ElasticHosts

ElasticHosts virtual servers come in sizes to suit all businesses, from a basic, but fully capable server from £29/$44 per month to high-end configurations with up to eight cores, 8 GB memory, 2 TB disk.

Our virtual servers are powered by Linux KVM – the advanced virtualization platform built into mainline Linux – which means that your virtual server is entirely independent of others on our farm and fully configurable by you to your needs, unlike solutions using only OS-level containers such as Virtuozzo/OpenVZ, which are used by many of our competitors.

Feature Description ElasticHosts Virtuozzo
Basic virtualization Run multiple virtual servers on physical hardware. Y Y
Full separation of virtual servers Rely on virtual servers having entirely independent and isolated environments for maximum flexibility and security. Y N
(same kernel)
Free choice of operating systems Run any operating system designed for PC hardware and any software on your virtual server. Y N
(limited to same OS as physical server)
Full kernel reboots Fully reboot your own individual virtual server. Y N
(user-space reboot only)

Correct at time of writing, 7 June 2010

Comparison with other virtualization technologies

Before selecting Linux KVM, we evaluated VMWare and Xen, two other virtualization platforms providing similar capabilities to KVM (Virtuozzo only provides OS-level containers). We selected KVM as the best architecture for virtualization on modern processors with fast hardware virtualization support (VT-x and NPT on Intel or AMD-V and EPT on AMD).

Increasing hardware virtualization support

Hypervisor architecture and device drivers