Author: Lisa Hoover
The team behind the OpenVZ project will announce today the availability of its operating system virtualization software for the latest stable release of the Linux kernel. OpenVZ for Linux 2.6.22 now supports user ID namespaces for improved security, and has new process ID namespace code that makes live migration possible.
According to Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project, the process ID namespace code is expected to be adopted into the next release of the Linux kernel. “The code is in -mm (Andrew Morton’s) tree, from which it will be merged to Linus’s tree. Given the two-months kernel release cycle, we expect that to happen in about three months from now.” Kolyshkin acknowledges, however, nothing is “set in stone.”
Kolyshkin says that the live migration capability in the most important feature of this new release of OpenVZ. “[Now] there is no need to do all resource planning ahead,” he says. “If the hardware is not capable, you just migrate your app to better hardware without any service interruption.” As long as you have at least two servers to work with, Kolyshkin says there is no downtime during migration.
The new OpenVZ kernel software is available for download at the project’s Web site. Installation instructions, product documentation and a knowledge base have been posted on the application’s wiki.
Virtualization software vendor SWsoft created OpenVZ in 2005 as a collaborative open source project to correspond with the company’s Virtuozzo application in much the same way that Fedora corresponds with Red Hat Linux. Built on Linux, OpenVZ is typically used to help consolidate servers and as a sandbox for testing and development. Kolyshkin says it’s tough to pinpoint the exact number of OpenVZ users, but that the Web site attracts “tens of thousands” of visitors each month.
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