3 Open Source VPS Options

With a virtual private server (VPS), you can run multiple copies of your operating system on a single dedicated server.

Each virtual machine or container on your server acts as though it were a separate server.

This gives users all the benefits and administrative access of a full dedicated server without the high cost of maintaining actual server hardware.

You can make a VPS system with many paid virtualization options, but you should also think about these free and open source options.

OpenVZ

OpenVZ is a great alternative to Parallels Virtuozzo Containers. It uses a container system to give your users root access to their own virtual private servers.

In fact, Parallels Virtuozzo is built on OpenVZ, so the company has a financial reason to make sure it keeps working well.

Linux VServer

With Linux VServer, you can run multiple “units” of your OS using kernel level isolation. They all still use the same kernel, but each one is a different server instance.

In the words of the project, it does this by using “security contexts, segmented routing, chroot, extended quotas, and some other standard tools.”

Xen hypervisor

Xen wasn’t made just for managing VPSs like the other two, but many system administrators use it to set up virtual private servers.

Xen works with a wide range of operating systems and was made by Cisco, AMD, Intel, IBM, Citrix, and Red Hat, among other large companies.