Comments

This is not a terribly informative article. One (large) UK integrator doesn't sell VMWare, and they recommend the non-VMWare product that they sell. I guess if I had an exclusive relationship with a supplier, I'd tend to describe their products as superior too. And where is the counterpoint? Surely someone - a VAR/integrator/reseller/etc. - has a pro-VMWare ESX opinion. They are the market leader, no?

From the Virtuozzo documentation, it looks like Virtuozzo starts with a host OS (Windows or Linux) and adds virtualized OS partitions. Essentially, Virtuozzo presents virtual images with the same set of abstracted hardware *device drivers* so you don't have to manage virtualized hardware. In the Windows world, Virtuozzo seems to present each guest with the Hardware Abstraction Layer. On the other hand, VMWare ESX exposes virtualized hardware which is accessed by drivers on whichever guest OS you happen to use (ie. below HAL on Windows). As an admin, I'm not sure that Virtuozzo saves me much effort since I don't generally spend a lot of time on device drivers after an initial system build, either on a VM or physical host server. Can I run multiple OS patch levels on different guests? It looks like ESX's virtual hardware provides more complete isolation between systems, since they don't share any host-OS code used by device drivers or other kernel-level software. If I want to run a set of virtual hosts with different security parameters - IDS machines, mail gateways, back-end data-processing hots, web servers, etc. - then I want a high level of isolation for each vm. ESX gives me this isolation - does Virtuozzo?

By  Anonymous, at Tuesday, October 31, 2006 1:45:00 AM 

"One (large) UK integrator doesn't sell VMWare, and they recommend the non-VMWare product that they sell."

You summarized everything in one line. :)

I've been working on both VZ and ESX for over a year now and, on my experience, I could say that:
1) VZ's marketing is great indeed.
2) VZ's approach is what of less scientific you could find in virtualization.
3) the isolation between customers is, potentially, zero. A single disk crash could (and did!) lead to private data of virtual machies being messed up, with data loss and disclosure...
4) no disk I/O shaping, no "shares". Hope that ten of your customers will never decide to start a "dd" or a big "tar" at the same time...
5) in my case, tragic support. I still have the best answers of their "priority" support printed out and hang on the office' wall...

I personally know other 3 major ISP using VZ, and I've never heard a good comment on it :)

By  Anonymous, at Tuesday, October 31, 2006 3:59:00 PM 

My personal experience with VMware is limited and I've honestly not run the ESX server so I may be considered biased. I have run virtuozzo for Linux and Windows for probably 3 years now (Windows slightly less since it's still fairly new) and have been extremely pleased with both products. I also have extensive experience with the Microsoft products.

When it's all said and done I don't think you can come out and say "HIP HIP HOORAY VMWARE DOES IT ALL" or "RAH RAH RAH VIRTUOZZO IS THE KING". The honest truth of the matter is that there's going to be a best tool for the job and there's going to be a job where one is going to be the more elegant solution than the other. I suspect that's why some run multiple platforms.

As with any software product, I've experienced my own technical issues with Virtuozzo. However, I've found it to be a reliable scalable solution and the technical support to be quick to assist resolving any issues or answering any questions. I average just over 40VMs per physical machine in a webhosting environment and my clients are pleased with the performance of the application and cost of service (Virtuozzo allows me to remain cost competitive). The greatest benefit for us was the ability to scale a client from a VPS to a single VPS dedicated server thus allowing the client to grow from VPS hosting to dedicated hosting with virtually zero down time and still maintaining the same management tools and interface as he had before. This ability to scale the client has been tremendous as our clients and their clients find it almost transparent. I don't believe Virtuozzo is the best solution for everything but for a task such as webhosting where you need to be able to get as many VPSs on a single hardware node and still maintain a high level of reliability and performance, Virtuozzo is a clear winner. Don't believe me? Do a search for VPS hosting and look at the number of companies hosting on virtuozzo as compared to the other platforms (any of the platforms, Xen, VMware, MSVS, you name it). if it was all just marketing magic then these companies would have dumped virtuozzo already and we'd see fewer companies adopting virtuozzo. Instead more and more companies are adopting Virtuozzo.

By  Anonymous, at Tuesday, October 31, 2006 5:35:00 PM 

It's a tough call. Yeah I am not sure the article paints a completely "un bias" opinion ?

Although I ran some benchmarks on my Citrix Silos against; MSVS, ESX, Virtuozzo and XEN and to be honest I did get better performance. So for Citrix I?m looking at it as an option. Although I?m keeping ESX for my test and dev.

I read that SPEC want to do some independent benchmarks (http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?newsID=7224&pagtype=all) ? only that will prove which is better under which circumstances.

By  Anonymous, at Wednesday, November 01, 2006 8:27:00 PM 

Oh dear. It seems that VMware has some actual competition and now their undies are all in a bunch. I wonder how much time their marketing and PR flacks spent writing the first two responses.

By  Anonymous, at Friday, November 03, 2006 12:00:00 AM 

Hi. I wrote the first response. My only relationship to VMWare is as a paying customer. That's it.

If there's a better alternative, I'd like to hear about it, but all the original article says, essentially, is that Virtuozzo is more scalable because it's different. It's a meaningless assertion. Competition in this market is great for me, the consumer, but this article didn't provide any data to back up the headline.

By  Anonymous, at Saturday, November 04, 2006 2:28:00 AM 

To the original poster, you've summarised the differences between virtuozzo and vmware really well, but then really missed the point.

By virtualising at the OS layer the RAM and Disk resources required to run a virtual server are significantly reduced. Virtuozzo typically uses 30MB RAM and 100MB of disk space per-virtual server, plus any changes or additional applications running.

A bare bones Windows 2003 installation in VMWARE needs around 500MB RAM and 2GB disk space before you've even started.

So on a 4GB server you can perhaps get 8 small VMWARE servers (this is probably pushing it), whereas on Virtuozzo the figure could easily be 20+.

VZ is also aware of the Windows operating system, it is designed for provisioning Windows so when you create a new VPS you create new OS install. The whole process takes under a minute from running the Wizard to logging in to the fully configured Windows Server. The supplied management tools allow you to clone and move these servers. As well as providing an end-user control panel so they can monitor resources, administer their server and reboot / restart.

VZ is not perfect, there are limitations such as limited driver support. VZ pretty much disallows any additional drivers from running in the host OS, so there is for instance no way that I'm aware of to connect up a modem to a VZ server.

As the system is also a clever use of terminal services, it can be difficult to install Citrix within a VPS and also you have no console as such. This can prove a limitation in some circumstances.

You are of course limited to running one Windows release with a specific service pack (although I believe it is upgrade individual VPSes to higher service packs).

The truth of the matter is if you have a requirement for 5 or more virtual servers running a windows operating system with straightforward requirements then the cost and performance of VZ can easily be justified.

There is definitely a good case for combining VMWARE and Virtuozzo in a single site. Run your straightforward apps (Exchange, DC, IIS) within your VZ and your other apps with specialist requirements on VMWARE.

VMWARE is the better DR/BC solution when coupled with all the add-ons (Virtual Center, VMOTION, Imaging Software), significant server resources and a high-end SAN. However this solution is definitely not a cost saver over traditional server farms.

VZ IS a cost saving consolidation solution which is what most really people want from virtualisation.

Jason

By  Anonymous, at Tuesday, November 21, 2006 1:03:00 AM 

I have not used Virtuozzo.

I have used the following VMWare server products.

GSX server
The new free server product
ESX Server 3.x

We now use ESX Server and run critical production servers 24/7.

Its a very solid product. We pay to have their support, so we have the support if something goes south, but have not needed it yet.

By  Anonymous, at Sunday, December 17, 2006 8:49:00 PM 

as i can see is Virtuozzo still a Hypervisor type 2 product and not a type one like ESX. I could be wrong do. That information seems hard to find. According to the technical information documant i see a host OS which makes it a hypervisor type 2 sollution. Not really comparable with ESX.

By  me, at Wednesday, May 16, 2007 12:39:00 PM 

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