Open Hosting is Linux KVM

In early 2009 Open Hosting became the first hosting company to offer unmanaged KVM-based virtual servers. At the time, Linux KVM was largely unknown outside the Linux community, while Xen dominated, despite relying on its own kernel, scheduler, and memory manager.

Two important events advanced the case for KVM. In 2007 KVM was mainlined with Linux 2.6.20, which was the first release to include KVM. A year later, Red Hat purchased Qumranet, the creator and primary sponsor of KVM. Now that KVM had been mainlined and with Red Hat investing considerable engineering resources in KVM, the future of Linux KVM was secure.

Today, Red Hat oversees the KVM project and it serves as the basis for Red Hat Virtualization. And it is this same virtualization technology that supports our cloud platform.

Why Linux KVM?

Why the Linux community prefers KVM is obvious: it is 100% Linux. Our host servers run Linux, relying on the same mainline kernel found on the great preponderance of servers the world over. And our clients prefer KVM because of the performance, stability, and security.

Looking beyond the opinions of engineers, the Open Virtualization Alliance exists to impress the business community that KVM is viable and mature. Behind it are the collective interests of Red Hat, IBM, Intel, and AMD, all working to support and develop Linux KVM.