Increase profit: Run 300% more VPS subscriptions on every server

Parallels Containers delivers three times more virtual servers than hypervisor solutions providing greater utilization of existing infrastructure.

Optimize costs: Reduce server maintenance cost by 75%

Centralized management enables fast operating system (OS) updates and upgrades. Make changes once and quickly replicate to an entire datacenter.

Maximize performance: Increase application performance by 50%

Parallels Containers enables near-native server performance, delivering maximum application performance and scalability for a given virtual CPU configuration.

Enable customers to add new services quickly

Rapid provisioning means new servers can be available within minutes of ordering, and servers are "instant on" when provisioned with no OS boot up time.  Customer self-service panels enable existing OS containers to be scaled on the fly with real-time adjustments to CPU, memory, and disk space allocations.

New features and improvements:

Support for Parallels Cloud Storage

• Turn existing server disk space into a resilient cloud storage pool
• Eliminate VPS downtime due to hardware failures 
• Zero downtime server migration and non-disruptive replication
• Deliver high availability cloud servers

New container layout

• Stores all files in a single image, enabling easy migrations and backups
• Improves server performance

Memory and IOPS deduplication

• Efficiently caches identical files found in multiple containers to reduce I/O and memory bottlenecks and increase the number of running containers per server

Rebootless updates

• Eliminates service outages for end users during system updates

Console access to containers. 

• Use the container console to log into a running container and view the progress of the startup and shutdown processes.

Updates with yum

• The vzup2date utility has been replaced with the standard yum utility, greatly simplifying the procedure of updating all components of your system

Containers with pre-installed application templates

• Pre-install application templates to OS EZ template caches to speed up containers creation

Increased virtual machines limits

• Create virtual machines with up to 32 CPU cores, 128 GB of RAM, and 5 TB of virtual disk space

Learn more about the new virtualization features and benefits in Parallels Cloud Server

Built for delivering profitable cloud services

• Advanced Resource Management provides the controls necessary to support multiple VPS and Cloud server packages at varying levels of CPU, memory, disk I/O and storage space.
• On-the-fly virtual environment elasticity enables flexibility for customers and ease of upgrading for service providers.
• Immediate provisioning and activation provides the fastest availability time for new VPS and Cloud server subscriptions, allowing your customers to add new services instantly.
• Comprehensive integration capabilities for third party systems are enabled with command line and API interfaces thus simplifying the complete automation of delivering and billing for services.
• Performance and resource isolation enable service providers to guarantee SLAs and provide highly reliable and secure virtual servers.
• Flexible management options reduce administration and support costs by simplifying day to day operations, automating routine tasks and providing customers with self service capabilities.

Maximize return on hardware investments

• Operating system containerization lets you run more subscriptions on every server by creating secure, isolated virtual servers without the overhead and constraints of hardware virtualization.
• Dynamic library sharing significantly reduces the amount of memory needed by each virtual server and changing the way you provision subscriptions.
• Cross CPU workload scheduling eliminates the binding of virtual environments to vCPUs to deliver flexible, high performance servers for customers.

Streamlining day to day operations

• Operating system templates simplify the process of creating and maintaining “gold images”  used to instantly provision VPS or Cloud servers.
• Application templates automate the rapid deployment and configuration of applications into virtual servers enabling you to easily extend existing services.
• Mass management and task automation simplify the day-to-day administration and greatly increase the number of physical nodes and virtual servers each administrator can manage.
• Live migration enables administrators to moves an entire virtual server between physical nodes without disrupting applications or users. Can perform live migration across different geographical locations if this is supported by the network infrastructure.
• Reduce maintenance costs by installing host OS and applications such as backup and antivirus on the server, not on each virtual server.
• Stability provided by global support and service to ensure the success of your business. With more than 5000 service provider partners worldwide, Parallels Cloud Server is the virtualization product of choice for mass market hosting providers.
• Complete set of management tools The widest set of tools for both Service Providers and customers, making it the best virtualization solution for mass hosting of VPSs. Parallels Cloud Server tools enable management, monitoring, backup, restore, troubleshooting, recovery, provisioning and deployment. Learn more.

Simply the best virtualization solution for Linux

Parallels has been a strong participant within the Linux community for more than a decade and was recently recognized by the Linux Foundation as one of the top ten commercial contributors to the kernel. As a participating member of the Linux foundation Parallels is heavily involved in workgroups and events alongside other Linux community leaders. This experience, access to innovators, and involvement with the Linux community helps Parallels to continually advance Parallels Containers and deliver the best solutions for our customers.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between containers and hypervisors?

Two types of virtualization are in use today: hardware virtualization (generally known as hypervisors) and operating system virtualization (commonly referred to as containers).

Hypervisor Virtualization
Multiple copies of system resources result in overhead on the server of up to 20%. Overhead reduces the ratios of virtual servers per physical server as well as overall system performance.

Operating System Virtualization
Virtualizing at the host operating system, Parallels Containers provides a common virtualization layer that allocates system resources across all virtual servers, called containers. The result is a leaner, more efficient virtualization layer with an overhead of only 2%. This translates into higher ratios of virtual servers to physical servers, near-native server performance and unique advantages for management of the virtual environment.

How difficult is Parallels Containers to use?
Parallels Containers is designed to be simple and intuitive to use. The management tools make deploying software versions and patch management a breeze, with simple ways to clone and test patches and efficient tools to disseminate patches.

How long does it take to install Parallels Containers?
Parallels Containers installation typically requires less than an hour by a Linux administrator.

How difficult is Parallels Containers to deploy?
Parallels Containers is simple to deploy. As with all virtualization solutions, there is a migration process between physical and virtual machines. To ease the process, there is a physical to virtual tool for Linux (VZP2V) which tests the processing peaks and valleys prior to migration to ensure performance levels are maintained.

How scalable is Parallels Containers?
The Parallels Containers architecture was designed to be extremely scalable so that every virtual private server can utilize the entire available resources on the server. Any guest container can utilize up to 16 CPUs and 64 GB of memory.

Are containers secure?
Yes, Parallels Containers' proprietary virtualization layer manages the isolation of namespaces, users, processes, network management to ensure that only users with appropriate access may access a container.

What is the recommended density of containers on a single physical server?
The density range depends upon the resources of the server, the contents of a particular container and the desired number of containers associated to a hardware node. Please read our white paper Best Practices for Optimizing your VPS and Cloud Server Business

How much overhead should I expect with Parallels Containers?
Parallels Containers adds very little overhead to native applications and operating system performance, ranging from 1-3%. The server and application performance difference with Parallels Containers is generally imperceptible.

If a guest container crashes, will it affect other servers or the host operating system?
No, all of the transactions accessing the host kernel are mediated through the Kernel Abstraction Layer. Crashes are limited to the specific container.

Does Parallels Cloud Server support containers for Windows?
No, Parallels Cloud Server supports containers for Linux only. If you want to offer Windows servers using Parallels Cloud Server, you can do so using Parallels Hypervisor which allows complete operating system flexibility. If you would like to only deploy containers for Windows you can deploy Parallels Virtuozzo Containers for Windows.