27. Creating KVM Virtual Machines with virt-install and virsh
In the previous chapter we explored the creation of KVM guest operating systems on an Ubuntu host using Cockpit and the virt-manager graphical tool. In this chapter we will turn our attention to the creation of KVM-based virtual machines using the virt-install and virsh command-line tools. These tools provide all the capabilities of the virt-manager and Cockpit options with the added advantage that they can be used within scripts to automate virtual machine creation. In addition, the virsh command allows virtual machines to be created based on a specification contained within a configuration file.
The virt-install tool is supplied to allow new virtual machines to be created by providing a list of command-line options. This chapter assumes that the necessary KVM tools are installed. For details on these requirements read the chapter entitled “Installing KVM Virtualization on Ubuntu”.
