Thanks for your input. As I said I haven't played with OpenStack but I've heard good things. Sounds like it's not ideal for this instance though.
One of the fantastic features IMO is that supports OVZ as well as KVM. OVZ is fantastic for most Linux servers and because it works similarly to a chroot jail (but even better) it runs like bare metal with minimal resource usage. Also getting OVZ guests to access hardware is really easy (and again performance is pretty much like native). KVM is handy if you want to run other OSs like Win or BSD. That's mainly what I use it for, although I occasionally run Linux under KVM too (it's handy of you want to access vmdk or other virtual HDD images). As OVZ uses the host kernel, if you want to use a differnt kernel for some reason, then you need to use KVM then too.
The current stable PVE (v1.9) is built on Debian Lenny and has a simple but effective WebUI. v2.0 is in early beta and is based on Squeeze and sounds as if it will have a flashier WebUI with many additional functions (such as being able to allow indivdual users access to only one or 2 machines). v1.9 also has some powerful commandline tools built-in too (which I assume will also be available in v2).
The only catch is that it requires 64 bit CPUs with virtual extension (AMD-v/VT-x) but most relatively modern hardware supports that. It is FOSS (ie free in both senses of the word) but also has paid support if required. I don't think there is a comparable free product currently available on the market (most of the free ones are proprietry crippleware in my very limited experience).
I think Proxmox is great
Thanks for your input. As I said I haven't played with OpenStack but I've heard good things. Sounds like it's not ideal for this instance though.
One of the fantastic features IMO is that supports OVZ as well as KVM. OVZ is fantastic for most Linux servers and because it works similarly to a chroot jail (but even better) it runs like bare metal with minimal resource usage. Also getting OVZ guests to access hardware is really easy (and again performance is pretty much like native). KVM is handy if you want to run other OSs like Win or BSD. That's mainly what I use it for, although I occasionally run Linux under KVM too (it's handy of you want to access vmdk or other virtual HDD images). As OVZ uses the host kernel, if you want to use a differnt kernel for some reason, then you need to use KVM then too.
The current stable PVE (v1.9) is built on Debian Lenny and has a simple but effective WebUI. v2.0 is in early beta and is based on Squeeze and sounds as if it will have a flashier WebUI with many additional functions (such as being able to allow indivdual users access to only one or 2 machines). v1.9 also has some powerful commandline tools built-in too (which I assume will also be available in v2).
The only catch is that it requires 64 bit CPUs with virtual extension (AMD-v/VT-x) but most relatively modern hardware supports that. It is FOSS (ie free in both senses of the word) but also has paid support if required. I don't think there is a comparable free product currently available on the market (most of the free ones are proprietry crippleware in my very limited experience).