Introduction to OpenVZ

OpenVZ is a reliable and efficient VPS technology

OpenVZ is the Open Source version of the popular Virtuozzo VPS system. Its a fully functional VPS system, offering full root access on your own IP Address.

OpenVZ is a shared kernel approach, in which all VPS's on the server share the hosts Linux kernel. Each VPS has its own process list, and is isolated from the other VPS running on the host server. The result is a low overhead system, which gives great performance.

The shared kernel approach does not allow user loadable Linux kernel modules at the VPS level.

OpenVZ does not virtualize swap down to the individual VPS level. Instead, swap is handled at the host level, and your processes are given a slice of ram in which to run. To see more on how OpenVZ handles memory, see our link to Memory and user_beancounters.