Open Source

The Importance of Open Source

Open source initiatives play a key role in Virtuozzo’s development efforts and culture. We are a commercial company who’s platform is built on open source software. Our developers all contribute to and work with open source software.

In addition to the obvious benefits of increased visibility to code and interoperability, open source software is “lighter” than proprietary software without the overhead seen in proprietary programs. Since its built with more developers than most proprietary programs it’s also often more secure. Why? More developers. More testing. Faster response times. Our goal is always to supply our customers with the most efficient and stable solution to their technical and business requirements. For all those reasons and more, Virtuozzo sponsors and contributes to a great number of open source initiatives.

Virtuozzo is also a founding member of several industry leading consortium including the following groups.

The open source version of Virtuozzo

OpenVZ is a container-based virtualization for Linux. OpenVZ creates multiple secure, isolated Linux containers (otherwise known as VEs or VPSs) on a single physical server enabling better server utilization and ensuring that applications do not conflict.

Each container performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server; a container can be rebooted independently and have root access, users, IP addresses, memory, processes, files, applications, system libraries, and configuration files.

Free Linux based operating system

For years, VzLinux has been a base operating system for OpenVz and our commercial products. Additionally, it was used as a guest operating system for containers and virtual machines. With our 20-years of experience in the field, we have all the required skills, infrastructure, and knowledge and have consistently released our version of VzLinux ahead of CentOS.

CRIU

Checkpoint/Restore in Userspace (CRIU)

Freeze a running application, or part of it, and checkpoint it to persistent storage as a collection of files outside of the kernel. The goal is to be able to restore and run the application from the point at which it was frozen to support the migration of containers.

Libct

(now libcontainer) Container management library

Provided buildable, linkable library to expose the granular capabilities of containers. Merged in 2014 with libcontainer. The goal was to create a unified platform so anyone who wants to create a containerized application does not have to worry about the “flavor” of container on which it will run. We also have maintainer’s responsibilities in the runc project.

P.Haul

Container migration management

This project is dedicated to supporting live migration of servers using CRIU. Migration is done using a p.haul script with the help of P.Haul service on destination node. Both, P.Haul command and service use CRIU service to dump and restore container.

Virtuozzo Opensource Products

What’s freely available? Why choose a commercial solution?

Open Source Options

Most of the virtualization solutions that exist today were founded and continue to be run as open source initiatives. For almost any aspect of virtualization you are likely to find well established open-source solutions with vibrant communities around them. There are many, many “do-it-yourself” shops who have adopted and integrated freely available code to successfully virtualize their infrastructure.

The Benefits of Commercial Support

At the same time, there are just as many users who have turned to commercial solutions because of the additional performance, stability and support that is included with a commercially available implementation of an open source product. In addition, companies like Virtuozzo have developed commercial offerings that can be used in conjunction with both the open source and commercial implementations of their core products.

Learn about Virtuozzo Products