Virtualisation for Linux is a technique to divide one hardware server into smaller virtual servers (containers/jails/vps)

The main reasons to virtualise your server is performance and security. Now you can divide your regular hosting server into 2 containers, one for your mysql server and one for your apache. So you can tweak both servers individually for better performance and security. So you can give your MySQL server an non-routable IP so it can not be reached from the outside IP.

In my work as a system administrator I too had to test out different virtual systems. I had a next to nothing budget for buying software because I invested most of my budget into good quality server hardware from HP.

Because the regular servers already run on debian I tried to look for a solution that runs on debian. The solution I found and that I have been using for more than a year now is OpenVZ.

If you are using debian stable (Lenny) you can install de OpenVZ kernel easily from the debian mirrors there is even a 64 AMD architecture available for 64 bit CPU’s.

Over the year I have successfully installed over 40 OpenVZ homenodes remotely for clients all over the world. I still remotely manage some of these home nodes for my clients. Some of my clients even use my Remote Server Monitoring service to monitor their homenode server and installed VPS servers.

If you want to try virtualisation but you are having troubles with the installation you can always contact me for help. Within one evening I can remotely install an OpenVZ kernel if you are using Debian OS/

I even install my script cve.sh (Create VE) a bash script to easily make VPS servers from the console.

Depening on what kind of services you want to run on your server and how many public IP’s you have you might end up using one virtual container as a proxy to transfer traffic to all your other virtual servers.

With OpenVZ you can now easily divide your server up into slices for better performance and security. Give OpenVZ and you will be amazed.

author: Rudolf Maduro (Life Coach and IT specialist)