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

Working with templates


In this section, you will learn how to create templates of Windows and Linux virtual machines using the virt-clone option available in virt-manager. Although the virt-clone utility was not originally intended for creating templates, when used with virt-sysprep and other operating system sealing utilities it serves that purpose. Be aware that a clone is just a single copy of a virtual machine, whereas a template is a master copy of the virtual machine that can be used to create many clones.

You will also learn how to create and manage templates with the help of the virsh and qemu-img commands and deploy virtual machines from a template using the thin and clone methods:

  • Thin method: A virtual machine deployed using the thin cloning mechanism uses the template image as a base image in read-only mode and links an additional "copy on write image" to store newly generated data. It requires less disk space but cannot run without access to the base template image.

  • Clone method...