Best performance UNIX just for HOST Virtualization?

Hi everybody,
Which Unix base OS have best performance for HOST virtualization?
I tested SmartOS but it needs another OS to connect remotely!
Thanks in advance.

Hi,

That's a very open-ended question without a clear answer. As always, it depends almost entirely on what exactly you're going to be doing, on your workload, on the OS your guests will be running, and a wide variety of other things.

For my part, speaking purely personally, I've found OpenVZ to offer excellent performance. It's a Linux-based container environment, where the host runs a modified kernel and the containers on the host depend on and inherit an instance of that modified kernel as their own. They therefore must be running Linux, but can be running a different Linux distribution from the host.

The very latest versions of OpenVZ allow for fully-isolated virtual machines, and so support running Windows guests too. Historically, it's been Linux-only however, with a separate and mostly architecturally unrelated Windows offering that's since been discontinued. There is a commercially supported version called Virtuozzo that comes with nice GUI management tools, with OpenVZ being the free and unsupported version. If you're familiar with Linux, think OpenVZ==CentOS and Virtuozzo==RHEL and you basically get the relationship between the two.

One thing I'm curious about: I'd been thinking about looking at SmartOS for some things myself. What do you mean when you say you need a remote OS for it ? As far as I understood things it's basically SunOS underneath, and boots off of a USB key and thereafter offers local utilities to download, install and manage images. External management systems like Chef, Puppet etc. are compatible with it, but are optional, as I understand things anyway.

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Thanks for your Hints, Dear drystalk,
As you said, OpenVZ is best sellection for High perfomance virtualization but did not support Windows OS!
I have a General Desktop PC (CoreI3+8G ram) and need to virualize some OSes like Linux, Windows, OpenBSD as guest OS with best performance.

Hi,

I think OpenVZ 7 (the latest release) does support Windows, though only running in a KVM VM and not in a container. OpenVZ 7 added the option to create VMs that was previously only available in Virtuozzo, and so you can create containers for Linux guests and VMs for all non-Linux guests on OpenVZ 7 (or you should be able to at least, according to the documentation I can see). So if you're familiar with OpenVZ, then OpenVZ 7 is probably the best way to go, since you can use both containers and full-blown real VMs on the same host.

However, if the issue here is that you are actually wanting to make day-to-day use of your own PC whilst being able to run containers and VMs on it (which I think might be what your comments about SmartOS imply), then your options are a bit more limited. Things like OpenVZ/SmartOS/ESX are meant to run on a dedicated server that does nothing but host containers and VMs. You then connect remotely to those containers and VMs to use them in whatever way you see fit (SSH, rdesktop, etc), and can also connect remotely to the hardware node to manage it.

If you're looking to be setting up VMs or containers on your own PC, then running a normal desktop-oriented Linux distro locally and using KVM/QEMU to run VMs on it might be a good way forward. Similarly you could run Windows 10 or Windows Server locally and add the Hyper-V role, and create VMs that way whilst still having a usable "real" desktop OS too. Or just use VirtualBox or something like that if your needs are simpler.

This is the old Chevy vs. Ford argument. Not to be rude, but really, this isn't the most constructive question. I can understand wanting some help picking your Linux, but the truth is there are many great distros to choose from, and there is no one that is the best for everyone using it for virtualizing servers or anything else.

There is a certain distro I am partial to, but when I read about why people prefer certain other distros, I always am impressed by the good reasons they have. I believe there is no correct answer to your question.

I think those disclaimers are important, but now I am going to tell you why I run Debian virtual machines. Debian came to me as rumor. same as God, Heaven, and Hell. People seemed to say Debian was really stable. I started with another distro and that is how I found out what people mean by "Debian is really stable." At first I thought I wanted something more cutting edge.

Let me tell you what I like most when it comes to my servers: forget about them I want then always on and running like electricity. Every second I have to put into making my server work is a second I could devote instead ti a task that makes me money. No one pays me to run my servers. They pay me to make the software I make on my servers.

You know how system updates have habit of breaking stuff? Debian doesn't do that. I really like it when my plans for a day are not cancelled because something gone wrong with my server that I have to deal with instead.

As far as I am concerned there is nothing Debian cannot do that any system can do. it always does it great. There is a big number of other distros that are based Debian. I think the way it works is they take Debian and do stuff to it then release it. I guess those other distros have features doesn't have, but I have no idea what they are.I have come to love stability and someone will correct me if I am wrong, but Debian is a gold standard for stability. Debian is the source.I don't really know, but I think Debian might be the best software ever. Debian is the only software I ever worked with that always impresses me and never disappoints. I only use Debian as VMs hosted on a computer available to me for hosting. The host does not matter Debian matters. I do not use Debian desktop software yet.

So there you have it, my dumb answer to your ____ question. I hope it helps.

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I'm not disagreeing with you, per se, but your claim that "updates have habit of breaking stuff? Debian doesn't do that." seems about as, how did you put it, constructive, as the question.

I'd always recommend CentOS or RHEL, but it doesn't matter. What matters, is what has already been pointed out: there's really no right answer to this question. It's horses for courses: you pick an OS / distribution based on what you want it for. I've even stopped using VMs, for the most part, in favour of Docker containers as much of what I need them for is ephemeral in nature, and I don't need them clocking up my hard drive.

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debian based ubuntu / linux mint updates never broken anything up until linux mint 18.x, which simply doesn't run on my machine. Same with Fedora25, a big frustrating update hell. Since Fedora 26 everything is fine, very fine, excellente! I remember that suse minor release updates never worked, and even major releases left a broken system.

Still the best suggestion (for me) is openVZ and other suggestions don't accept because they did not develop specially for virtualization and they are multifunctional OS.
welcome to new hints:b:
Thanks all.

My experience is that major Linux updates to PHP and Apache2 can and do break things.

It has to break things in many circumstances because, for example, the Apache2 configuration file for the latest version of Apache2 / PHP7 does not work with PHP 5.X versions, of PHP/Apache2, etc.

So, Apache2 will break during some major upgrades and so will PHP code.

Also, PHP code which is DEPRECATED in PHP7 will break when upgrading to PHP7.

You must be very careful upgrading if you do not want a lot of unexpected downtime; and if you are just doing the upgrade on your personal server, that might be OK; but if you are upgrading a production server, one odd config file change or incompatibility can ruin your day for sure.

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What is related to the virtualization subject?:confused::confused:

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Because earlier in this thread people discussed various Linux distributions, so if you read the earlier threads about "breaking when upgrading" then you will not be confused, LOL, as people's replies are based on the facts, not just one subject line.

Virtualization is not some "magic word", it is an instance of a distribution of some operating system(s) and the performance is based on a number of things, including reliability and upgradability.

The original questions is more confusing than my reply:

"Best performance .... " ? That is a very confusing concept as well :slight_smile:

One big distinction you might want to make when it comes to virtualisation is "para-virtualisation" versus "full-virtualisation".

The difference is that a para-virtualised system is aware that it is virtual. This means that it can forego some tasks a non-virtualised system would have to do:

i.e. a disk driver needs to check if the disk is still accessible, may have to cover for a block becoming bad, etc.. A fully virtualised disk driver thinks that the (virtual) disk it is presented is in fact a real disk and treats it accordingly. It will do all these checks i talked before. A para-virtualised disk driver would "know" that what seems to be a disk is in fact a file on some real disk and forego all these checks because the disk driver of the host system would carry them out anyway. This will make the para-virtualised driver faster and less resource-consuming. On the other hand it would mean that you have a system with a different driver and you can't simply copy your physical system to a virtual environment (or the other direction) without changing some things.

I haven't worked with OpenVZ for a long time, so i cannot say anything about newer versions. OpenVZ is (was?) such a para-virtualised environment which offers performance benefits compared to fully virtualised environments like VirtualBox, etc.. But basically it is (or was?) a very comfortable chroot -environment and the performance gain meant on the other hand, that you had only one kernel really running. This meant that you were not completely independent in chosing the system you wanted to run virtualised. If it is now possible to mix Windows- and Linux-systems on the same hardware node IMHO this means that they have switched to full virtualisation and this perhaps means giving up some/all of the performance advantages the para-virtualised system once had.

But without more clearly defining what you want to do a serious suggestion is not possible, as already has been said times and again.

I hope this helps.

bakunin