OpenVZ is not true virtualization but similar to FreeBSD Jails.
OpenVZ is a highly scalable virtualization technology with minimal overhead, good isolation and rapid customer provisioning.
OpenVZ consists of a kernel, user-level tools and templates.
The OpenVZ kernel is a Linux kernel, modified to add support for OpenVZ containers. The modified kernel provides virtualization, isolation, resource management, and checkpointing.
OpenVZ is the basis of Parallels Cloud Server, a commercial virtualization solution offered by Parallels.
Key Features
- OpenVZ employs a single kernel model, it is as scalable as the Linux kernel – up to thousands of CPUs and terabytes of RAM.
- Virtualization overhead observed in OpenVZ is minimal so that there is very little performance degradation.
- Serve more containers from a given physical server, so long as the computational demands do not exceed the physical availability.
- A root user of an OpenVZ physical server can see all the running processes and files of all the containers on the system.
- Rapid customer provisioning.
- Updates provisioning.
Website: openvz.org
Support: Live Journal
Developer: Community project, with help from Parallels, Inc.
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
OpenVZ is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Containers | |
|---|---|
| Docker | Create, deploy, and run applications by using containers |
| LXC | Userspace interface for the Linux kernel containment features |
| containerd | Industry-standard container runtime |
| Apptainer | Optimized for compute focused enterprise and HPC workloads |
| Kata Containers | Uses a hypervisor to provide isolation when spawning containers |
| OpenVz | Container-based virtualization |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |