Parallels Virtuozzo Containers

About Parallels Virtuozzo Containers: Parallels Virtuozzo Container is the para-virtualization technology. It means that it creates virtual environment by splitting your operating system resources without actually installing another operating system over the host-operating-system. So basically unlike other common virtualization solutions it does ask you to install another operating system on the host. It will let you create containers, which will use the same source of your host operating system and they will be ready in few seconds to couple of minutes depending upon the configuration (templates) you choose.

So basically if you apply security patch or service-pack to host operating system it will be applied to containers (virtual-node) also, while other programs won't be available to containers. Good thing is it's pretty fast, easy to setup and deal with. You can learn in few minutes but one should use it only if they are going use one operating system for all virtual-nodes. Meaning that all containers inside a physical-node will share same operating system. You can't setup Linux as guest over Windows Server 2003 and vice-versa. Basically it's not for setting up heterogeneous OSes on one physical node but it's for sharing resources seriously.

That's what I understood about it. I have been playing with VMWare Workstation, Microsoft VM and Virtualbox but yesterday I had a chance to play with Parallels Virtuozzo Container as I had to move some (4 of them) servers to new physical node. Physical machine/server was not physically accessible and was at distant remote place.

Problem: I had RDP access to physical node which has Windows Server 2003 installed on it. Everything went well during the setup but while I was changing IP-address of the last container I got some-error can't execute command or something like that I don't remember exactly. We restarted container and physical node both. Somehow I was able to change the IP finally but while setting up the Default Gateway under the Network Configuration it was not taking that. I tried restarting container, there was no error but when I chose to "Assign IP address manually" and set the Gateway, say Apply and Ok. But next time I go on that Property tab and see that blank.

Solution: After trying things back and forth for about an hour, called up my friend and colleague Garvish, he joined me in troubleshooting and got the hint that probably "hardware node's host name will be conflicting with some other node on the network". We confirmed that and changed the computer-name, rebooted the system and issue is fixed.

In the end: The only problem is this issue would not have taken couple of hours and would have been fixed in minutes if there was a proper detailed message. Not sure if it would have been fixed in recent patches. I was using Parallels 4.0.x. So the conclusion is leave good informative messages for your users sometimes with technical details, depending on the target audience.Similar Posts:

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VMWare Workstation - This virtual machine appears to be in use.

What we need to do is simply go to the folder where we have placed the physical files for the specific virtual machine and just delete the folders which are ending with "*.vmx.lck" and you are done.

For example in respect to current situation which we see in dialog box I needed to delete 2 folders SUSE Linux.vmx.lck and SUSE Linux.vmdk.lck. That's it and VMWare Workstation will be happy to play the Virtual Machine again without any problem.Similar Posts:

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Wikipedia defines it as "[Virtualization is] a technique for hiding the physical characteristics of computing resources from the way in which other systems, applications, or end users interact with those resources. This includes making a single physical resource (such as a server, an operating system, an application, or storage device) appear to function as multiple logical resources; or it can include making multiple physical resources (such as storage devices or servers) appear as a single logical resource."

In simple words Virtualization is about making Software fool (whether it is system or application). Sorry for my harsh words. This technology makes guest software feel like they are interacting with real hardware/resource while it is nothing but a layer created by Virtualization enabled software application.

Softwares with Virtualization Technology for System softwares/Operating system are called as Virtual Machine(s), I mean we can install Operating System with such softwares and they will be actually Machine inside Machine. All the resources used by Guest Virtual Machine will be using physical resources from Host Machine/Operating System.

It is good to use Virtualization for Software Testing, Deployment over multiple platforms and it's usage has long list. It will require really good hardware configuration for machines we are willing to install VMs.

Here is the list of System Virtualization enabled softwares for reference.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

You can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx
It's freely available and pretty option if you are interested in installing Windows guest over your Windows box.

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2

This is another Microsoft product for Server Virtualization. It can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/default.aspx

VMware

This is one of the big daddy of Virtualization and they are having wide range of products for System and Application virtualization. You can visit it on http://www.vmware.com/. I have been using it since more then 4 or 5 years now and it works great for installation of any Operating System over my Windows Box whether it is Linux / Windows variants.

Oracle VM

Recently Oracle has jumped into Virtualization band and in Nov 2007 they unveiled Oracle VM. Which is based on the open source Xen(TM) hypervisor technology. Oracle VM is server virtualization software that fully supports both Oracle and non-Oracle applications, and is three times more efficient than other server virtualization products as Oracle claims on their website. You can download Oracle VM from http://edelivery.oracle.com/oraclevm.

VirtualBox

This is another promising Open Source Virtualization software from Innotek which is recently acquired by Sun Microsystems. You can visit VirtualBox website http://www.virtualbox.org/ where it is available as free download.
If you know more about any of the products listed or not listed above please mention it in your comment. I will be updating this post soon or will be writing new one in this reference I guess..!
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