Top 10 Linux Virtualization Software
Virtualization is the latest buzz word. You may wonder computers are getting cheaper every day, why should we care and why should we use virtualization? Virtualization is a broad term that refers to the abstraction of computer resources such as:1. Platform Virtualization
2. Resource Virtualization
3. Storage Virtualization
4. Network Virtualization
5. Desktop Virtualization
Why should we use virtualization?
Consolidation - It means combining multiple software workloads on one computer system. We can run various virtual machines in order to save money and power (electricity).
Testing - we can test various configurations. We can create less resource hungry and low priority virtual machines (VM). Often, New Linux distro inside VM is also good for students who wish to learn new operating systems and programming languages / database without making any changes to working environment.
Security and Isolation - If mail server or any other applications gets cracked, only that VM will be under control of the attacker. Also, isolation means misbehaving applications (e.g. memory leaks) cannot bring down whole server.
Open Source Linux Virtualization Software
1. OpenVZ is an operating system-level virtualization technology based on the Linux kernel and operating system.
2. Xen is a virtual machine monitor for 32 / 64 bit Intel / AMD (IA 64) and PowerPC 970 architectures. It allows several guest operating systems to be executed on the same computer hardware concurrently. XEN is included with most popular Linux distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, RHEL, Fedora and many others.
3. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a Linux kernel virtualization infrastructure. KVM currently supports native virtualization using Intel VT or AMD-V. A wide variety of guest operating systems work with KVM, including many flavours of Linux, BSD, Solaris, and Windows etc. KVM is included with Debian, OpenSuse and other Linux distributions.
4. Linux-VServer is a virtual private server implementation done by adding operating system-level virtualization capabilities to the Linux kernel.
5. VirtualBox is an x86 virtualization software package, developed by Sun Microsystems as part of its Sun xVM virtualization platform. Supported host operating systems include Linux, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp, Windows XP or Vista, and Solaris, while supported guest operating systems include FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, OS/2 Warp, Windows and Solaris.
6. Bochs is a portable x86 and AMD64 PC emulator and debugger. Many guest operating systems can be run using the emulator including DOS, several versions of Microsoft Windows, BSDs, Linux, AmigaOS, Rhapsody and MorphOS. Bochs can run on many host operating systems, like Windows, Windows Mobile, Linux and Mac OS X.
7. User Mode Linux (UML) was the first virtualization technology for Linux. User-mode Linux is generally considered to have lower performance than some competing technologies, such as Xen and OpenVZ. Future work in adding support for x86 virtualization to UML may reduce this disadvantage.
