OpenVZ is one of the most widely used open source container-based virtualization platforms in the world as it allows the user to create multiple Linux-based containers on a single server. This provides the user with the advantage of being able to reduce the number of physical servers on the network, reduce resource and power footprints on the network, and provide a single point of management.
Instead of spending valuable time to take servers down for prolonged periods to add resources such as CPUs, memory, or hard drive space, this can instead be accomplished in minutes using OpenVZ by simply shutting the container down, changing the number of resources that are allocated to the container, and then restarting it.
Taking a practical hands-on approach to learning, the intention of this book is to provide someone with little to no experience of OpenVZ with an opportunity to learn how to install and manage an OpenVZ server from the ground up. By the time you reach the end of this book, you will have a solid understanding of how to administer a server running OpenVZ.
Chapter 1, Installing OpenVZ, discusses virtualization, OpenVZ, and how to install OpenVZ.
Chapter 2, OS Templates and Creating Containers, takes you through OS templates—what they are, and how to download and install them.
Chapter 3, OpenVZ Container Administration, takes you through the concept of a container and its role on an OpenVZ server, how to choose an OS template to use with your container, and how to create a container. It also provides a walkthrough where we create a working container to use with further chapters of this book.
Chapter 4, Server Administration Using OpenVZ, covers all of the essential commands and concepts that the server administrator needs to know to be able to manage the server and containers on the server, including location of important system files, disk quota, CPU management, and memory management.
Chapter 5, Using OpenVZ Web Panel – Part One, takes you through OpenVZ Web Panel. We discuss how OpenVZ Web Panel is related to our OpenVZ server, how to install it, and how to manage your OpenVZ server using OpenVZ Web Panel instead of the Linux command line.
Chapter 6, Using OpenVZ Web Panel – Part Two, picks up from where Chapter 5, Using OpenVZ Web Panel – Part One, left off with a discussion on how to configure your OpenVZ Web Panel, and finishes with how to manage your administration tasks using the web panel instead of the Linux command line.
You will need a spare computer or virtual PC to install Linux OS, and OpenVZ and OpenVZ Web Panel.
This book is for beginners and intermediate users of OpenVZ who may have some or no experience in using OpenVZ. This book is about how to install and manage the OpenVZ server and containers. It is written from a beginner's perspective from the start.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "The next command that we are going to cover is the vzctl command."
A block of code is set as follows:
ldap: enabled: true host: "ldap.ldapserver.com" login_pattern: "uid=<login>,ou=people,dc=example,dc=com"
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
vzctl restart 101 Stopping Container ... Container was stopped Container is unmounted Starting Container...
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "The Remove Template button allows you to select a template that you want to remove and delete it from the server."
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