[Users] VServer vs OpenVZ

[Kir Kolyshkin]

My view of subject is definitely biased towards OpenVZ, but still: there 
are areas where OpenVZ is definitely more developed than VServer. Let me 
concentrate on three of these.

First is stability. By sticking to old (currently 2.6.8) kernel and 
backporting all the bug fixes, security fixes and hardware driver 
updates, we make OpenVZ kernel very stable. We do a lot of kernel 
testing in house, including stress testing.

Second is resource management. There are a lot of resources that can be 
abused from inside VServer guest or OpenVZ VPS, leading to at least DoS; 
some of those resources are not under control of traditional UNIX means 
such as ulimit. In OpenVZ we have User Beancounters (UBC for short), 
which accounts and limits about 20 of such resources (including IPC 
objects, various kernel buffers etc).

Third is virtualized network stack. AFAIK VServer's ngnet is not yet 
ready for prime time yet, while OpenVZ's venet is here. Without fully 
virtualized network stack people are experiencing problems like this one:
http://www.paul.sladen.org/vserver/archives/200511/0165.html
http://www.paul.sladen.org/vserver/archives/200511/0189.html

Regards,
  Kir, OpenVZ project leader

Eugen Leitl wrote:

>Before I try OpenVZ I would like to hear comments of people
>who've ran both VServer and OpenVZ, preferrably on the same
>hardware, on how both compare. 
>
>Factors of interest are stability, Debian support, 
>hardware utilization, documentation and community support,
>security.
>
>My planned usage is VServers in a hosting setting.
>  
>