Virtualization Platforms

Portal Home > Knowledgebase > Articles Database > Virtualization Platforms

Posted by Christian Little, 10-02-2011, 03:48 PM
We currently offer OpenVZ containers for VPS hosting, but I'm looking for alternative platforms that might allow us to run Windows containers. So I'm looking at Xen and doing a ton of reading on it today. But wanted to get some input from everybody here. Some of the things I'm looking out for: Memory Management I've been reading that even though you lose the burstable RAM functionality with Xen, the swap works quite well but it tends to slow the server down when it starts swapping a lot. With OpenVZ, we're finding that it works great most of the time, but every once in a while it consumes a stupid amount of RAM and the physical server crashes. It doesn't happen often, but I don't like it. From what I have read so far, the swap feature of Xen makes it more stable, but it supposedly generates higher server loads. Windows OpenVZ doesn't support Windows in any shape or form right now, and we've had numerous requests for Windows VPS's. So this is a big sticking point. Performance It looks to me like Xen runs a little slower than OpenVZ containers, but it's more stable. Do you folks have any input on Xen? How does it perform for you so far? Is there another virtualization platform that supports both linux and windows that you recommend? My 2 biggest features are stability and Liunx/Windows compatibility. The ability to deploy a software firewall on the hardware node is also a big thing for me. iptables works with the hardware node on our OpenVZ servers, but if I try to put CSF or something else with it it blocks all traffic to the individual containers which is not cool. Last edited by Christian Little; 10-02-2011 at 03:52 PM.
Posted by HostHatch_AR, 10-02-2011, 04:40 PM
Have you considered using Hyper-V or VMware for Windows VM's?
Posted by Softsys Hosting, 10-02-2011, 11:02 PM
1 for Hyper-V - I'll recommend getting a separate node for Windows VPS with Hyper-V since it works great with Windows VM's.
Posted by HelpingHost, 10-02-2011, 11:12 PM
I'm using XenServer for a long time now and it is extremely stable and performs great.
Posted by HSN-Saman, 10-02-2011, 11:15 PM
I'd recommend VMware,as you wants to run several operating systems, for windows you could have the best performance on Hyper-V.
Posted by Preetam, 10-03-2011, 08:06 AM
Have you considered KVM?
Posted by RS-Kevin, 10-03-2011, 08:37 AM
We have been using Xen + Citrix Technology for our VPS and found it very stable and powerful than OpenVZ
Posted by Christian Little, 10-05-2011, 02:23 PM
Thanks for the replies. I'm not really in favor of using Hyper-V because I don't trust Microsoft to run a server. I'd rather have a linux-based server that has the ability to run Windows containers on it. I'll look at VMWare, I've never really looked into it much previously. Looks like we'll try out Xen though.
Posted by HostHatch_AR, 10-05-2011, 02:40 PM
VMware is much better than Xen in my personal opinion.
Posted by UmbeeHosting, 10-08-2011, 08:44 PM
Xenserver all the way Vmware is by far the best as it is truly enterprise class and mature but it will cost you a boom to use for hosting so forget it.