Comparison
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Feature comparison of different virtualization solutions
| Feature | Description | OpenVZ (stable) | Virtuozzo 6 (PCS 6) | Virtuozzo 7 | Virtuozzo 7 Plus | 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 |
| 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 | 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 |
| 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 | None | No | None | None | None |
| Central Management tool | Is centralized multi-server management available for this edition? | Yes, 3rd party | Yes, Parallels Virtual Automation (PVA) | No | Yes, PVA | 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) |
| 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 of VEs | Ability to migrate virtual machines between hosts without perceived downtime | Yes, but with no zero downtime | Yes, Kernal-Level Migration | Yes, CRIU | Yes, CRIU | Offline, CRIU support is planned | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Automated Live Migration (DRS) | Ability to put host into maintenance mode which will automatically live migrate all virtual machines onto other available hosts so that the host can be brought shut down safely | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Storage Migration | Integrated Power Management features Ability to automatically migrate vms 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 vms 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: Direct Attached Storage, NAS: Network Attached Storage, FC: Fibre Channel, iSCSI, FCoE - Fibre Channel over Ethernet) | DAS (EXT4) | NAS (NFS), DAS (EXT4) | DAS (EXT4) | NAS (NFS), DAS (EXT4) | NAS (NFS), DAS (EXT4) | SAN, NAS (NFS), 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 | 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 (???) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Virtual SAN | Enhanced storage capability e.g. providing a virtual SAN through virtualized 'local' storage | Yes, Virtuozzo Storage | Yes, Virtuozzo Storage | Yes, Virtuozzo Storage | Yes, Virtuozzo Storage | Yes, but 3rd party (DRBD 9, Ceph, GlusterFS) | Yes, but 3rd party (DRBD 9, Ceph, GlusterFS) | Yes, Storage Spaces | Yes, Red Hat Storage | No |
| Storage QoS | Ability to control Quality of Service for Storage I/O for virtual machines | No | Only IOPs limits | Only IOPs limits | Only IOPs limits | No | No | 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 Odin 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 | Yes, pfcache | Yes, pfcache | No | No | None | None | None |
| Completely isolated disk subsystem for CTs | Yes, ploop | Yes, ploop | Yes, ploop | Yes, ploop | Yes, with LVM | No | 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 (Bitnami) | No | Yes (Turnkey) | None | None | None |
| Open Stack integration | Driver for Open Stack Nova | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | (LXC and KVM supported through libvirt) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Kernel maintenance | Ability to upgrade kernel with minimal downtime. | KernelCare service integration | kernel rebootless update (vzreboot) | KernelCare service integration | kernel rebootless update (vzreboot) | 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 |
| 6. Commercial | ||||||||||
| Open Source | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | 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 | |
