Book Image

Mastering KVM Virtualization

Book Image

Mastering KVM Virtualization

Overview of this book

A robust datacenter is essential for any organization – but you don’t want to waste resources. With KVM you can virtualize your datacenter, transforming a Linux operating system into a powerful hypervisor that allows you to manage multiple OS with minimal fuss. This book doesn’t just show you how to virtualize with KVM – it shows you how to do it well. Written to make you an expert on KVM, you’ll learn to manage the three essential pillars of scalability, performance and security – as well as some useful integrations with cloud services such as OpenStack. From the fundamentals of setting up a standalone KVM virtualization platform, and the best tools to harness it effectively, including virt-manager, and kimchi-project, everything you do is built around making KVM work for you in the real-world, helping you to interact and customize it as you need it. With further guidance on performance optimization for Microsoft Windows and RHEL virtual machines, as well as proven strategies for backup and disaster recovery, you’ll can be confident that your virtualized data center is working for your organization – not hampering it. Finally, the book will empower you to unlock the full potential of cloud through KVM. Migrating your physical machines to the cloud can be challenging, but once you’ve mastered KVM, it’s a little easie.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Mastering KVM Virtualization
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Introducing the virt-v2v utility


virt-v2v is a special command-line utility, using which we can convert VMs from a foreign hypervisor to run on a KVM hypervisor managed by libvirt, OpenStack, oVirt, and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV). virt-p2v is a companion tool of virt-v2v that comes as an ISO or CD image to help a physical machine's conversion to a virtual machine.

However, is a special utility to convert a virtual machine from one platform to another or physical to virtual server conversion really required? Can't we just copy the bits residing on a physical disk to a virtual disk, such as dd + nc? This might be the question in your mind. If it is, then it's a valid question indeed.

System conversion using utilities such as dd and nc works. You will be able to migrate the systems from virtual to virtual, as well as physical to virtual, but with partial success. It also involves a lot of manual work, so there is a high chance of failure.

To automate the conversion process, a specialized...