Openvirt
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. How much does Openvirt cost?
A. Openvirt is free of charge. We charge £75 + VAT per hour for support. This includes consultancy, training, designing solutions, support, configuration and customisation. We bill by the minute so this is very cost effective.
Q. Where do I download Openvirt from?
A. Openvirt uses Ubuntu Server as the base operating system. You download and install Ubuntu Server. Contact us for instructions for installation of Openvirt on Ubuntu Server. We only provide the software to commercial organisations.
Q. Why is Openvirt only available to commercial organisations?
A. We provide the software for free. We make money selling hardware (servers and storage) and paid for support. Since we only sell hardware and support to commercial organisations, we only provide the software to commercial organisations.
We include small businesses, non-profit organisations and all educational institutions in our definition.
Q. Where do I obtain installation instructions?
A.If you want to try Openvirt, contact us at support@dnuk.com
You will need to provide details on your organisation:
a) Organisation name
b) Organisation address
c) Web site address
At present we only provide the software to UK based organisations.
Q. Is Openvirt a fork of Ubuntu Server?
A. No. Openvirt is Ubuntu Server with updated packages plus a control panel to manage the virtualization infrastructure.
Q. How are the updated packages and control panel installed in Ubuntu Server?
A. We run a repository for Openvirt. Packages are simply installed using the Debian package management system. This makes for a very low maintenance setup.
Q. Do you support any other distribution other than Ubuntu Server?
A. No. We only support Ubuntu Server.
Q. I can do all this using VirtualBox, right?
A. Openvirt is designed for server based virtualization infrastructure. It competes with VMware ESX, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V. VirtualBox is a type 2 hypervisor which is ideal for virtualizing operating systems on a desktop based system. VirtualBox can directly access hardware on a PC like USB devices which makes it ideal for running Windows on a Linux desktop (and vice versa). Openvirt is for managing the servers in your organisation. You could also use Openvirt to virtualize operating systems which are served over the LAN to thin clients.
Q. Does Openvirt support clusters of physical hosts?
A. Yes. Openvirt has been designed from the start to support multiple physical host systems in your infrastructure. You can manage your entire cluster from a single physical host in the cluster. You only need to login to the control panel on one of the physical hosts to manage the virtualization across the whole cluster.
Q. What storage do I need for live migration between physical host systems?
A. You would need a shared SAN setup. Our Teravault line of storage servers are ideal for this. The SAN fabric can be Ethernet, Fibre Channel or InfiniBand.
Q. Does Openvirt have high availability features?
A. Yes. If HA is enabled on a cluster of at least 2 hosts, the HA service will automatically start virtual machines that were running on a host that failed.
Q. Is Openvirt secure?
A. Yes.
- HTTPS for the control panel
- SSH for CLI and shell management
- SSH for host-to-host authentication
- TLS for file transfers
- Integrated firewall that is powerful yet very simple to manage
Q. Is the Windows support any good?
A. Yes. Whilst Openvirt is Linux based, the Windows support is critical to Red Hat's virtualization strategy. Red Hat and Microsoft have an agreement to support each others operating systems on their virtualization platforms. This includes Windows Server 2003, 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
See this article:
http://www.redhat.com/about/news/prarchive/2009/rh-ms-virtualization-interoperability.html
Q. Do I need a Linux PC to manage the infrastructure?
A. No. Whilst some Linux experience is beneficial, the Openvirt infrastructure can be managed through a web browser. A Windows or Mac system is fine.
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