32 or 64 bit

Deor

Just wondering what peoples preference is for VM's? Any pros or cons to either? Till now ive stuck with 32bit Ubuntu on my LEB's, but im going to put together something bigger with probably 2gb of ram for some larger forums and a minecraft server so was thinking of changing if there are any significant benefits.

rajprakash

This has been covered at length already.

http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/32bit-or-64bit-for-my-low-end-vps-take-2/

ztec

If the hostnode OS is 32bit and it hosts a 64bit OS VPS, will the VPS still be really 64bit? I'm talking OpenVZ.

iKocka

64 bit OpenVZ template won't work on 32 bit node ;)

Deor

@rajprakash Many thanks for that, very useful reading.

@ztec Interesting question, maybe a provider would be able to answer what their nodes run on and why.

iKocka

@Deor: As I already mentioned, 64 bit OpenVZ template is not going to work on 32 bit OpenVZ node.

yomero

iKocka said: @Deor: As I already mentioned, 64 bit OpenVZ template is not going to work on 32 bit OpenVZ node.

+1 Obviously because the guest processes really are processes in the host. So, you can't run a 64 bit binary in a 32 bit architecture.

skagerrak

ztec said: If the hostnode OS is 32bit and it hosts a 64bit OS VPS, will the VPS still be really 64bit? I'm talking OpenVZ.

Containers (OpenVZ / Virtuozzo, Linux-VServer, LXC) are not virtualisation technologies per se. They carve up a single system in "super chroot" jails. All the "guest" processes in the containers run directly on the same "host" kernel and as such, generally have access to the same cpu/ram/etc resources as the host. For example the contained processes may be 64 bit and use multiple cpus, if the host is 64 bit and has multiple cpus.

Deor

@iKockaiKocka sorry, i had my post typed for a few minutes before i pressed the post button, didnt see your response till just now! Makes sense really :)

@skagerrak Thanks for the extra info

drmike

Hey can I run a 64bit OS while the hostnode is only running 32bit?

:whistle:

ztec

Will a 32 bit VPS still use less memory than a 64bit VPS on a 64 bit host?

LowEndAdmin

Yes. Because your userland processes are 32bit (thus use less memory), and those are the ones that count towards your VPS's memory utilization.

Go59954

The question regarding the side question you ask (will 64 bit VPS OS, work on a 32 bit node?), is if there is actually node that is to be divided into VPSes, and still use a 32 bit as base OS nowadays!!! Since the main advantage and one of the main reasons 64 bit OS's where invented, is to deal with high capacities of RAM we are having, when more than 4 and 8 GB and more of RAM, became the mainstream RAM capacity few years ago.

What I mean is that a part of the whole virtualization thing, is the advancement in RAM sizes available at market. So I don't think you will easily find any provider using nodes running 32 bit OS, especially when they will use it for a virtualization platform (OVZ, XEN etc) and when they are going to actually sell RAM! and need as much as they can, why they will go with a 32 bit OS? So you can conclude that your assumption itself is to a big extent not valid nowadays, and they will be using a 64 bit so it shall run everything anyway.

vampireJ

is there still a provider that uses a 32 bit host? I mean you should have more than 4gb of memories in your host system

uptimevps

Pretty much all nodes I would think are x86_64 due to memory.