Chapter 3. Setting Up Standalone KVM Virtualization

In the second chapter, you learned about KVM internals; now in this chapter, you will learn about how to set up your Linux server as a virtualization host. We are talking about using KVM for virtualization and libvirt as the virtualization management engine.

KVM enables virtualization and readies your server or workstation to host the virtual machines. In technical terms, KVM is a set of kernel modules for an x86 architecture hardware with virtualization extensions; when loaded, it converts a Linux server into a virtualization server (hypervisor). The loadable modules are kvm.ko, which provides the core virtualization capabilities and a processor-specific module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko.

Note

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor. A hypervisor or virtual machine monitor (VMM) is a piece of computer software, firmware, or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines.

It is not enough to just load the KVM kernel...