Over the weekend, I was introduced to VServer. It effectively creates a virtual environment on my current box for whatever there is that I need. I know of Xen and OpenVPS, both of which are a bit too heavy for just a simple environment that I’m looking for. Easy set up on Debian Etch by following the documentation, of course. Install via apt-get, reboot, select the correct kernel and we’re ready!

The main purpose, for me, is to do tests. Observation and/or examination of a particular application that I hope not to contaminate my existing system. So, I check out system like Hadoop which I’ve done over the weekend. Few more to come over the weeks.

VServer reminds me of IPython.

VServer also mentioned other usage scenarios, which I thought makes a lot of sense to a certain extent. Though I don’t think it will apply to some use cases. It can enhance security by isolating the main server from the Guest environment. Also being independent on hardware resource, whereby you can move a Guest from one server to another quite easily without any dependencies involved - just a matter of copy and paste! Among others, I think these 3 use cases are suffice to check out VServer. I was totally amazed.

What I like most about it is the configuration file /etc/vservers/newvserver-vars where you can let VServer install EXTRA_PACKAGES and run POST_INSTALL_SCRIPT when the virtual environment is created, among other variables. So I can practically get a new virtual environment up with minimal configurations!

Am a bit bias, but hey, this is all I need. Nice and simple!