The 5 Minute Guide to Running OpenVZ on CentOS 6.x

As much as I like Debian (and the fact that it has OpenVZ kernels in the repos, for now...) CentOS is really the best distribution for running this container-based virtualization environment. This assumes a minimal CentOS 6.0 install.

1) Add the OpenVZ repos

See the Quick Installation guide and ensure that:

[root@opti330 yum.repos.d]# cat /etc/yum.repos.d/openvz.repo
[openvz-utils]
name=OpenVZ utilities
#baseurl=http://download.openvz.org/current/
mirrorlist=http://download.openvz.org/mirrors-current
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://download.openvz.org/RPM-GPG-Key-OpenVZ

[openvz-kernel-rhel6]
name=OpenVZ RHEL6-based kernel
#baseurl=http://download.openvz.org/kernel/branches/rhel6-2.6.32/current/
mirrorlist=http://download.openvz.org/kernel/mirrors-rhel6-2.6.32
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://download.openvz.org/RPM-GPG-Key-OpenVZ

2) Install the packages (after updating of course)

# yum install openvz-kernel-rhel6 vzctl vzquota bridge-utils

3) Update /etc/sysctl.conf

net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1
net.ipv4.conf.all.proxy_arp = 1

This ARP proxying is really only needed if you are doing veth networking (the default we'll use below)

4) Reboot

You kernel should now be:

[root@opti330 yum.repos.d]# uname -a
Linux opti330 2.6.32-042stab024.1 #1 SMP Tue Jul 26 15:23:12 MSD 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

5) Update /etc/sysconfig/iptables to allow traffic to/from venet0 (only if you are using venet)

-A FORWARD -i venet0 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT

-A FORWARD -i eth0 -o venet0 -j ACCEPT

Or something close. You will also want to update your iptables policy or disable it or disable it.

6) Now you can create your VE's per the instructions on my OpenVZ Wiki Page.