Having one server and the constant fear being hacked or FUBAR-ing it myself, i want to start configuring my system with virtualization. I want to have my webserver seperated from my mailserver and need a testserver for testing newly released packages, so I don't screw something up on my web/mailserver, like ISPconfig or destroy email of my users. Also, i want these multiple OS's completly seperated from eachother, so an attacker can not hop and compromize the other environments on the system. I'm using CentOS 4.4 and like know which one is better for my situation. Thanks
With xen, you are able to run different operating systems independantly, with openVZ, all these operating systems are sharing the same linux kernel. The pro's and con's in my opinion are: Xen: + Run really independant operating systems that dont share the same linux kernel - Higher overhead then OpenVZ - The filesystem of the guest os is in a file that can not grow automatically when the guest needs more space. OpenVZ - All guests share the same linux kernel + All guests share the same harddisk, you can give a guest more HD space by simply setting a higher quota value + Very low overhead, you may many VZ on one server. ESpecially build for ISP hosting enviroments For testing purposes, I personally prefer none of thie two. I use the free VMWare Server. In VMWare it is easy to install a unmodified OS for testing, the virtual harddisks may grow when you add more data and you can set breakpoints where you go back when e.g. a software installation fails. But VMWare is much slower then Xen and OpenVZ due to the hardware abstration, but this does not matter so much in a testing enviroment.
In my opinion both OpenVZ and Xen are more or less experimental, I wouldn't use them in production environments yet. For testing purposes, I'd recommend VMware Server.
Oke, thanks for the replies... I will take them to hart and definitly keep you posted... especially when i'm getting in to trouble, hahaha!
