Quick installation

This document briefly describes the steps needed to install OpenVZ on your machine.

There are a few ways to get OpenVZ:

Virtuozzo bare-metal installation

OpenVZ project builds its own Linux distribution with both hypervisor and container virtualization.

It is based on CloudLinux distribution, with the additions of our custom kernel, OpenVZ management utilities, QEMU and Virtuozzo installer. It is highly recommended to use OpenVZ containers and virtual machines with this Virtuozzo installation image. See Virtuozzo. Download installation ISO image.

Using pre-installed Linux distribution

Alternatively, one can install OpenVZ on a pre-installed RPM based Linux distribution. Follow step-by-step instruction below:

Package virtuozzo-release will bring meta information and Yum repositories:

  rpm -ihv http://download.openvz.org/virtuozzo/releases/7.0/x86_64/os/virtuozzo-release-7.0.1-2.x86_64.rpm

Some Linux distributions (like Fedora) may require to install package yum-plugin-priorities:

  yum install yum-plugin-priorities

Then install mandatory Virtuozzo RPM packages:

  yum install -y prlctl prl-disp-service vzkernel

Known issues: #3274, #3275, #3273.

See OpenVZ Packages available in various Linux distributions.

OpenVZ with upstream Linux kernel

One can use OpenVZ containers with vanilla kernel, albeit with some limitations:

• Some required changes may be absent in Linux kernel on your machine. Our Virtuozzo distribution based on Cloud Linux and we strongly recommend to use it if you don't want to install Virtuozzo Linux distribution for some reasons. Cloud Linux kernel contains some important changes absent in another kernels (even RHEL kernels).
• It is required to create a separate partition and mount it to /vz.

See OpenVZ with upstream kernel and OpenVZ Packages.

Using OpenVZ

OpenVZ is now set up on your machine. Follow on to basic operations in OpenVZ environment document.

See also

• Quick installation of legacy OpenVZ