In: Computer Science
Presentation on architecture and technology: The topic name
Red Hat’s Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is an open source virtualization technology built into Linux. Specifically, KVM lets you turn Linux into a hypervisor that allows a host machine to run multiple, isolated virtual environments called guests or virtual machines (VMs).KVM is part of Linux. If you’ve got Linux 2.6.20 or newer, you’ve got KVM. KVM was first announced in 2006 and merged into the mainline Linux kernel version a year later. Because KVM is part of existing Linux code, it immediately benefits from every new Linux feature, fix, and advancement without additional engineering. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization module in the Linux kernel that allows the kernel to function as 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, such as Intel VT or AMD-V.KVM has also been ported to other operating systems such as FreeBSD and illumos in the form of loadable kernel modules.KVM was originally designed for x86 processors and has since been ported to S/390,PowerPC,IA-64, and ARM.KVM provides hardware-assisted virtualization for a wide variety of guest operating systems including Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows, Haiku, ReactOS, Plan 9, AROS Research Operating System and macOS. In addition, Android 2.2, GNU/Hurd ,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.Additionally, KVM provides paravirtualization support for Linux, OpenBSD,FreeBSD,NetBSD,Plan 9 and Windows guests using the VirtIO API. This includes a paravirtual Ethernet card, disk I/O controller,balloon device, and a VGA graphics interface using SPICE or VMware drivers.KVM converts Linux into a type-1 hypervisor. All hypervisors need some operating system-level components—such as a memory manager, process scheduler, input/output (I/O) stack, device drivers, security manager, a network stack, and more—to run VMs. KVM has all these components because it’s part of the Linux kernel. Every VM is implemented as a regular Linux process, scheduled by the standard Linux scheduler, with dedicated virtual hardware like a network card, graphics adapter, CPU(s), memory, and disks.We believe in KVM so much that it’s the sole hypervisor for all of our virtualization products, and we’re continually improving the kernel code with contributions to the KVM community. But since KVM is part of Linux, it’s already included in red hat .Well, Red Hat has 2 versions of KVM. The KVM that ships with Red Hat Enterprise Linux has all of the hypervisor functionality with basic management capabilities, allowing customers to run up to 4 isolated virtual machines on a single host. Red Hat Virtualization contains an advanced version of KVM that enables enterprise management of unlimited guest machines. It’s ideal for use in datacenter virtualization, technical workstations, private clouds, and in development or production.