OpenVZ Survey Answers

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One of the Virtuozzo folks sent a link to an OpenVZ survey that I filled out. It requires a Google account. I do have one but I try to avoid using it as much as possible.

Just wanted to share my answers to the, "What features are absent in OpenVZ from your point of view?" question.

1) Base images and layering like that of Docker. Docker mostly sucks but the ease and speed of deployment is amazing. The OpenVZ container creation tools... can they be adapted to use a pre-existing ploop image as a read-only base image?

2) Application containers. While I don't have a personal need for them quite yet I can definitely see how they are handy for developers as well as those into fleet computing.

3) qcow2 disk images are very popular with KVM. It isn't clear to me what benefits ploop offers over qcow2 or vice-versa. It would be nice if OpenVZ could use or convert qcow2 disk images.

4) Better OS Template tools. OpenVZ's vzpkg tool bit-rotted because there weren't enough developer resources to keep it alive. As a result OpenVZ's official OS Templates have been being built with the proprietary Virtuozzo tools for some time. I understand that is changing in the not too distant future with the public release of more of Virtuozzo's tools. I'm not familiar with those so I don't know how good they are... but yes, more attention to OS Template creation and management tools is needed. This is especially true if and when OpenVZ adds application containers and/or disk layering features.

5) Better integration with LXC in the mainline kernel. I think LXC and Docker could be a stepping stone to OpenVZ / Virtuozzo... if the OpenVZ tools worked reasonably well with LXC in the mainline kernel... and it was clear to the user what features they could gain if they moved up to OpenVZ and/or Virtuozzo.

6) An entry-level web panel. OpenVZ Web Panel seems somewhat popular but I've always been turned off by its reliance on Ruby... and unsure of its security-related testing. The recent Packt Publishing book, "OpenVZ Essentials" by Mark Furman spends half of the book covering OpenVZ Web Panel. It would be nice if OWP was adopted in some way or replaced with something similar to offer an entry-level web-based management system like VMware does with ESXi. If considered, I'd strongly recommend that there is a clear differentiation between the features in the entry-level web-panel and those commercially offered. I know a few companies are selling OpenVZ compatible web-interfaces... like SolusVM, Proxmox VE, etc.

7) More modern kernel support... but that is in-the-works.