4 Free Virtualization Tools for Hosting by www.thehostingnews.com

4 Free Virtualization Tools for Hosting

July 31st, 2012 By: Tavis J. Hampton

Dedicated Content Sponsored By: Codero

Virtualization has many uses, and in web hosting, it has gained a tremendous amount of popularity. It allows server administrators to maximize space and power usage while also offering more software options within a single server. Moreover, virtualization is great for temporary projects and website testing. The following five tools are free and excellent choices for virtualization.

1. OpenVZ – The open source project of Parallels Server Bare Metal, OpenVZ is a container-based virtualization system for Linux that allows users to create virutal private servers (VPS). It is designed specifically to run on servers and is an ideal choice for VPS hosting providers.

2. KVM – Built into modern Linux kernels, KVM is a good choice for Linux virtualization. KVM stands for Kernel-based Virtual Machine and is designed to take advantage of hardware virtualization (Intel VT and AMD-V) and run at the kernel level.

3. Xen- A free and open source hypervisor, Xen provides paravirtualization and hardware-assisted virtualization. It has the support of many commercial entities, including IBM, Citrix, HP, Red Hat, and Oracle. It also supports a wide range of architectures, including ARM.

4. VirtualBox – A product of Oracle, VirtualBox is an open source virtual machine tool that provides both desktop graphical and “headless” virtualization. It supports a wide range of guest operating systems, including several versions of Windows, Linux, Solaris, and OpenBSD.

Not all virtualization tools are alike. Depending on your needs, you may prefer one over another. For example, OpenVZ is ideal for VPS hosting, while KVM may be better for running long-term Linux servers side-by-side. Xen is ideal for its wide range of support and features, and VirtualBox is an excellent choice for its user-friendly commands and/or interface. All of these options are free, and all of them are great for servers.