The Little Geeni

The difference between VMware and Virtuozzo Containers is more than just the name. Only hosting companies using VMware can offer complete flexibility, security and capacity, as well as options for high availability, load balancing and disaster recovery.

Operating System Flexibility

A basic difference between VMware and Virtuozzo is that VMware creates individual virtual servers directly on the hardware, at a bare metal level, while Virtuozzo’s containers run at the operating system (OS) level.

All container environments running on the same physical hardware must share the same host operating system. This means that while each environment can run its own client OS, the one you can run on your virtual environment will be limited to those that are compatible with the host. Virtuozzo is limited to Linux or Windows at both the host and client level, and can only run a client OS on a physical server that uses the same host OS; in other words, a Linux client on a Linux host, and a Windows client on a Windows host. Of course, limiting the operating system also limits your choice of software to that available for Linux and Windows.

Running at the hardware level, VMware accomplishes virtualization by using a physical machine’s hardware resources to serve multiple virtual servers, each of which can run an independent operating system. In this way, VMware virtualization supports many diverse operating systems on any server system. This allows VMware to support a variety of Windows versions and many different flavors of Linux, including Ubuntu, SuSE, and Red Hat, as well as non-Windows and Linux operating systems such as Solaris and Netware.

With Virtuozzo, because your virtual environment must run the same OS as the host, you don’t have the option to manage and modify your own operating system. The need for uniformity extends to updates—all environments must run at the same patch level. That means that if your virtual environment’s software has not been optimized for the latest Windows or Linux update, and your hosting company installs it (on the host system and across all virtual environments), your software may function poorly, or not at all.

With VMware, you can manage and modify your own operating system, as well as run different patch levels than the host system. This offers your company installation and update control on your virtual servers, and the freedom to use an extended range of software, software releases, and even multiple software flavors on the same OS, such as SQL Standard, Web and Express editions.

In Virtuozzo’s containers, when you need to reboot your virtual environment, such as during a test phase, you’ll have to wait for a scheduled system outage for the entire physical server, chaining you to your hosting company’s calendar. Using VMware, you can reboot your operating system when and as often as your situation requires.

Finally, a hardware-based virtual server like VMware offers something an OS-based virtual environment does not and cannot offer—virtual memory. Virtual memory, called swap in Unix or page file in Windows, allows your applications to use an assigned piece of disk space as working memory when necessary to avoid crashing. Because all container environments share an operating system core, containers don’t have independent access to swap. Using VMware, your hosting provider can give you swap space or a paging file as large as that available on a physical server.

Security

Virtual environments that all run the same operating system are more vulnerable to both security breaches and simultaneous code faults. If the virtual servers on a hosting physical server are all running one operating system, and any of the operating systems are hacked, then they all are; if the host operating system experiences a failure due to a bug in the software, then they all do. This is not the kind of virtual server environment you can depend on to failover gracefully or recover quickly.

In a Virtuozzo environment, security is complicated by the need for OS patches to be certified by the company. That means that when a critical operating system patch is released, the patch must go through another layer of complexity and time before it is applied—time in which your virtual server could be vulnerable. If your servers are hosted on VMware, you can apply patches as soon as they are released.

On-Demand Capacity

Because a VMware virtual server can operate on any physical server in the network, and because VMware supports live migration or vMotion, your whole virtual server can be moved as needed to another piece of hardware—with no downtime. This saves your company data and time, and it could save you customers and money. It also means that when your hosting company needs to take a physical server down for maintenance or replacement, you never need to know. Unlike in an OS virtual environment, live migration will allow your virtual server to continue running on the hosting company’s other servers. This is a feature that Virtuozzo still does not have.

High Availability, Load Balancing and Disaster Recovery Options

VMware virtual server lets your hosting company offer high availability, load balancing, and disaster recovery, unlike OS virtual environments. With VMware, your hosting company can offer load balancing, so your workload can run on the physical server that suits your needs during peak times.

With an OS-level environment, it might be impossible to move live data from one server to another. Even with compatible operating systems, the server might require a reboot.

When You’re Looking for Virtual Server Hosting, Think Infinitely Virtual

Virtual Server platforms aren’t all the same, and your hosting company needs to use the most flexible, secure and available virtualization technology. VMware, which runs virtual servers at the hardware level, is that technology.

Find out more about Virtual Servers, VMware, and options for load balancing and high availability at InfinitelyVirtual.com.

Information Technology About, Domains and Hosting, Servers, Truth, Virtual, Virtuozzo, VMware

If you are looking for multi-tenancy, virtualization, resource management, and clustering, you can try virtual private server hosting. Virtual private server or commonly known as virtual dedicated server allows resellers to fully control and allocate resources to their customer. Virtual dedicated server hosting acts as a bridge between shared web hosting services and dedicated server hosting services. Using VPS hosting, you are providing high levels of control which has currently become the most popular option for resellers.

The biggest advantage of using VPS hosting, is its cheaper cost compared to dedicated server. And, it generally runs its own copy of operating system with customers having super-user-level access. You as the “owner” of the VPS can install almost any software that runs on the OS. Reasons you might consider when choosing VPS are:

The media. When you have just started your business, you have your shared server hosting. But soon you have to expand and outgrow the features of your online business, that will need more web space, memory, etc. You have the option to choose between dedicated server and VPS. Dedicated hosting is expensive, so you will choose VPS.

More power. In VPS, you are actually availing the services of a dedicated server that has been partitioned into a number of servers. Here, you get more bandwidth, memory, space and more control.

Cost efficient. Since VPS gives you the advantages of a dedicated server hosting, but at a lower cost, this hosting service is the best hosting plan if you are considering the cost.

Complete root access: Just like a dedicated server, the virtual private server gives you unlimited root access. This means that you have the complete freedom to configure your website without impacting other websites. By the same coin, any changes made by websites sharing your server will have no impact on your website. Because of this, you can eliminate the risk of downtime due to mistakes committed by others. Since private servers are virtually invisible to each other, your website enjoys complete functional isolation.

Total security: Just like dedicated servers, virtual servers do not share their space with other customers. Thus, you enjoy total security.

While deciding on whom/where to purchase the VPS hosting service, you should try to ask the following questions:

1. What are the specifications of the host server, the RAM, the CPU, the processor, the disk space provided, the bandwidth, and if they can provide you on how many VPS is already running in the host server.?

2. How is resource contention handled? What if one of the VPS are running out of disk space, how do you deal with these?

If you are considering hosting your own website, sharing a virtual private server is a very viable option. You will want to make sure that you are fully aware of any server side restrictions, such as maximum amount of CPU and network resources available, but many virtual private server hosts provide more than enough for nearly any website. The factors that you can consider when choosing the virtual private server hosting are, the cost, the security, and the efficiency. The only disadvantage here is, if you are not aware on how to manage your own server, you might want to choose the shared hosting service. Anyway, if the hosting company that will host your virtual private server has 24/7 technical support, you can ask them anytime, on how you must handle the server.

With BNS VPS hosting service, you control your virtualized dedicated server via Microsoft’s RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) and install applications on your server. You create your own user authentication database and use your dedicated IP address. This dedicated IP address isolates your server from common problems associated with shared hosting —shared  IP address being listed in spam blacklists. For more information about virtual private server hosting service, you can visit BNS Hosting’s site. And talk to one of our hosted solutions expert 24/7.

Domains and Hosting Domains and Hosting, Private, Server, Virtual

You may have come across the phrase either in gaming forums of in science fiction, but exactly what is meant by virtual reality, what is it, and does it present us with any possible benefits or advantages in the future?

This phrase can be answered by either simply looking at the technology currently used, and understanding the basics of how it works, and what it tries to achieve. The more complex way of looking at this concept is by firstly asking what we understand by the word reality, before we try understanding the idea of an alternate, virtual version of reality.

Basically, if we understand the idea of reality to be the sum of all of the sensory inputs our brain receives, virtual reality is the use of technology to replace as many of those sensory inputs as possible with computer generated ones, to fool the brain into believing in a world which is false, and which only exists within the brain of the computer.

The most common form of virtual reality is one where the user wears a visor which wraps entirely round their normal field of vision. The computer then projects or displays a visual three dimensional world onto the inside f this visor, entirely replacing what the user would normally see with a computer generated view. The clever part of this is that the visor has a number of motion sensors built in to it, so that if the user turns their head, tilts their head, or moves their body entirely, the display inside the projector will move to match the user’s movement, creating the illusion of the user actually moving around within this three dimensional world of the computer’s.

Taking this idea further, the world may contain a number of objects, such as furniture, doors, objects that can be picked up and examined. By wearing special gloves which have a whole range of sensors built in to them, the computer can track the position, movement and actions of the user’s hands, and work out whether they would be touching anything, and if so, how the objects would react. Would they be being picked up, turned, knocked over and so forth?

By adding audio as well, the user can be very immersed within this world, and with advancing technologies making greater and more realistic computer generated scenes, the user can very easily start to believe in this virtual world, or reality.

One way in which this technology is an exciting area for development is within computer and video games, and already we are starting to see early developments of this with basic visors, and hand controls which are motion sensitive. Eventually we may well all find ourselves entering an alternative reality in which to play our games, which would make chase scenes, fights and cliff top adventures even more breath taking!

Computer Games Computer, Exciting, Games, Prospect, Reality, Virtual