OpenVE

Proxmox OpenVE looks the closest to a VMCenter/VMSphere alternative based purely on Linux (Debian to be more precise). You can add pure virtualized environments a la VMware guests, or run container based Linux(-only) guests. It comes with a cluster option with live migration possibilities.

Two disadvantages on first sight :

  1. It's 64bit only
  2. It comes only in the form of an appliance-based installation (which will wipe your /dev/sda)

Apart from that, very promising.

dowdle Mon, 08/02/2010 - 09:09

Just wanted to mention OpenNode... which just recently had their first public release. What is OpenNode? It aims to be similar to Proxmox VE but based on CentOS.

In the beta release they have the installer done and it has the following features from my memory so check out their site if desired:

  • Graphical installer
  • Minimal install footprint, trimmed down CentOS
  • Auto-partitioning with LVM if desired (software RAID is an option if desired)
  • Bridge device pre-configured
  • Minimalistic TUI management app that lets you download OS Templates for OpenVZ from their OS Template repo, setup Func, and a couple other things

Their next release will include a modern (Web 2.0 / Ajax-based) web-based management system.
So far as I can tell you can drop to shell and use vzctl for OpenVZ container management and virsh / virt-manager for KVM machine management.

Fairly functional for a first release.