Book Image

KVM Virtualization Cookbook

By : Konstantin Ivanov
Book Image

KVM Virtualization Cookbook

By: Konstantin Ivanov

Overview of this book

Virtualization technologies such as KVM allow for better control over the available server resources, by deploying multiple virtual instances on the same physical host, or clusters of compute resources. With KVM it is possible to run various workloads in isolation with the hypervisor layer providing better tenant isolation and higher degree of security. This book will provide a deep dive into deploying KVM virtual machines using qemu and libvirt and will demonstrate practical examples on how to run, scale, monitor, migrate and backup such instances. You will also discover real production ready recipes on deploying KVM instances with OpenStack and how to programatically manage the life cycle of KVM virtual machines using Python. You will learn numerous tips and techniques which will help you deploy & plan the KVM infrastructure. Next, you will be introduced to the working of libvirt libraries and the iPython development environment. Finally, you will be able to tune your Linux kernel for high throughput and better performance. By the end of this book, you will gain all the knowledge needed to be an expert in working with the KVM virtualization infrastructure.
Table of Contents (9 chapters)

Getting Started with QEMU and KVM

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • Installing and configuring QEMU
  • Managing disk images with qemu-img
  • Preparing images for OS installation with qemu-nbd
  • Installing a custom OS on the image with debootstrap
  • Resizing an image
  • Using pre-existing images
  • Running virtual machines with qemu-system-*
  • Starting the QEMU VM with KVM support
  • Connecting to a running instance with VNC