openvz versus xen

[Roger Pack]

Anybody had any experiences with ruby/rails on openvz versus xen VPS'?
Trying to decide which kind I like [openvz is cheaper...]
Thanks!
-r

[Lee Jensen]

Are you asking in relation to starting a hosting provider or utilizing
someone else's VPS...

If you're just looking to buy VPSes from someone else the answer
probably varies greatly depending on your host and their
oversubscription models. OpenVZ or Xen are going to look about the
same from your perspective but may perform vary differently. Not to
say that one architecture is superior to the other, you could make
arguments in both directions. What it comes down to is how the
provider utilizes the servers. If for instance they are a xen shop and
dedicate/guarantee you memory and compute resources (aka amazon ec2,
etc) you will get very consistent performance. If they oversell CPU
time substantially your VPS may feel like a shared host. Both xen and
openvz allow you to do this and it's probably just as easy in either.
Ruby is pretty CPU hungry. Even if you do a lot of DB/filesystem work
you're still going to be burning a good bit of CPU time.

Other considerations: You may get some additional flexibility from a
xen vps depending on your provider (IE running different
kernels/distros etc, I don't believe you can do that in openvz since
it is just kernel virtualization). One example is linode which I use
for my personal stuff. If you're a tweaker you can set it up to do any
number of interesting things and even control the boot process to a
large degree. If you don't need anything like that openvz is a fine
choice.

In summary, if you're a tweaker you probably want xen, if you don't
care make your decision on value (price,performance,support,etc).

Lee

[Roger Pack]

> Are you asking in relation to starting a hosting provider or utilizing
> someone else's VPS...
>
> If you're just looking to buy VPSes from someone else the answer
> probably varies greatly depending on your host and their
> oversubscription models.

Thanks for your answers. This is in relation to trying to decide
between xen or openvz on http://fsckvps.com
Which I think doesn't over provision. I do like tweaking so I'll take
your suggestions into considerations.
Much thanks.
-r