What is Virtuozzo, and How Does the Platform API Work?
Are you a business owner or an individual who needs to split a physical server into many virtual servers? Or do you need to share your servers with others in a convenient way? If so, then a viable solution to your problem is Virtuozzo, which we will explain in this tutorial.
What is Virtuozzo?
Virtuozzo is a software solution that enables you to divide your bare metal servers into various containerized servers; also known as VEs or VPSs. Virtuozzo is not a hypervisor, which divides your server into different virtual servers. Instead, it containerizes a server as a Virtual Environment. Each one of these containerized servers acts as if it was an actual server.
The most significant benefit of Virtuozzo is that it takes your physical hardware and divides that physical hardware into secure and efficient containers. Each one of these containers is completely separate from each other. So that one container cannot access another container’s storage and RAM, making it very secure and efficient with resources.
Virtuozzo is an affordable solution that can help any cloud provider in terms of hosting data storage or computing power. Most cloud providers either need to host virtual machines or containers. With Virtuozzo, you have the flexibility to run and host both.
Why Use Virtuozzo?
Virtuozzo is a leading cloud platform provider and is a go-to option for most cloud providers. Currently, they have more than 50 million containers in the market. They power cloud providers of all sizes whether small or big.
Virtuozzo’s technology enables a business to get up and running in the cloud hosting industry in days as opposed to months. With Virtuozzo, you don’t need to build everything from the ground up, therefore reducing your workload and drastically speeding up deployment.
See also: Cloud Server Pricing
Virtuozzo VS Hypervisor
Hypervisors divide the physical hardware into virtual servers. Each of these virtual servers independently runs a guest OS, which is a resource-intensive method. But Virtuozzo uses a new technology, which is called containers.
Containers are lightweight because they share one host OS across all the containers and are not as resource intensive as virtual servers, thus enabling you to host more containerized servers on your physical server than a hypervisor.
As you can see in the picture below, you can save resources and host more containers with Virtuozzo. On the other hand, with Hypervisors, you need a guest OS for each virtual machine, which requires more resources compared to Virtuozzo containers.
What is the Platform API?
Platform API simply refers to Virtuozzo’s platform API. With this API you can change and configure any aspect of the cloud platform. You can use this API to automate your cloud platform behaviors.
The API’s main purpose is to enable you to run custom tasks so that the admins and developers can run custom features or simplify their work.
There are two types of Platform API:
- Public API for developers
- Private API for admins
Public API for Developers
This API is used mostly for automating purposes. You can define a set of actions to ease your work and combine it with other services to extend the functionality of the platform.
You can interact with this API via HTTP protocol and it is a REST-based API. The opportunities and possibilities that could be done with this API are endless. You can combine it with various services and extensions to drastically improve your workflow.
The main usages of this API are as follows:
- Create environments
- Deploy apps
- Control your apps
- Control other tasks
Private API for Admins
With this API you get full access to the platform, which enables anyone that has access to this API to control nearly any aspect of the platform. This API is only used by admins and the ones in charge of the platform.
Note that you should not use this API for other tasks such as automation, because this API is sensitive and a single mistake can lead to a big problem in the platform.
The main usages of this API are as follows:
- Security
- Account
- Billing
- Infrastructure
Conclusion
Virtuozzo is indeed a stable solution for service providers. It has changed the way cloud providers offer their services. Virtuozzo is the technology that drives the backend infrastructure of many cloud providers, including ServerMania. Whether you are looking to save money on hardware, improve performance and reliability, or streamline your server management, Virtuozzo is a solution worth considering.
Check out our cloud hosting options if you are curious about this technology or want to rent a cloud server. Or dig deeper and check out our tutorial on how to create a new cloud server.
Next Step
Now that you have acquired new knowledge about Virtuozzo and what it is used for, you are now able to work with it and set it up to meet your needs. We also recommend taking a look at our knowledge base to enrich your knowledge about IT and the cloud.
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