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

Automated virtual machine deployment


Virtual machine creation and guest operating system installation are two different tasks. Creating a VM is like provisioning new PC hardware, but you need to install the OS separately

As you have seen with virt-manager or virt-install, a VM is first configured with the desired hardware resources, then you use one of the support installation methods to install the OS. Installing the actual operating system (also known as the Guest in virtualization terminology) is done in exactly same manner as on a physical system; the operating system's installer asks for configuration details and configures the system accordingly.

What if both of these tasks are combined and a virtual machine is created (along with a full operating system installation) in one go? It would clearly help to deploy the virtual machines much more rapidly and in a more automated way.

Tools such as virt-builder and oz can be used to combine these two tasks and accelerate the installation of new...