Tool of the Day - kernel based virtual machine
KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution
for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT
or AMD-V). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides
the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module,
kvm-intel.ko
or kvm-amd.ko. KVM also requires a modified QEMU although work is underway
to get the required changes upstream.
Using KVM, one can run multiple virtual machines running unmodified Linux
or Windows
images. Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware: a network
card, disk, graphics
adapter, etc. The kernel component of KVM is included in mainline Linux, as
of 2.6.20.
features
- QMP - Qemu Monitor Protocol
- KSM - Kernel Samepage Merging
- Kvm Paravirtual Clock - A Paravirtual timesource for KVM
- CPU Hotplug support - Adding cpus on the fly
- PCI Hotplug support - Adding pci devices on the fly
- vmchannel - Communication channel between the host and guests
- migration - Migrating Virtual Machines
- vhost
- SCSI disk emulation
- Virtio Devices
- CPU clustering
- hpet
- device assignment
- pxe boot
- iscsi boot
- x2apic
- floppy
- cdrom
- USB
- USB host device passthrough
- sound
- Userspace Irqchip emulation
- Userspace Pit emulation
- Balloon memory driver
- Large pages support
- Stable Guest ABI
Home page: http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page
for binary package: http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Downloads
regards,
dhanasekar
