Virtualization with KVM

All for One

Article from ADMIN 02/2010

By Tim Schürmann

KVM continues to gain popularity in the world of Linux – so much so, that it has become Red Hat and Ubuntu's preferred virtualization solution. In contrast to Xen, setting up KVM involves just a couple of steps, and the guest operating systems can run without special patches.

Whether you want to lock up your web server, test security functions, put a really powerful server to better use, or just try out a new distribution, virtual machines can be very useful. The Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) [1] is a fairly recent project now being promoted by Red Hat, and it's another candidate for the job of launching and managing your virtual machines. Although KVM is frequently overlooked in the wake of VirtualBox and VMware, it offers an impressive feature scope, is included by nearly every distribution, and is totally free. The virtualization functions in Red Hat Enterprise Linux are based on it.

Building Blocks

KVM comprises individual modules that handle different tasks. To start, Qemu [2] emulates the hardware of one or multiple computers. Operating systems can coexist peacefully on the virtual machines that Qemu provides without fighting over the physical network interface (Figure 1).