[aklug] UML/VServer/OpenVZ Love

I just want to pop a note out there to everybody interested in Linux
on Linux love. For a long time now I've been using User-Mode Linux
(UML) and other OS level virtualization solutions like VServer and
OpenVZ for quick server instances, network testing, and large scale
infrastructure testing. However, when I mention them I get blank
stares and people say "Uh.. dude.. Just use VMWare because it has
buttons and stuff". I actually have a lot of VMWare employee friends
and their focus and product is quite different than OS level
virtualization/paravirtualization. The company is gigantic (thousands
of employees, hundreds of developers) and filled to the brim with all
sorts of incredibly smart people to make sure any OS boots on any
supported host OS. Kinda overkill when you want to run Linux
instances on top of Linux hosts.

If anybody wants a primer on UML. Let me know - I'm more than happy
to show off this ancient solution that's been around since Linux 2.2
that boots faster and uses far less memory than any modern full
virtualization product even on virtualization aware processors. I use
VDE2 to emulate 802.1q capable switches with STP. It works
wonderfully when configuring redundant router solutions and testing
complicated network scenarios while using minimal resources.

I also use OpenVZ for an even lower footprint jail style solution.
Except this jail can handle many netfilter modules and bind it's own
virtual interface and do hot migrations. Similar things can be said
for VServer which has it's own bag of tricks.

All free.. It's nice being able to boot 8 test nodes on a P4 laptop
without running out of horsepower. On modern hardware you can easily
run 200+ OpenVZ instances.

If your interested and need to know more, check out:

  http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/
  http://wiki.openvz.org/
  http://linux-vserver.org/
  http://wiki.virtualsquare.org/index.php/VDE
  http://libvirt.org/

Right now I am testing 2 machines as failover routers, and
provisioning them from a 'puppet' system that is reachable by both.
Hopefully by the end of the day I will have simplified a very
complicated scenario for other IT people in my office to use and take
advantage of.

Don't get me wrong.. If I had a stock of virtualization aware
processors at my disposal and a management system that was easy to
work with I may end up ising virtualbox/vmware/kvm more often than I
do now. But you just can't beat the ability to boot a Linux system in
2 seconds after installing it in 20-30 seconds.

- Shane
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Received on Sun Nov 1 16:01:27 2009