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Saturday, June 23, 2018

Configuring Kernel Based Virtual Machine (KVM) on RHEL or CentOS 7 ...
src: i.ytimg.com

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization infrastructure for the Linux kernel that turns it into a hypervisor. It was merged into the Linux kernel mainline in kernel version 2.6.20, which was released on February 5, 2007. KVM requires a processor with hardware virtualization extensions. KVM has also been ported to FreeBSD and illumos in the form of loadable kernel modules.

KVM originally supported x86 processors and has been ported to S/390, PowerPC, and IA-64. An ARM port was merged during the 3.9 kernel merge window.

A wide variety of guest operating systems work with KVM, including many flavours and versions of Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows, Haiku, ReactOS, Plan 9, AROS Research Operating System and OS X. In addition, Android 2.2, GNU/Hurd (Debian K16), Minix 3.1.2a, Solaris 10 U3 and Darwin 8.0.1, together with other operating systems and some newer versions of these listed, are known to work with certain limitations.

Paravirtualization support for certain devices is available for Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Plan 9 and Windows guests using the VirtIO API. This supports a paravirtual Ethernet card, a paravirtual disk I/O controller, a balloon device for adjusting guest memory usage, and a VGA graphics interface using SPICE or VMware drivers.


Video Kernel-based Virtual Machine



Internals

By itself, KVM does not perform any emulation. Instead, it exposes the /dev/kvm interface, which a userspace host can then use to:

  • Set up the guest VM's address space. The host must also supply a firmware image (usually a custom BIOS when emulating PCs) that the guest can use to bootstrap into its main OS.
  • Feed the guest simulated I/O.
  • Map the guest's video display back onto the system host.

On Linux, QEMU versions 0.10.1 and later is one such userspace host. QEMU uses KVM when available to virtualize guests at near-native speeds, but otherwise falls back to software-only emulation.

Internally, KVM uses SeaBIOS as an open source implementation of a 16-bit x86 BIOS.


Maps Kernel-based Virtual Machine



Licensing

KVM's parts are licensed under various GNU licenses:

  • KVM kernel module: GPL v2
  • KVM user module: LGPL v2
  • QEMU virtual CPU core library (libqemu.a) and QEMU PC system emulator: LGPL
  • Linux user mode QEMU emulator: GPL
  • BIOS files (bios.bin, vgabios.bin and vgabios-cirrus.bin): LGPL v2 or later

The leap from virtual host to virtual machine
src: freesoftwaremagazine.com


History

Avi Kivity began the development of KVM at Qumranet, a technology startup company that was acquired by Red Hat in 2008.

KVM was merged into the Linux kernel mainline in kernel version 2.6.20, which was released on 5 February 2007.

KVM is maintained by Paolo Bonzini.


With ovirt & virt manager - ppt video online download
src: slideplayer.com


Graphical management tools

  • Kimchi - web-based virtualization management tool for KVM
  • Virtual Machine Manager - supports creating, editing, starting, and stopping KVM-based virtual machines, as well as live or cold drag-and-drop migration of VMs between hosts.
  • Proxmox Virtual Environment - an open-source virtualization management package including KVM and LXC. It has a bare-metal installer, a web-based remote management GUI, a HA cluster stack, unified storage, flexible network, and optional commercial support.
  • OpenQRM - management platform for managing heterogeneous data center infrastructures.
  • GNOME Boxes - Gnome interface for managing libvirt guests on Linux.
  • oVirt - open-source virtualization management tool for KVM built on top of libvirt

Windows 10 in einer KVM ( Kernel-based Virtual Machine) in Linux ...
src: i.ytimg.com


Emulated hardware


Project Overview Amador Pahim (apahim) oVirt Contributor - ppt ...
src: slideplayer.com


See also


KVM Linux | Kernel-based Virtual Machine | Desktop Vs Server ...
src: i.ytimg.com


References


An Investigation Using Kernel-based Virtual Machines Wes Lloyd ...
src: images.slideplayer.com


Bibliography

  • Amit Shah (2016-11-02). "Ten years of KVM". lwn.net. Retrieved 2017-02-10. 

Open Source Virtualization with oVirt - ppt download
src: slideplayer.com


External links

  • Official website
  • Best practices for the Kernel-based Virtual Machine, IBM, second edition, April 2012
  • Virtio-blk Performance Improvement, KVM Forum 2012, November 8, 2012, by Asias He
  • Wikibook QEMU & KVM

Source of article : Wikipedia