VPS Frequently Asked Questions

Virtual Private Servers (VPS) are the most advanced step in server virtualization technology. They are used to partition a single physical server into isolated virtual private servers. Each virtual private server looks and behaves exactly like a real networked server system, complete with its own set of init scripts, users, processes, filesystems, etc.

We use UBC (User Bean Counters) to provide guaranteed minimum performance resources to your VPS. We aim to give every one of our customers the best performance available from their VPS, and therefore allow all VPS's to burst up to the full server capabilities. What this means to you is that while there is no contest for server resources (server is idle), your VPS will act and have available the entire VPS Hardware Node resource. ie; dual quad core Xeon CPU's, Raid SAS drives 8+Gb Ram. This is only applicable when there is no overcommitment on the hardware node - and this is our guarantee - "We do not overcommit on our VPS infrastructure"

Most applications can be installed within a Virtual Private Server without any modifications. Our customers are using Cpanel, Plesk, Zimbra, MS SQL 2005, Oracle, Exchange, DB/2, Weblogic, Websphere and other commercial applications with no issues. Applications and services do not have to be aware of Virtuozzo.

The short answer is - every system administrator needs it. Some examples of practical applications:

• Hosting - all ranges on the same platform, from low-level shared to medium-power virtual server to powerful dedicated servers - seamless scaling up in the same safe virtual private server.
• Server consolidation - put together your existing servers and use more powerful and reliable hardware.
• Increase availability - keep an up-to-date copy of your virtual private server on another server, and start it in seconds in case of failure
• Education - each student gets its own virtual server with root access
• Testing - safe experimentation on the machine that runs another services
• Clean sandbox - install each service in its own freshly created Virtual Private Server, and you will never have to resolve dependency problems.
• Multiversioning - keep "snapshots" of the project you are working on and be able to switch back and forth in seconds
• Improve network services security - run each server in its own Virtual Private Server. If the application has a security hole, only this particular virtual private server will be compromised, never the whole system.

In short, Virtuozzo is the only highly scalable virtualization technology with near-zero overhead, strong isolation and rapid customer provisioning that's ready for production use right now. Deployment of Virtuozzo improves efficiency, flexibility and quality of service in the enterprise environment.

How scalable is Virtuozzo?

Virtuozzo technology scales up well - it has been tested on machines up to 8CPU and up to 64GB of RAM. If that's not enough, hundreds of servers can be efficiently managed from a single GUI console. A single virtual private server could be scaled up from taking a little fraction of available resources up to all resources available dynamically - you do not even have to restart the virtual private server.

Virtuozzo is able to lower Total Cost of Ownership and improve Return On Investment in many ways. For existing hardware, it allows to utilize its processing power better by improving average load from 3-5% to at least 30-50%, while still providing ability to handle peak loads. To decrease complexity, Virtuozzo provides standardized and centralised server management, logically decoupled from actual hardware. And when its time to buy new servers, you can now use few more powerful servers instead of many little ones - with added benefits of better reliability, better peak performance and typically longer lifespan.

By providing unified scalable platform with such unique features as rapid application and updates provisioning. Each Virtual Private Server is hardware independent and can be moved to another Virtuozzo-based system in seconds over the network. This allows for ease of hardware maintenance (move out all VPS and do whatever you need with the box) and improved availability (keep a syncronized copy of your virtual private server elswere and start it up when primary service failed). If your old box is not able to cope with peak load anymore, just move your VPS to a new one - as simple as drag-n-drop in GUI.

Near zero. There is no emulation layer, only security isolation, and all checking is done on the kernel level without context switching. In fact, some tests show a slight improvement of performance under Virtuozzo.

Peak performance is achieved when only one VPS has active tasks. In this case, it could use 100% of available resources - all CPUs, all physical memory, all disk and network bandwidth. Virtuozzo does not limit you to a single-CPU virtual machine.

Yes, a special patent-pending algorithm is employed to minimize downtime and ensure no data is lost in the process. All you need is a fast network connection between the servers.

This is a virtual device that provides a high-speed network connection to the host OS. Zero-copy design principles ensure highest possible performance. This virtual device supports all advanced control capabilities available in Linux. More than one device could be created. In the Virtual Private Server, you can have your own firewall rules and local routing table. You can run packet sniffer to diagnose network problems with your own Virtual Private Server. However, there is absolutely no access to any packets sent to another Virtual Private Servers.