Virtuozzo

The pros and cons of Virtuozzo: A user review

Atlanta-based virtualization pro Mark Dean shares his thoughts in a guest blog for SearchServerVirtualization.com

One of the more popular products in the growing virtualization market is Parallels Virtuozzo Containers. Virtuozzo Containers provide a stable, high performance virtualization platform. However, this same technology also has some drawbacks in restricting the operating systems that can be used for both hosts and VMs.

I deployed Virtuozzo for a customer that wanted to leverage virtualization but was uneasy about the performance of their database server. I suggested Virtuozzo since it straddles the physical-virtual line with OS containers, it is similar to the technology that Sun Solaris uses.

The strengths of Virtuozzo Containers are really in that blurred line between the physical and virtual platforms. Instead of a hypervisor between the OS and the hardware, Virtuozzo Containers virtualize the OS by sharing OS code, files, memory and cache from the root OS, which is called the Hardware Node (and is represented as Container ID 0) in Virtuozzo terms. This means that the VMs are using the hardware directly rather than having calls to the hardware trapped by a hypervisor and then executed which translates into better performance for I/O workloads. This increase in performance is one of the main reasons companies will deploy Virtuozzo. High I/O workloads such as heavy transaction based databases benefit from the shared code nature of the containers.

But as hardware advances with the option of CPU hardware assistance from the CPU manufacturers (AMD-V and Intel-VT), I see Virtuozzo’s technology becoming irrelevant. Since I can now run unmodified VMs using Xen or KVM on Linux and no longer have the (over-exaggerated) performance hit of the binary translation hypervisor (as in ESX), why go with a limiting technology?

Virtuozzo imposes some limitations on what you can run in your farm. Since the VMs are basically sharing code form the root Container OS, you can only run that type of VM on the host. Virtuozzo Containers currently only supports Windows 2003 Server and main Linux distributions. You cannot run Solaris, BSD or NetWare. Now, for some IT shops that may not be a problem but just about all the places I’ve seen, there is a mix of Unix, Windows and for many government places, NetWare.

If a virtualization vendor does not enable live migration, host/VM isolation or embrace the concept of a farm, it is not good for production workloads. Virtuozzo does have some of them, but their isolation is not as good as I like to see. I find that right now only VMware VI3 ESX 3.5 Server has all those concepts down. Xen Enterprise, when coupled with CPU assisted virtualization is the best contender to challenge VMware’s space right now.

Mark Dean is a VMware Professional Partner and a Microsoft Certified Partner with certifications in VMware, Microsoft, Novell, Citrix, IBM and HP along with HP and IBM hardware. Dean has his own virtualization consulting company, VM Computing.

Virtuozzo 4.0: Worth considering

If your company is buying into the virtualization game, you may want to consider Virtuozzo 4.0.

I work in a VMware shop (one of these days I’ll post on my 3.5 experiences) but I follow the virtualization market, and since SWsoft/Parallels released Virtuozzo 4.0, I think there’s  room for Parallels in the market.

Right now, SWsoft Parallels/Virtuozzo owns virtualization in the Web-hosting provider space. Their other products have a lot of traction in that space too (think Plesk and SiteBuilder). And of course, there’s the Mac virtualization product to beat - Parallels Desktop, the gold-medal standard that runs a few laps around poor Fusion, and the forthcoming Parallels Server which will let people virtualize OS X Server (as long as it’s all on Mac hardware!).

From their recent market moves, the company seems to be trying to take on Citrix’s Xen and Microsoft’s Virtual Server, perhaps even make a run on some of VMware’s market share by making some bold moves in the virtualization space. Once again, they are touting their OS-encapsulation variation on virtualization with Virtuozzo, which just released version 4.o.

From the Parallels blog:

Parallels Virtuozzo Containers is different because is virtualizes the OPERATING SYSTEM, not the hardware. This means that you can install an OS (Windows or Linux) and then run workloads off that single kernel in isolated execution environments that we call “containers.” Because all of the containers are working in direct contact with real hardware and are all working off that one OS install, performance is exceptional…about 97-99% of native, regardless of how many containers are running. And, container footprints are tiny - only 10 MB of RAM and 45 MB of disk space required at the bare minimum.

From a product feature view, you get many of the same features that one finds in other high-end products like VMware and XenServer:

1. Management Interface - Groups virtualized systems logically making them easier to manage. You can also assign role-based administrative and reporting rights to users.
2. P2V Tool - Allows you to migration from your old virtualization platform of choice to Virtuozzo. Allows for upgrading of Win2K servers to Win2K3 as part of the migration!
3. Backup - Allows you to take a virtual machine and make a backup while the machine is running, and then stores the backup on another host.
4. Templates - Allows you to install a virtual machine, make it into a template, and deploy new machines based on that template.
5. CPU restriction - Since this is not a true virtual machine, the guests typically see all of the CPUs. This can now be restricted on Windows systems so that guests see only a set number of processors.

Some problematic areas in the past were with OS-level clustering and network load balancing in the virtual machines (now called “virtual environments,” since they really aren’t seperate machines).

The new version appears to address these issues and improves upon the handling of multi-NIC hosts and how particular virtual environments see and use those NICs (as well as other devices such as USB external drives, USB product key fobs, etc.). Virtuozzo containers, like most virtualization products, support both 32-bit and 64-bit virtual environments.

In a Web-hosting environment, this is a great tool because of the massive number of sites that can be provided to clients. Considering that the average corporate data center is not entirely different from a hosting provider (especially when you start talking about chargeback), Virtuozzo may work out well, but the cons and pros must both be considered.

Virtuozzo won’t do much in file/print or in in Terminal Services, but in putting out Web-based applications to users, or even standard client-server apps, Virtuozzo has a lot of the same advantages of VMware, Xen, Virtual Server, VirtualBox and so on in regards to server consolidation and controlling hardware growth.

I wouldn’t count on the thousands-to-one ratio often touted in the Web-hosting space because of the very small footprint required per Web site, but there is undoubtedly a much higher container-per-host ratio than traditional hypervisor-based virtualization. There is a risk of failure if something hoses on the operating system (kernel panic on a Linux box, BSOD on a Windows box, driver dropout on either, etc.,) because that OS runs the entire show - but that’s the same on any platform: lose the host OS, lose all the guests.

The risk may be higher on Virtuozzo hosts because of the difficulties of a single-OS that gets put into a container - things like “DLL hell,” missing dependencies, etc. that are less pervasive in hypervisor hosts (but that remains to be seen).

Also, one Virtuozzo server of a given operating system can run only other servers of that same operating system (or in the case of Linux, of that exact same kernel). Lastly, there is more risk involved if your hardware isn’t redundant, and this is where the business models differ:

• Traditional Hypervisor: Cheaper (commodity) hardware front-end, expensive storage, smaller ratio of virtualized machines.
• Container Virtualization: Expensive (clustered commodity or other redundant HW) front end, expensive storage, higher ratio of virtualized machines.

A good analysis of a virtualization project proposal will include Virtuozzo as a candidate not only for the features, but because it is important to review the overall costs. As a simplified example (one that I deliberately am making equal out so as not to show any bias) without any licensing networking, operations, and soft-costs included may look like this:

Proposal 1: Virtuozzo - Virtualize 100 servers

• 2 x (Passive-Active) Clustered Server: $50,000
• 1 x New SAN: $100,000
• Total: $150,000

Proposal 2: VMware / Xen / Etc. - Virtualize 100 servers

• 10 x Generic Server: $50,000
• 1 x New SAN: $100,000
• Total: $150,000

Bearing all of this in mind, it’s time to add Virtuozzo to the watchlists when virtualization comes up.

SearchServerVirtualization.com Products of the Year - Not without their share of snubs

Fortunately for me, my job never requires me to determine vendor awards. However, Alex Barrett and the SearchServerVirtualization.com staff aren’t so lucky. While it’s great to have the power to name Products of the Year, it also means that you’re stuck hearing complaints from everyone that wasn’t named. In case you missed it, Alex recently published the SearchServerVirtualization 2007 Products of the Year.

I think that Alex and the editorial staff did a great job with selecting products, but thought that I would take a moment to highlight some vendors with excellent products that did not make the list. After all, it’s just as much fun to debate the vendors that were not recognized as it is for those who were.

VMware

Yes, VMware’s on the list, but at the same time they’re not on the list. If you didn’t notice, VMware ESX Server 3.5 is nowhere to be found in the article. The SearchServerVirtualization.com editors informed me that ESX 3.5 missed the cutoff date for award consideration (November 30th), and therefore wasn’t eligible. Editors do need time to work with a released product in order to make a fair judgment, so I understand the reasoning for the cutoff. Still, ESX 3.5 was a significant release from VMware, with features such as Storage VMotion adding significant value to VMware deployments.

Novell

Novell quietly had a great 2007, from a virtualization product perspective. Novell was right behind Citrix/XenSource in achieving Microsoft support for their Xen-based virtualization platform, and was pushing the innovation envelope throughout the year. Novell was the very first virtualization vendor to demonstrate N_Port ID virtualization (NPIV) on their Xen platform. Novell was even showing their work with open virtual machine format (OVF) last September at their booth at VMWorld. When you factor in Novell’s work with their heterogeneous virtualization platform management tool, ZENworks Virtual Machine Manager, you’re left with a pretty nice virtualization package. The vendors mentioned in the virtualization platform category (VMware, Citrix/XenSource, SWsoft) are all worthy of recognition, and I think it’s equally fair to recognize Novell’s work in 2007 as well. Perhaps Novell’s heavy lifting in 2007 will result in recognition in 2008; however, it’s safe to say that Novell is going to have some stiff competition from VMware, Citrix/XenSource, Microsoft, Sun, Parallels, and Virtual Iron.

Symantec

I thinks it’s hard to leave Symantec Veritas NetBackup 6.5 out of the discussion. In fact, amongst backup products, I’d list them as first, right alongside CommVault. Symantec was the first major backup vendor to announce support for Citrix XenServer backup, while all other backup products officially supported one virtualization platform - VMware ESX Server. The NetBackup team was also very innovative with VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB), as NetBackup 6.5 includes the capability to perform file level recoveries of VCB image level backups. Typically, a backup product performs two VCB backup jobs - an image level backup for DR purposes, and a file level backup for day-to-day recovery tasks. NetBackup 6.5 provides the ability to do this in a single pass, which I found to be pretty innovative. Factor in Data-deduplication (extremely valuable considering the high degree of file redundancy on VM host systems), also available in NetBackup 6.5, and it’s hard to see how NetBackup could be ignored.

SteelEye

SteelEye is another vendor in the data protection category that I’m surprised did not make the list. VMware HA by itself will not detect an application failure and initiate a failover job as a result, as it’s primarily designed to monitor and react to hardware failures and some failures within the guest OS. SteelEye LifeKeeper, on the other hand, provides automated VM failover in response to application and service failures (in addition to guest OS and physical server failures). Many failures are software-specific, and products that can automate VM failover or restarts in response to software failures go far to improve the availability of VMs in production.I’m limiting my comments only to the award categories, hence I’m only listing some of the products I’ve worked with in 2007 that fit into one of the SSV categories. I hope that for the 2008 awards, we’ll see a higher number of award categories, so all products in the virtualization ecosystem are represented.

Do you agree with editors’ choice of winners? Which deserving vendors do you feel were left off the list? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

VMware goes on the offensive

Note: Reposted with the author’s permission from Burton Group’s Data Center Strategies blog.

If you haven’t seen Mike DiPetrillo’s latest blog, “VMware Patch Tuesday,” it’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time. Mike’s post contrasts patch management on the ESX hypervisor with that of competing platforms. I think the picture DiPetrillo paints is much darker than reality (at least with Windows hosts) being that a given Windows Server 2003 host will not require every available patch (many are service-specific) and since not all updates require a reboot. The patch reboot requirements will further diminish in Windows Server 2008 thanks to hot patching support.

That being said, Mike’s latest post is about much more than VMware’s patch management strategy. Instead, consider it the start of the VMware Offensive. In 2007, VMware for the most part smiled and waved at their competition. That’s not going to be the case in 2008. Citrix, Microsoft, Novell, SWsoft, Sun, Oracle, and Virtual Iron all have plans to chip away at VMware’s market share, and rather than ignoring their competitors, I expect VMware to be much more aggressive at highlighting what makes their approach to virtualization different from the competition.

Read the rest of this post at Burton Group’s Data Center Strategies blog.

Virtuozzo 4.0 at LinuxWorld

LinuxWorld vendor news

SWsoft is previewing Virtuozzo 4.0 at LinuxWorld. The new version, slated for release later this year, has a new, customizable interface and includes additional management tools (management tools trend, anyone?).

Virtuozzo 4.0 can perform cross-platform backups (i.e. store a Windows virtual server backup on a Linux server and vice versa). You’ll also see a full SDK for application integration, template improvements, and even tighter integration with Plesk.

Server virtualization: Three top methods, plus pros and cons

Currently, there are three main styles of server virtualization, and each has its benefits and drawbacks, according to open source consultant and author Bernard Golden, a presenter at the Red Hat Summit, happening right now in San Diego.

His lowdown on the three ways to virtualize provides a handy guide to the options today. Following his list, I offer some links to definitions, how-tos, tips and news about each method.

By the way, besides being a resident expert on SearchServerVirtualization.com and SearchEnterpriseLinux.com Golden is president of Navica Inc., an open source consulting firm, and author of the new book, “Virtualization for Dummies”. Check out his views on server hardware for virtualization in this post.

Here are the top three ways to virtualize:

Virtualization style: Operating system (OS) “container” emulation
Examples: Solaris Containers; SWsoft
Pros: Efficient; does not require additional software
Cons: Isolation; dependent upon OS; limits version choice within guest OS types

Virtualization style: Hardware emulation
Examples: VMware Server; Microsoft Virtual Server
Pros: Relatively easy to install and use; true isolation of OS instances
Cons: Less efficient than paravirtualization

Virtualization style: Paravirtualization
Examples: Xen, VMware ESX, Microsoft Longhorn virtualization
Pros: High herformance; true Isolation of OS instances
Cons: Extra software layer; complex to install and administer

Don’t expect these ways and means to remain fixed in time. In five years, all operating systems will be virtualized, simplifying every aspect of server virtualization from planning to upgrades, Golden predicts. Even better, built-in operating system virtualization will make it very difficult for application software vendors to respond to every helpdesk call by blaming the VM.

For more information on the three top ways deploy server virtualization, check out these resources:

For an overview, read Alessandro Perilli’s analysis of virtualization vendor strategies.

Here’s some info on OS container emulation:
IBM DB2 runs on SWsoft Virtuozzo virtualization; Virtuozzo sidesteps Windows Server costs; Sun boots Unix partitioning on Solaris; and Sun commits to Xen.

Get the scoop on hardware emulation: VMware Server on Linux: Installation through management; Optimizing Microsoft Virtual Server 2005; and emulation defined.

For more on paravirtualization, go to: Paravirtualization with Xen; Xen defined; How-to: VMware ESX, Linux virtual machines and read-only file systems; and Virtualization in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

Which style of virtualization do you use? What questions would you like to ask our resident expert, Bernard Golden, about server virtualization strategies? Tell all by commenting on this post or writing to me at  jstafford at techtarget.com.

SWsoft Virtuozzo starter pack

There’s word from SWsoft of a starter pack for its Virtuozzo operating system virtualization software. Designed for new users, the $1,198 bundle includes a license for single or dual-processor system, management tools, and a year of Silver level support and maintenance. Also included is VZP2V, SWsoft’s physical-to-virtual tool that helps import a a server from a dedicated physical box to a Virtuozzo virtual environment.

An SWsoft spokesperson claims that the starter pack represents savings between 33% and 50% off the full price.

Not so needless Windows Server licenses

Last week, I wrote a story entitled Virtuozzo user avoids needless Windows Server licenses. Many of you wrote in to inform me that in fact, the Windows Server licenses that the subject had not purchased were in fact required under Microsoft licensing terms. In the words of one reader:

There is a lot of misinformation occurring specific to license reduction fees and Virtuozzo. I work for a Fortune 100 with an extremely strong VMware (ESX) presence and we too were initially enamored with the ability to reduce OS licensing fees.

Quite Simply - you need to pay for each virtualized (’VPS’ in Virtuozzo speak) instance just like you would for separate Virtual Machines in the VMware World.

SWsoft used to tout that you only have to pay for the ‘parent’ Windows OS — that was until Microsoft gave them a ’stern reprimand’. Today you will not find a single SWsoft employee or any verbiage on their site that indicates you only have to pay for one OS license.

The only exception to this is Microsoft Datacenter Edition. John Yanekian is in breach of license obligation with his current configuration if he has not licensed all of his VPS’s.

The story has since been updated and renamed. Thanks to everyone who pointed out this error.