[Mashiro]

Hello everyone!

Welcome to my little info and discussion thread about the end of life for OpenVZ 6 and what this means for the OpenVZ 6 VPSs provided at Post4VPS by the sponsors.

Let me first list the VPSs here that are using OpenVZ 6:

• VPS 3
  
• VPS 7
  
• VPS 9
  
• VPS 11
  
• VPS 12
  

Taken from https://post4vps.com/Announcement-VPS-Plans


In roughly 3+ months OpenVZ 6 (RHEL 6 based) will reach its end of life cycle (Nov 2019). This means that it will be no longer developed and updated by the OpenVZ developers. No bug fixes, no security updates and certainly no feature updates.

Reference: https://wiki.openvz.org/Releases

The OpenVZ 6 kernel 2.6.32 is a really old kernel although of course the OpenVZ developers have kept it somewhat up to date (however still lacking all features and bells of newer kernel versions). Pretty much all new Linux distributions are no longer supported by OpenVZ because of the kernel. Current working OSs are all almost also EOL (end of life).

Using OpenVZ 6 (still using it rather) is a rather dangerous venture nowadays. These days there are more and more security issues than in all the years before. Flaws in hardware that are hard to fix (Intel Spectre and other issues) and where even software fixes is workaround (if it is even available for the used OS!).

In my humble opinion every provider still using OpenVZ 6 should be long moving over to either OpenVZ 7 or a different virtualization like KVM, XEN or similar (something that is of course still being maintained and supported). However you as a user should also take precaution and prepare to move over to better solutions. I recommend KVM because hardware virtualization is simply better than software nowadays (my two cents).


What does all of this mean for Post4VPS? Will sponsors drop VPSs running OpenVZ 6? Will the eventually replace them with something better? Or will the worst happen and they will continue using a dead technology and risk to get hacked? What will you do?

P.S.: You probably should be concerned.


Share your thoughts, concerns and ideas. Please be serious and if you don't really have anything to contribute don't post. We have enough low quality posts these days already.

Thank you for your understanding.

[Honey]

Yeah using OpenVZ has always been a concerned matter, back when I first started working with servers, I didn't really knew the difference and was fine both ways, however eventually I realized that KVM is the preferred choice, I don't quite understand why providers don't simply move to KVM, is it costly? require more maentenance? No Clue..But yeah, providers should definitely now switch to kvm now that openvz is being discontinued

[rudra]

openvz is not being discontinued !
HR clearly mentioned that it was openvz 6 that was being dropped.
Also I am sure it was discussed many times that the advantages of openvz was being less resource consuming, as it runs under the same kernel.

it is a sad day.

[humanpuff69]

The problem is that openvz 7 is a mixed kvm with paravirtual . It doesnt not use the os level virtualization like openvz 6 which is the main reason to use openvz i stead of kvm in the first place

But with the lack of update and security those advantage of using openvz 6 is not worth it so provider probably will upgrade . Security risk is much more important than lower overhead and os level thing

[hamed]

It doesn't make a difference. But it gets better anyway because openvz has a lot less features. And also I have to say special software will not be installed so we better remove it Good luck founders post4vps

[deanhills]

In my humble opinion every provider still using OpenVZ 6 should be long moving over to either OpenVZ 7 or a different virtualization like KVM, XEN or similar (something that is of course still being maintained and supported). However you as a user should also take precaution and prepare to move over to better solutions. I recommend KVM because hardware virtualization is simply better than software nowadays (my two cents).

Thank you for posting this warning @"Hidden Refuge".  Brilliant post as per usual and also very thought provoking.  So I guess it's important that we check for the version of OpenVZ of the VPSs below that are marked in red.  How would we check for whether the VPS Virtualization is OpenVZ 6 or 7?  Can you help with the Linux commands one would use to check this out?

BTW I've found that all of the new VPSs we've been getting off late have been KVM.  Maybe this is a trend in the industry, new hosts in the business aren't using OpenVZ as they used to.  If you can help with how one tests for this, I can also test my OpenVZ with HostUS.

VPS 1 - KVM
VPS 2 - KVM
VPS 3 - OpenVZ [checked: ABC-Hosters is on 6 but are planning to switch to OpenVZ 7 or completely change to KVM - most hosts I think are aware of the need and urgency to do this]
VPS 4 - KVM
VPS 5 - KVM
VPS 6 - KVM
VPS 7 - OpenVZ [discontinued plan]
VPS 8 - Xen HVM
VPS 9 - OpenVZ] [checked: on vulnerable kernel - so far looks as though host is on KVM for new VPSs - will do further checks]
VPS 10 - KVM
VPS 11 - OpenVZ [checked: on vulnerable kernel - will do further checks]
VPS 12 - OpenVZ [checked: on vulnerable kernel - will do further checks]
VPS 13 - KVM
VPS 14 - KVM
VPS 17 - KVM
VPS 18 - KVM

---

OK, I did some research.  I loaded Virt-what to my VPS, and then was disappointed as it only shows the Virtualization, not the version.

However, when I used

Code: (Select All)

uname -a

it showed my VPS is on the kernel you mentioned for OpenVZ 6.  Looks as though VPS 9 will be effected.

I guess one can check this way for any of the other VPSs as well.

[xdude]

It doesn't make a difference. But it gets better anyway because openvz has a lot less features. And also I have to say special software will not be installed so we better remove it Good luck founders post4vps

What do you mean it doesn't make a difference?  Hopefully those our sponsors will move to OVZ 7 something else before November. Shouldn't wait till last minute to do this. I have seen a few threads about this at LowEndTalk. Some seem to prefer moving to KVM than OVZ 7.

[rudra]

@deanhills
virt-what is just a shell script that puts all the relevant tests/checks at one place. It either purses the output of commands like dmidecode, cpuid, uname -p or tests for the existance of files/directories (usually inside /sys file system) that always exist on certain virtualized systems or the output of cat /proc/cpuinfo. if you want to find out their version, like here we want to know openvz version then i guess there is no other way than finding out the kernel version. so congrats.

Also you need to do it manually as you did.

hostnamectl status,dmesg, lshw, lspci, hwinfo, lscpu etc are commands whose outputs are useful other ways to determine this. But the thing is they are often restricted on such systems, thus not producing the relevant output (which is why i never saw them in virt-what source).

using cat on /some files in /proc (like cpuinfo) or device files under /sys may be other ways to uncover the virtual environment through the manufacturer info for virtual devices.

Knowing multiple ways is beneficial here. You dont know which ones will work.

There are ways to make host report to guest wrong info. Though i doubt any webhost will stoop that far. haha

so to reiterate, for openvz version, our main aids are...
uname -r and uname -v for kernel version and release date.
cat /proc/version will show them too.

rpm -q kernel

or,

dpkg -l | grep kernel
will always show kernel package not installed inside guest, as is expected.

So basically yes. you did it. Thats the way.

[Melvin]

its such a bad news, after the good experience with the OPENVZ 6, now they are moving ? nah i don't like this but thanks to our sponsors such as Pacific Spirit and manal for rewarding us with their vps's we can't worry because we got this amazing staff serving for us.

[deanhills]

So in summary with the VPS Plans, only VPS 3, VPS 9, VPS 10 and VPS 11 are on OpenVZ 6.  All of the VPSs except for VPS 9 are unoccupied for now.  So only VPS 9 is of direct concern to us for now.  I've written to Virmach and received the following feedback:

Hi, we don't believe there will be an issue with your services. We are still on the decision-making stage internally and are running analyses on our best options.

We're aiming to have more information out to all OVZ customers before the end of next month.

The response from the host of VPS 3 has been almost identical.  Think I'll wait a little while before I contact the host for VPS 10 and 11.  Most likely they'll respond exactly the same.  

Bottom line.  If one wants to run a successful business with VPSs, one can't afford to still be on OpenVZ 6 after November.  Thanks to @"Hidden Refuge" thread here, we're in the know as well. Thanks Hidden!