I have used Virtuozzo for years. I own 25 licenses that were perpetual until Parallels divested and sold pieces off. Now they have Virtuozzo for $128/mo. I simply cannot afford that for what I do. So I turned to OpenVZ which is the test bed for Virtuozzo. I found the documentation very limited and there is NO support.

I just leased a dedicated server and now I have now clue how to download, install and launch an OS Template as a container. The simply don't tell you in Virtuozzo 7.

I need to know the step-by-step instructions to creating an OS Template like an ez-template so that I may launch containers as in Virtuozzo.

Can you help me? I need CentOS 7.3 or higher. I will be installing Plesk and cPanel on different containers. Do I want a minimal CentOS 7-x64 Minimal or a complete? I just don't know what to do. Should I switch to VM Ware that I have no experience with? KVM? I only know Virtuozzo and it is built from OpenVZ.

In OpenVZ7 they have dropped the older (arguably better) kernel patch system and moved to something more parallels based. I believe it uses LXC/LXD containers for kernel guests and full KVM virtualization for fullV guests (as in Windows containers, etc.).

I have not had time to play with V7 yet. I will hit the site and do a bit of research, and get back to you if I find something interesting. Meanwhile, perhaps someone currently using OpenVZ7 will chime in with news for both of us.

UPDATE: This page http://openvz.livejournal.com/53870.html is the release announcement, and it does have a link for EZTemplate information. It mentions KVM but does not mention LXC.Fully half of the links are dead, but the docs links work.

Basically, the product we know as OpenVZ is dead (Use version 6 with CentOS/RHEL 6 if you need the older template support) and the new product (starting at OpenVZ7) is really Viruozzo without the license, and the hypervisor is now KVM based.

For my purposes, a step back about a decade.

I do home that I am wrong, but that is what it looks like to me. It implies that there is unlikley to be any direct support for the old template format in the new product, and that installing a guest will be totally different. It is unclear to me if migration has been solved, but very clear that the old migration tools will NOT work. Big ouch!

Hi,

Why not go with control panels like solusVM, virtulizor? You can choose any virtualization with it (OpenVZ, KVM, Xen etc.)

You can manage everything with web interface and also Virtulizor provided good set of OS templates, which works pretty well for all distribution. Virtulizor is cheap $95/year for unlimited VPS.

Because if there is no support a wrapper won't help. I have purchased Virtuozzo 7 and have a dedicated software engineer to get me rolling now. I've been running Virtuozzo for 11 years and own perpetual but now useless licenses. So I tried OpenVZ. But if they won't answer questions or provide a decent manual what good are they? I already have my first server online in Miami (it didn't drown and remained online!) and I'm fine. The other reason is security. Virtuozzo has solid security. I've had containers compromised but never a hardware node.

hmm, the control panels(Sousvm, virtulizor) are straight forward and easy to understand and configure. With Solusvm never seen node compromised.

OpenVZ 7, unlike earlier versions, is the same code as Virtuozzo. Any template for Virtuozzo 7 should also work for OpenVZ7, but the default behavior appears to be for OpenVZ/Virtuozzo to download and cache packages and build the template FOR you! Neat!

MOST of the documentation for Virtuozzo should also apply to OpenVZ, but I cannot say where they differ. (I assume only on the name and certain API features that must be turned on at compile time, but have not tested for that.)

Find OpenVZ 7 specific documentation at this link:https://openvz.org/Virtuozzo
and interesting articles here: https://www.montanalinux.org/virtuoz...e-release.html and https://docs.virtuozzo.com/virtuozzo...ontainers.html
and this thread
https://forum.openvz.org/index.php?t...ca28fcd0da64ca

Does that help at all?

Yes despite of the control panel, everything should be apply as it is. The virtulization is openvz, its just the way control panel configure things on server.

I know nothing of these tools and don't find them in the documentation. I am more than happy to read about it. Does OpenVZ have a manual for a manual and then a manual for the first two manuals? LOL.

No, but they have older manuals for older versions of OpenVZ and a new manual for the new version 7.
If you take a serious look.
Did you visit any of the links provided?

I have indeed followed your links and could not find matching search terms for either. I also followed the link to a prior thread and read:

More importantly, Virtuozzo will no longer support Plesk ez-templates beginning February 2018. As a result I've just paid for Virtuozzo. You meant well and I am very appreciative. There are so many new features and the downside is that the documentation is weak. I learned to program nearly 40 years ago by buying the software and then stacks of third-party books that contained practical, working examples of a command. I feel that the Virtuozzo documentation is weak. They have taken their forums offline because they feel that a more one-on-one relationship with their customers is important. Can you say $$$ for support?

But you meant well and as i said I am appreciative. I am old-school and don't mind asking what superficially appears to be a stupid question when someone down the road may learn from it.

OpenVZ version 6 and prior can be installed on CentOS. The current version 7 installs like a hypervisor, it is an entire OS. You can install CentOS guests, but OpenVZ 7 is more like virtuozzo: you do not install it ON an OS. The manual and posts I linked to do describe the commands to download a template for guest creation. I would think that extending that to modify and clone a template to create your own would not be more difficult than it was with OpenVZ 6. Different, but not difficult.

I have not, however, verified that process. I would think that the forums I liked would be the place where those things would be discussed, and a valuable place to ask that question.

Sorry that did not help you. If you have paid for virtuozzo, you now have support, documentation, and access to the main products. If you ask there, you should get the answers you need. Best of luck.

Please don't think I'm saying that this site was not of any help at all. That's not true. It's just that I was unable to find those Search terms in the documentation and a documentation is first. The documentation is also sparse with virtuozzo 7. It's the weakest thing they've got but yet version 7 does so much more than version six and below.

But this site definitely helps me. There have been issues already we're being able to contact support was beneficial. They write manuals so that other software Engineers can read them and not necessarily an end-user. I'm a rather well experienced and user. But yet I like to see a working example of something as I had described before.

I replied to this post as I mentioned so that when somebody else comes looking for an answer to the same question or close to it it's not lost. Your efforts or my efforts are not lost. They live on and we can all hope that the information benefits the next user that comes along looking for that answer.

In the users guide for OpoenVZ 7 there is this text at this page https://docs.openvz.org/openvz_users...templates.html

The procedure seems to be "create a virtual guest from existing template, customize the guest as you wish for the template, use the utility to create a new template from that guest", and it is all well described.

This is, in fact, far easier and more automated than making templates for earlier versions. Perhaps that very ease and automation is confusing the issue?

It may not matter for you at this point, but the information is here for the next person who asks.

OpenVZ doesn't support CentOs 7.

Same document, different page, supported operating systems for containers