Getting acquainted with libvirt

Libvirt is a set of API libraries that sits in between the end user and the hypervisor. The hypervisor can be built using any virtualization technology that libvirt supports. At the time of writing, libvirt supports the following hypervisors:

• The KVM/QEMU Linux hypervisor
• The Xen hypervisor on Linux and Solaris hosts
• The LXC Linux container system
• The OpenVZ Linux container system
• The User Mode Linux paravirtualized kernel
• The VirtualBox hypervisor
• The VMware ESX and GSX hypervisors
• The VMware Workstation and Player hypervisors
• The Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor
• The IBM PowerVM hypervisor
• The Parallels hypervisor
• The Bhyve hypervisor

libvirt acts as a transparent layer that takes commands from users, modifies them based on the underlying virtualization technology, and then executes them on the hypervisor. This means that if you know how to use libvirt-based management tools, you should be able to manage the preceding set of hypervisors without knowing them individually...