[CentOS-virt] OS-level virtualization using LXC and systemd-nspawn containers

Mon Jan 25 19:55:30 UTC 2021
Gena Makhomed <gmm at csdoc.com>

Hello All,

OpenVZ 6 in the past was a very popular technology
for creating OS-level virtualization containers.

But OpenVZ 6 is EOL now (because RHEL 6 / CentOS 6 is EOL)
and all OpenVZ 6 users should migrate to some alternatives.

I found only two possible free/open source alternatives for OpenVZ 6:

- LXC
- systemd-nspawn

Does anyone use LXC and/or systemd-nspawn
containers on RHEL 8 / CentOS 8 for production?

What are advantages and disadvantages of each of these technologies?

Can you share your experience with LXC and/or systemd-nspawn
for RHEL 8 / CentOS 8 operating system on the hardware node?

============================================================

As I understand, LXC is not supported by Red Hat and it should be used 
on RHEL at its own risk?

But, as I understand from the articles

- https://access.redhat.com/solutions/1533893
- https://access.redhat.com/articles/2726611

systemd-nspawn is also not supported by Red Hat and should be used at 
its own risk?

So, between LXC and systemd-nspawn is there no difference despite 
what systemd-nspawn is the part of the RHEL 8 operating system
and can be installed on the RHEL 8 from the BaseOS repo?

Are there any chances that the situation with support for systemd-nspawn
will change in the future and this OS-level virtualization technology
will become fully supported in the RHEL 8.x or the RHEL 9.x version?

-- 
Best regards,
  Gena