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Note: This comparison doesn't include Docker, because Docker is not a virtualization solution. It automates the deployment of applications inside software containers, by providing an additional layer of abstraction and automation of operating-system-level virtualization.[1] |
Disclaimer
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- The content is for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into any contract.
- The information presented is not a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality.
- Any references to the development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for these products remains at Virtuozzo’s sole discretion.
- Product capabilities, timeframes and features are subject to change and should not be viewed as Virtuozzo commitments.
The information regarding all other solutions are taken by authors from public sources only. This information can be changed by any OpenVZ Wiki user without any notice and author's review or approval.
Feature comparison of different virtualization solutions
| Feature | Description | OpenVZ | Virtuozzo 6 (PCS 6) | OpenVZ 7 | Virtuozzo 7 | LXC | Proxmox VE | Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 R2 | RHEV 3.5 | Citrix XenServer 6.5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Virtualization platform | ||||||||||
| 1.1. Overview | ||||||||||
| HW virtualization support (Hypervisor) | Full emulation of underneath hardware level: full isolation guest environment, no dependencies from host OS, overhead for hypervisor layer. | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| OS-level virtualization (Containers) | Sharing the same instance of host OS: high density, high performance, high dependencies from host OS. | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Hypervisor technology | Technology that enables to run Virtual Machines. | None | Parallels Desktop Monitor | KVM | KVM | None | KVM | Hyper-V | KVM | Xen |
| Windows guest OS additional support | WHQL-signed drivers, SVVP certification | None | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Containers technology | Technology that enables to run Containers. | Virtuozzo Containers | Virtuozzo Containers with enhancements | Virtuozzo Containers with enhancements | Virtuozzo Containers with enhancements | Linux containers | LXC (moved from OpenVZ since 4.0) | None | None | None |
| 1.2. Memory | ||||||||||
| Memory Overcommit | Ability to present more memory to virtual machines than physically available | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, with new VCMMD memory management | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Page sharing | Memory (RAM) savings through sharing identical memory pages across virtual machines | Yes | Yes, only for CTs | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Online Memory Management for VM | Ability to change amount of RAM for CT and VM without reboot | No | No | Yes | Yes | N/A | No | Yes | No | No |
| 2. Management | ||||||||||
| 2.1. General | ||||||||||
| Unified management tool for CTs and VMs | Single tool for managing both containers and virtual machines (if applicable) | None | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | None | None | None |
| OpenStack integration | Integration with OpenStack components (see details) | Yes, only Nova | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Central Management tool | Is centralized multi-server management available for this edition? | Yes, 3rd party | Yes, Parallels Virtual Automation (PVA) | No | Yes, Virtual Automator | Yes, 3rd party | Yes | Yes, System Center Virtual Machine Manager | Yes, RHEV Manager | Yes, XenCenter |
| 2.2. Upgrade & Backup | ||||||||||
| Update Management | Integrated patching mechanism for the virtual environments (Guest OS) / guest tools / templates | No integrated update, YUM (Linux) | No integrated update, YUM (Linux), WSUS (Windows) | No integrated update, YUM (Linux), WSUS (Windows) | No integrated update, YUM (Linux), WSUS (Windows) | No integrated update, APT (Linux) | No integrated update, YUM (Linux), WSUS (Windows) | Yes (WSUS, SCCM, Virtual Machine Servicing Tool 2012 for offline VM update) | No integrated update, YUM (Linux), WSUS (Windows) | No integrated update, YUM (Linux), WSUS (Windows) |
| Kernel Updates without reboot | Ability to update Linux kernel or install security patches without reboot | Yes, only Nova | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live VE snapshot | Ability to take a snapshot of a virtual environment while the guest OS is running (e.g. for roll-back or backup purposes) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Offline, CRIU support is planned | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Integrated Backup | Are backup plugins/tools provided to backup virtual environments (over and above the ability to perform classic backup using agents in the guests) | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Backup Integration API | Integration with 3rd party backup applications for backup of the virtual environment. | No (only through snapshots) | Yes | Yes | Yes | No (only through snapshots) | Yes (vzdump) | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2.3. Others | ||||||||||
| VEs Templates (VM, CT) | Ability to create and store master images and deploy virtual machines from them | Yes (CT only) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (OpenVZ templates) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| P2V migration | Integrated or added P2V (or V2V) capability in order to convert physical systems to virtual environment. | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No, 3rd party tools | Yes | No | No |
| 3. VE Mobility and HA | ||||||||||
| 3.1. VE Mobility | ||||||||||
| Live Migration | Ability to migrate virtual machines between hosts without perceived downtime | Yes, but with no zero downtime | Yes, Kernel-Level Migration | Yes, CRIU for containers | Yes, CRIU for containers | Offline, CRIU support is planned | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| DRS/Host Maintenance Mode | Ability to put host into maintenance mode which will automatically live migrate all VEs onto other available hosts so that the host can be brought shut down safely | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Distributed Power Management | Distributed Power Management features Ability to automatically migrate VEs onto fewer hosts and power off unused capacity (hosts), wake systems back up when required | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 3.2. HA / DR | ||||||||||
| Cluster size | Maximum number of hosts in the cluster/pool relationship and maximum number VEs per cluster/pool (if specified) | None | 32 hosts/cluster validated (100 hosts/cluster maximum) - PStorage limitation | Not tested yet | Not tested yet | None | 32 nodes | 64 nodes | 200 nodes | 16 nodes |
| Integrated HA | Recover virtual environment in case of host failures through restart on alternative hosts (downtime = restart time) | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Site Failover | Integrated ability to (ideally live) migrate virtual machine data (virtual disk files) to different storage e.g. for array upgrades/migration and I/O management | No | No | No | No | No | No | Manual | No | Integrated Disaster Recovery - manual |
| 4. Network and Storage | ||||||||||
| 4.1. Storage | ||||||||||
| Supported Storage | Supported types of Storage (DAS, NAS or SAN) | DAS (EXT4) | NAS (NFS), DAS (EXT4) | DAS (EXT4) | NAS (NFS), DAS (EXT4) | NAS (NFS), DAS (EXT4) | DAS, NAS (NFS, ZFS), SAN (iSCSI), Ceph | DAS, NAS (SMB), SAN (iSCSI, FC, FCoE) | DAS, NAS (NFS), SAN (iSCSI, FC, FCoE) | DAS, NAS (NFS), SAN (iSCSI, FC, FCoE) |
| Virtual Disk Format | Supported format(s) of the virtual disks for the virtual machines | CT - ploop | CT - ploop, VM - ploop | CT - ploop, VM - ploop\Qcow2 | CT - ploop, VM - ploop\Qcow2 | Any | qcow2, vmdk, raw | vhdx, vhd, pass-though (raw) | Qcow2, raw disk | vhd, raw disk |
| Thin Disk Provisioning | Ability to over-commit overall disk space by dynamically growing the size of virtual disks based on actual usage rather than pre-allocating full size. | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, depends on disk format (dm-thin) | Yes (depends on underlying storage driver) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Virtual SAN | Enhanced storage capability e.g. providing a virtual SAN through virtualized 'local' storage | No | Yes, Virtuozzo Storage | No | Yes, Virtuozzo Storage | Yes, but 3rd party (DRBD 9, Ceph, GlusterFS) | Yes, but 3rd party (DRBD 9, Ceph, GlusterFS, sheepdog) | Yes, Storage Spaces | Yes, Red Hat Storage | No |
| Storage QoS | Ability to control Quality of Service for Storage I/O or Throughput for CT/VM | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes, VMs only | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 4.2. Network | ||||||||||
| Advanced Network Switch | Centralized virtual network configuration (rather than managing virtual switches on individual hosts), typically with enhanced networking capabilities | No | No | No | No | No | Yes, Open vSwitch support | Yes | OpenStack Neutron Integration | Open vSwitch integration |
| Network QoS | Ability to create and store master images and deploy virtual machines from them | Only bandwidth limits | Only bandwidth limits | Only bandwidth limits | Only bandwidth limits | Only bandwidth limits | Yes, with Open vSwitch | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 5. Others – most of features are relevant only for Virtuozzo editions | ||||||||||
| Memory deduplication for binary files | Memory and IOPS deduplication management that enables/disables caching for Container directories and files, verifies cache integrity, checks Containers for cache errors, and purges the cache if needed | No | Yes, pfcache | No | Yes, pfcache | No | No | None | None | None |
| Completely isolated disk subsystem for CTs | Yes, ploop | Yes, ploop | Yes, ploop | Yes, ploop | Yes, with LVM | Yes, LVM, ZFS, or loop devices | None | None | None | |
| API\SDK | OpenVZ API for Ruby, LibVirt | Virtuozzo SDK, LibVirt | Virtuozzo SDK, LibVirt | Virtuozzo SDK, LibVirt | LibLXC, API for Ruby, Python 2, Haskell, Go | Proxmox VE uses a REST like API (JSON data format) | Windows SDK | RHEV-M API: REST API, SDKs | XenAPI, XenServer SDKs | |
| Image Catalog integration | Integration with 3rd-party image catalog services of popular server applications and development environments that can be installed with one click. | No | No | No | Yes Application Image Catalog Virtuozzo Application Catalog | No | Yes (Turnkey) | None | None | None |
| Kernel maintenance | Ability to upgrade kernel with minimal downtime. | KernelCare service integration | kernel rebootless update (vzreboot) | No | Yes ReadyKernel Service | KernelCare service integration | KernelCare service integration | None | KernelCare service integration | KernelCare service integration |
| Power Panel | A tool used for managing particular virtual machines and containers by their end users. | No | Yes | No | Yes | None | None | None | None | None |
| Secure for using in public networks | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No[2], [3] | No[2], [3] | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 6. Commercial | ||||||||||
| Open Source | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | No (but there is Open Source edition(oVirt)) | No (but there is Open Source edition) | |
| License\Subscription | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes, Enterprise Edition | |
| Support | Both community and commercial support | Commercial support | Community support | Commercial Support | Yes, Canonical Ltd. | Both community and commercial support | Commercial support | Commercial support | Both community and commercial support | |
| EOL policy | 5 years of support | 7 years of support | TBD | 7 years of support | 11 years of support] | |||||