Updated: 2/02/2021
With CentOS owning almost 20% of the market and the recent announcement from Red Hat about CentOS Linux having a reduced lifecycle, it has left many organizations wondering about alternatives.
Virtuozzo, a sponsor and a contributor to numerous open source projects, has decided to release a version of Virtuozzo Linux 8 (VzLinux) to assist organizations and their clients with an easy path to upgrade or move the existing estate from CentOS. It will be free to download, use, and distribute.
Virtuozzo has previously had a version of VzLinux 7 and VzLinux 6 and is no stranger to releasing our fork of RHEL's build and configuration. For years, VzLinux has been a base Operating System for OpenVz and our commercial products. Additionally, it was used as a guest operating system for containers and virtual machines. With our 20-years of experience in the field, we have all the required skills, infrastructure, and knowledge and have consistently released our version of VzLinux ahead of CentOS.
VzLinux 6, 7 and 8 OS templates for OpenVZ and Virtuozzo Hybrid Server are available for our customers to use. Please refer to our official documentation for details: https://docs.virtuozzo.com/virtuozzo_hybrid_server_7_users_guide/managing-virtual-machines-and-containers/creating-virtual-machines-and-containers.html
A future build of VzLinux 8 is coming in the first quarter and will address needs for bare-metal servers. One can review currently built packages here: http://repo.virtuozzo.com/vzlinux/8/
Roadmap:
To address our clients' future needs, we have decided to release three different flavors for Virtuozzo Linux for Containers, Virtual Machines and Bare Metal servers.
Currently Available:
- Containers: VzLinux 8, 7, and 6 templates are available for OpenVZ and Virtuozzo Hybrid Server.
Q1 2021:
- Containers: A path to convert CentOS 8 to VzLinux 8 from the host will become available in quarter 1 of 2021
- Virtual Machines: VzLinux 8 guest operating system support
- Bare Metal: Easy upgrade from CentOS 8 to VzLinux 8
- Bare Metal: Easy upgrade from CentOS 7 to VzLinux 8
Q2/3 2021:
- Bare Metal: Easy upgrade from VzLinux 8 to Virtuozzo Hybrid Server 8
- Bare Metal: Easy upgrade from VzLinux 8 to OpenVZ 8
Updates to the documentation and availability will be posted on our blog as they become available. To submit inquiries or feedback directly to our experts click here.
