Linux containers (LXC), like KVM virtualization, have certain advantages and disadvantages that influence the use cases in which these technologies are typically applied.

Linux Containers

The current version of Linux Containers is primarily designed to support the isolation of one or more applications, with plans to implement full OS containers in the near future. Containers can be created or destroyed very easily and are convenient to maintain. System-wide changes are visible in every container. For example, if you update an application on the host machine, this change will be applied to all sandbox environments running instances of that application. Because containers are lightweight, a large number of them can run simultaneously on a host machine. The theoretical maximum is 6,000 containers and 12,000 root filesystem directory link mounts. Furthermore, containers are faster to create and have reduced startup times. Lightweight and portable OS-based virtualization units share the base operating system kernel but simultaneously act as isolated environments with their own file system, processes, and TCP/IP stack. They can be compared to Solaris Zones or Jails in FreeBSD. Since there is no virtualization overhead, they perform much better than virtual machines.

KVM Virtualization

KVM virtualization allows you to boot complete operating systems of different types, including non-Linux systems. However, complex configuration is sometimes required. Virtual machines consume a lot of resources, so you can only run a limited number of them on a server. KVM represents the virtualization capabilities built into the Linux kernel itself. Running independent kernel instances generally means better isolation and security. If one of the kernels terminates unexpectedly, it doesn\'t shut down the entire system. On the other hand, this isolation makes it difficult for virtual machines to communicate with the rest of the system, so various interpretation mechanisms must be used. The guest virtual machine is isolated from changes on the host server, allowing you to run different versions of the same application on the host and the virtual machine. KVM also provides many useful features, such as live migration. For more information about these capabilities, see the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Virtualization Deployment and Administration Guide. If you would like to inquire about our virtualization services, you can create a VPS account