document updated 21 years ago, on Jun 3, 2005
Basically, a bunch of geeks get together, rent one or more machines, split it into many virtual
machines, and give each member root (usually each having their own IP address). The benefit is that
it can be colocated
and be on good hardware, thereby ensuring good network speed and high uptime for CPU/disk/network.
It's often done using UML, but
Xen may become a better alternative,
especially with x86
hardware virtualization being supported by Xen some time this year.