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Andreas John's self-FAQ for VServer 2.0: devleoped from a dialogue with myself and answers from the mailing-list

Q. What is a "guest"?

A: In the vitualisation business we talk about "hosts" and "guests". The host is the mother operating system or mother machine, while a guest is a virtual machine or OS

Q. What kind of OS can I run as guest?

A: With VServer you can only run Linux guests. The trick is that a guest does not run an own kernel, it merely uses the hosts kernel-interface. VServer offers so called security contexts which make it possible to seperate one guest from each other, i.e. they cannot get data from each other. Imagine it as a chroot environment with much more security and features.

Q: Which distributions did you test?

A: Some. Check out the wiki for read-made guest images. But you can easily build own guests images, e.g. with Debian's debootstrap. Checkout step-by-step Guide 2.6 how to do that.

Q: Is VServer comparabale to XEN?

A: Nope. XEN and VServer are just good friends. You can run a VServer kernel in a XEN host and install several guests within this XEN. This is conformed to work at least with 2.6 kernel / vs20.

Q: Is VServer secure?

A: We hope so. It should be as secure as Linux is. It much much more secure

Q: Performance?

A: Nearly as the host. There is very little overhead, Herbert measured about 1-2%. This IMVHO significantly less than other solutions waste.

Q: Resource sharing?

A: Yes ....

Q: Resource limiting?

A: Yes, you can set max limits per guest, but you can only offer guaranteed resource availability with some ticks at the time.

Q: Why isn't there a a device /dev/bla? within a guest

A: Devices belong to the kernel and thus to the host.

Q: What is Unification (vunify)?

A:

Q: What is vhashify?

A:

Q: How do I manage a multi-guest setuop with vhashify?

A: -> Herbert ;)

Q: With which VS version should I begin? I saw 2.0 is "beta" ....

A: If you are new to VServer I recommend to try 2.0. It's late beta and is likely to release soon. Kudos go to Herbert. The 2.0 release is his "baby".

Example command lines - explained:

$ foo
bar ....