In our the previous post we seen how to install KVM hypervisor on Ubuntu/Debian machines. In this post we will see how to install KVM hypervisor in Redhat/Fedora/CentOS based Linux OS and use it to the maximum with commands as well as GUI tools. Till this point we seen some basics KVM stuff such as.

Let us start with KVM hypervisor in Redhat/Fedora/CentOS Linux operating system.

Step1: Before installing KVM(Kernel Virtual machine) hypervisor we have check if our hardware support or not. Click here to know if your hardware support KVM or not.

Step2: If the hardware supports, install KVM virtualization with following command as a normal user.

sudo yum install qemu-kvm virt-install virt-manager libvirt*

What actually the above packages do?

virt-manager: Virtual Machine Manager provides a graphical tool for administering virtual machines for KVM, Xen, and QEmu. Start, stop, add or remove virtual devices, connect to a graphical or serial console, and see resource usage statistics for existing VMs on local or remote machines. Uses libvirt as the back-end management API. We can use this virt-manager to connect to remote KVM Hypervisors too. This is similar to VMware vCenter server where we can manage multiple VMware ESXi/ESX servers from single point. We can even clone/migrate from one hypervisor to other without much issues.

qemu-kvm: Core KVM package for managing VM’s through /dev/kvm file for interacting with direct hardware. This package contains KVM, libvirt-bin etc.

libvirt*: This proves us useful command line tool called virsh which is text-based tool to manage virtual machines.

Step3: Check if libvirtd service is started or not.

ps -ef | grep libvirtd

Step4(optional step): If libvirtd service is not at started use below command -d option so that it will start as daemon.

sudo service libvirtd start

sudo chkconfig libvirtd on

Step5: Once the service is started we can run virt-manager command to start virtual machine manager as a normal user. It will ask for root password, provide it.

virt-manager

virtual-machine-manager-auth

 

virtual-machine-connection

Once if you see virtual machine manager without any error that shows KVM hypervisor installed successfully. Please stay tuned to our next post on how to install VM’s on the KVM hypervisor.

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Surendra Anne

Mr Surendra Anne is from Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India. He is a Linux/Open source supporter who believes in Hard work, A down to earth person, Likes to share knowledge with others, Loves dogs, Likes photography. He works as Devops Engineer with Taggle systems, an IOT automatic water metering company, Sydney . You can contact him at surendra (@) linuxnix dot com.