Virtuozzo’s Mature Linux Distribution VzLinux Now Available to Public

Virtuozzo, a global leader in high-efficiency virtualization and hyperconverged software solutions, today released its latest VzLinux operating system (VzLinux 8) to the general public. VzLinux – an enterprise distribution – has been used by Virtuozzo as a base OS for the company’s OpenVZ virtualization solution and other commercial products as well as a guest OS for more than 20 years. Web hosting service providers and other end customers deploying the technology gain the immediate benefits of a stable, long-term supported Linux distro maintained by the open-source community.

 

VzLinux 8 is a free, multi-purpose distro optimized to run in containers, virtual machines or on bare-metal servers. It is designed to support I/O-intensive, enterprise-level applications and workloads. Virtuozzo currently offers a ready-to-use utility to convert from CentOS 8 without downtime as well as templates for hyperscalers, enabling customers to deploy VzLinux 8 as a guest OS under various hypervisors. The conversion utility enables seamless conversions of CentOS 8 bare-metal servers, virtual machines and containers, effectively managing risk while minimizing negative business impact. Regarding containers, Virtuozzo provides advanced functionality including conversion dry-run, snapshot creation to roll back and unattended mass conversion. Options to convert from CentOS 7 will be made available in a future update.

 

Notably, VzLinux is a 1:1 binary compatible fork of Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®—specifically RHEL 8.

 

“The enterprise Linux distribution market is shifting away from CentOS-dominated Linux servers given the distro’s slated sunset later this year,” said Maik Broemme, Senior Product Manager, Virtuozzo. “The resulting gap in the market requires a reliable solution with longevity, which is why we opted to make our VzLinux publicly available. We simply aim to give the industry a viable, free alternative with seamless transition capabilities.”

 

Virtuozzo has a long history of sponsoring and contributing to well-known open-source projects such as OpenVZ, KVM, Docker, OpenStack, CRIU. The company’s confidence in its VzLinux distro has led to an in-house conversion of more than 200+ CentOS servers, ensuring Virtuozzo’s infrastructure is future-proofed well beyond December 2021 when CentOS is slated for end-of-life.

 

To download VzLinux 8 and for contributions to the VzLinux project, visit www.vzLinux.org.

 

About Virtuozzo

 

Virtuozzo is a leading, global provider of hybrid virtualization, storage and cloud enablement software solutions. The company’s software-defined, hyperconverged self-service platform and resource management capabilities enable hosting and service providers to provide end-customers with public and private cloud services. Virtuozzo is an industry pioneer who developed the first commercially available container technology 21 years ago. The company provides software solutions and services to over 450 service providers, ISVs, and enterprises worldwide to enable over 500 thousand virtual environments, running mission-critical cloud workloads. A significant force in the opensource community, Virtuozzo sponsors and/or is a contributor to numerous open-source projects including KVM, Docker, OpenStack, OpenVZ, CRIU and the Linux kernel. Learn more www.virtuozzo.com.