One can divide dedicated server in to virtual machines for consolidation, energy efficiency, testing and isolation of environment. This way of deployment is for powerful dedicated servers, not entry grade dedicated servers. Instead of using 3 dedicated servers for web server, database server, load balancer; we can use single bigger dedicated server and divide it or use many dedicated servers and consolidate with a cloud computing software. Previously we talked about hardware virtualization and operating system virtualization as two of the most used virtualization. In this article we are offering is a list of free and proprietary virtualization softwares for dedicated server consolidation.
Why Use Virtualization Softwares For Dedicated Server?
We can stretch the physical server towards its limit by installing various types of software on one piece of hardware. We can have many virtual servers on one dedicated server which will help in saving energy and optimisation of operation cost, also we can test any web application on a virtual server as dev setup before testing on a live virtual server. Also, this kind of setup with virtual servers helps when one virtual server is under networking attack – other virtual servers function normally.
List of Virtualization Softwares For Dedicated Server Consolidation
Virtuozzo/OpenVZ is paid version and OpenVZ is free version of same base software. In Virtuozzo/OpenVZ the small partitions created become a complete stand alone virtual private servers or VPS with their proprietary file system and security functionality that isolates all the partitions. Each virtual private server on the host can be rebooted separately as long the host machine is always running. Virtuozzo/OpenVZ is stable virtual softwares and is widely used. Xen hypervisor/Citrix Xen Server is another stable virtualization software which is used mainly for creating cloud servers by Amazon like companies. XEN supports most of the Linux distributions. Xen runs directly on the hardware and manages CPU, memory and disk.
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OpenStack is a free cloud computing software. Among the other known, there is KVM, SmartOS, VMware ESXi, Promox VE, Microsoft Hyper-V. VMware ESXi is one of the best solution among the paid virtualization softwares so as Parallels Virtuozzo and Microsoft Hyper-V. Virtuozzo/OpenVZ is possibly most known for easy to manage, less resource hog software for one physical dedicated server scenario. However Virtuozzo/OpenVZ creates container virtualization. There is difference between OpenVZ and Xen.
