OpenVZ is an Operating System-level server virtualization solution, built on Linux. OpenVZ creates isolated, secure virtual environments — VEs (otherwise known as virtual private servers, or VPSs) on a single physical server enabling better server utilization and ensuring that applications do not conflict.

Each VE performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server; VEs can be rebooted independently and have root access, users, IP addresses, memory, processes, files, applications, system libraries and configuration files. See Documentation » Technology for more information.

The OpenVZ project is an open source community project supported by SWsoft and is intended to provide access to the code and ultimately for the open source community to test, develop and further the OS virtualization effort. It is also a proving ground for new technology that may evolve into the Virtuozzo™ product offering. We encourage the community to access, use, develop and comment on the software and references on this site.

Virtualization is a framework or methodology of dividing the resources of a computer into multiple execution environments. Virtualization techniques create multiple isolated partitions — Virtual Machines (VM) or Virtual Environments (VEs) — on a single physical server.

Techniques
There are several kinds of virtualization techniques which provide similar features but differ in the degree of abstraction and the methods used for virtualization. Virtual machines (VMs) Virtual machines emulate some real or fictional hardware, which in turn requires real resources from the host (the machine running the VMs). This approach, used by most system emulators, allows the emulator to run an arbitrary guest operating system without modifications because guest OS is not aware that it is not running on real hardware. The main issue with this approach is that some CPU instructions require additional privileges and may not be executed in user space thus requiring a virtual machines monitor (VMM) to analyze executed code and make it safe on-the-fly. Hardware emulation approach is used by VMware products, Parallels and Microsoft Virtual Server.