Specifications

History:

Aventurin{e} has been in active development since 2006. It started out as a fork of the Open Source project BlueQuartz by two of the junior developers of the BlueQuartz project: Brian N. Smith and Michael Stauber. The idea was to use core elements of the BlueQuartz GUI interface and to mate it with the OpenVZ container based virtualization engine in order to create and manage OpenVZ Virtual Private Containers. The initial version of Aventurin{e} with the model number 6102R ran on CentOS 4 and was released in 2007. In 2008 Aventurin{e} 6105R on CentOS 5 came out and it was also the first version of Aventurin{e} with optional Cluster support. In 2011 we released Aventurin{e} 6106R on Scientific Linux 6, which retained the optional Cluster support.

The latest version of Aventurin{e} is currently Aventurin{e} 6109R, which runs on Virtuozzo Linux 7 (a CentOS 7 clone) and uses OpenVZ 7.

Aventurin{e} version numbers:

  • Aventurin{e} 6109R - Virtuozzo Linux 7 + OpenVZ 7 + Chorizo GUI - Stable Release
  • Aventurin{e} 6108R - SL 6 + OpenVZ 6 (Legacy) + Chorizo GUI - Old Stable Release
  • Aventurin{e} 6106R - SL 6 + OpenVZ (Legacy) + Sausalito GUI - EOL since March 2017
  • Aventurin{e} 6105R - CentOS 5 + OpenVZ (Legacy) + Sausalito GUI - EOL since March 2013
  • Aventurin{e} 6102R - CentOS 4 + OpenVZ (Legacy) + Sausalito GUI - EOL since March 2012

General Technical Overview:

Aventurin{e} is available as ISO image and can be installed on x86_64 compatible PC or server hardware. The install is as easy as it gets: Boot off the CD, press return in the CD boot menu and lean back. The rest of the install is fully automated. You can see what the install looks like over here.

Optionally it's also possible to install the GUI parts of Aventurin{e} 6109R onto an existing OpenVZ 7 system. The instructions for that are available here.

The base OS of Aventurin{e} 6109R is Virtuozzo Linux 7, which is a clone of CentOS 7 and is maintained by the same people that also provide OpenVZ 7. The GUI interface of Aventurin{e} runs on an Apache webserver (on special ports for HTTP and HTTPS) and uses PHP, jQuery, CSS3, Perl, Shell scripts and a special daemon written in C+ called CCEd. The GUI uses an Object oriented database called CODB to store management information. This GUI interface is called "Chorizo" and has about 80% commonality with the Open Source GUI interface of BlueOnyx - our sister project. BlueOnyx has been around since 2008 and traces it's origins back to BlueQuartz and the Cobalt RaQ's. The general design philosophy of the GUI interface emphasizes security. GUI users are authenticated against the PAM database and strict ACL's are applied to limit the scope of actions a user can take. Various levels of ACL's exist and define which parts of the GUI interface are accessible to a user. As any other web based GUI interface the Aventurin{e} GUI needs to perform certain transactions with elevated privileges ('root' access) in order to modify system config files and to manipulate system services. Aventurin{e} does this with security first and foremost in mind. All GUI transactions run as unprivileged user and are routed through the CCEd and CODB backend. Certain CODB transactions then - if all security related parameters are met - trigger a handler, which executes a very limited and specific transaction with elevated privileges. This allows for a very robust and secure GUI with all the flexibility we need and the robustness that we want.

Specifications for a 6109R Server:

It really depends on the expected usage. If you just want to run a single small hobby related VPS or a small intranet server, then the required hardware demands could be as low as this:

Minimum requirements:

  • x86_64 compatible architecture.
  • Preferably multiple CPU cores (2 GHz or faster).
  • At least 4 GB of RAM, but that cuts it close. The more the better!
  • +80 GB of disk space.

That would be enough for some hobbyist usage, but don't expect too much off it. It is also possible to install and run Aventurin{e} on blades, like IBM blade centers. Of course the typical blade comes with only 2.5" disks and typically diskspace is a limiting factor that not really allows you to run many large VPS's. However, some key features of Aventurin{e} - like easy migrations, independence of hardware and the built in backup facility - make it desirable to run Aventurin{e} even though you'll run only a single VPS on that hardware.

Virtualization under Linux lives and breathes with CPU cores, fast RAM and fast I/O throughput of speedy hard disks. The more and the faster, the better the end result. Intel i3, i5, i7 or Xeon's with multiple cores are always a good choice. The i3 only for light weight stuff (due to lack of enough cores). For a long time our own Aventurin{e} servers for the BlueOnyx and Aventurin{e} project ran on 4 cores (Intel i5) and made do with 32 GB of RAM and 1-2TB of disk space each. We have since a bit outgrown that, but both back then (and today) we did run up to 30 VPS's per node. We do have clients who run Aventurin{e} on monster hardware with dozens of CPU cores, 200GB of RAM and terabytes of storage attached. In some cases these clients also started small on modest hardware. And eventually outgrew them. But in those cases they could simply "vzmigrate" the running VPS's off the old Aventurin{e} and live-migrate them to the new one.

Included OS Templates:

Aventurin{e} 6109R comes with the following OpenVZ 7 OS templates:

  • BlueOnyx 5209R
  • BlueOnyx 5208R
  • BlueOnyx 5207R
  • CentOS 7 (minimal)
  • CentOS 6 (minimal)
  • Debian 7
  • Debian 8
  • Debian 9
  • Ubuntu 14.04
  • Ubuntu 16.04
  • Ubuntu 17.10
  • Ubuntu 18.04
  • Fedora 23
  • SLES 11
  • SLES 12
  • SUSE 42.1
  • SUSE 42.2
  • SUSE 42.3
  • Virtuozzo Linux 6
  • Virtuozzo Linux 7

Further precreated OS templates for OpenVZ can be downloaded and installed from other sources as well.

Aventurin{e} Licensing and Terms of Usage:

In the past Aventurin{e} was closed source commercial software. We decided to change our stance on this. It is now partially open source and partially closed source. The closed source parts are those that directly deal with the interface between OpenVZ and the Chorizo GUI Interface. The licensing has been relaxed, so that it's now permissible to distribute unmodified binary copies of the Aventurin{e} 6109R ISO image.

The freely available version of Aventurin{e} 6109R allows you to create and manage a single OpenVZ virtual private server. That will also allow you to give Aventurin{e} a test ride before you commit to a purchase. Or if you are a hobbyist user who just wants to manage a single VPS, then you're welcome to run Aventurin{e} 6109R without ever purchasing a license extension.

A commercial license needs to be purchased if you want to unlock the GUI in order to run and manage 5, 10, 15, 20 or an unlimited number of OpenVZ VPS's. In that case you will receive a serial number and license key, which can be installed via the GUI interface. Once activated the GUI unlocks the ability to manage as many VPS's as your license extension allows.

Further details about the terms and conditions can be found in the Aventurin{e} License Agreement.

Previous page: News Next page: License