Libvirt is a set of libraries and language bindings used to interact with various virtualization technologies in a standard and uniform way. These include KVM, XEN, QEMU, OpenVZ, and of course LXC. Libvirt uses XML files to define virtualized entities such as LXC containers, and describe their properties, such as available memory, block devices, networking, the init system, and other metadata. It supports multiple storage drivers such as the LVM, local and network filesystems, iSCSI, and others.

Libvirt provides a completely independent way of working with Linux containers from the mainstream LXC project and the toolset we've seen and used so far. It implements the kernel feature set that constitutes LXC, and exposes its own tools and libraries to work with containers without the need to install other packages. In Chapter 4, LXC Code Integration with Python, we'll see how to write Python programs using the libvirt API, but for now let's explore...