Openvirt

• Intro
• Components
• Control Panel
• Storage
• Release
• Further Info
• Videos

Platform Components
	Base Operating System
	KVM Hypervisor & QEMU-KVM
	Libvirt
	Control Panel

Base Operating System

Ubuntu Server is the base operating system we use for Openvirt. Ubuntu Server is a high quality Linux distribution with regular updates provided by Canonical. It can be installed to hard disks, RAID arrays or to embedded flash devices.

We have chosen Ubuntu for it's stability, performance and support. Almost every storage technology available can be connected to the system to provide back-end storage for the guest operating systems. Network technologies including Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet and InfiniBand enjoy very strong support.

The flexibility of the system allows completely bespoke solutions to be built.

KVM Hypervisor & QEMU-KVM

Embedded into the Linux kernel, the KVM hypervisor provides a full virtualization solution for a large range of guest operating systems.

Controlled by Red Hat, the project enjoys contributions from AMD, IBM, Intel, Novell, Canonical (Ubuntu) and Red Hat themselves. KVM is at the core of Red Hat's virtualization strategy.

KVM is currently the only hypervisor that allows live migration of a guest system between hosts where the CPUs of the hosts are completely different. For example, live migration between an AMD Opteron host and an Intel Xeon host is a standard feature.

With the hypervisor providing CPU and memory resources to the guest systems, QEMU-KVM provides the rest of the virtual machine. This includes a BIOS to start the virtual machine, graphics adapter, disk controller, network adapters, keyboard, mouse and USB.

QEMU-KVM in action on a virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 R2. In this example, emulated devices include: 64-bit ACPI system ATA hard disks VGA graphics adapter Intel 82371SB (PIIX3) disk controller Intel PRO/1000 MT network adapter Intel 82371SB (PIIX3) USB controller QEMU-KVM will emulate all devices necessary to run an unmodified operating system on a virtual machine.

Libvirt

An API to interact with the virtualization capabilities of the host system. Libvirt provides remote encrypted management of virtual machines, virtual networks and back-end storage. The client API supports Linux, Windows and Solaris.

In a nutshell, Libvirt allows you to connect your choice of management software into the virtualization infrastructure.

Virt Manager connecting to 3 host systems.	Virt Manager inspecting the performance of a virtual machine.
An example of a client application that interfaces to Libvirt. The Virtual Machine Manager from Red Hat is connecting to 3 host systems. The connection is secure and encrypted. On the left is the 3 physical hosts and the virtual machines on those hosts. On the right the performance of a virtual machine is being inspected. Click to enlarge.

Control Panel

A secure web based control panel is used to manage the virtualization infrastructure.

In the control panel you can:

• Start, stop, pause and resume the virtual machines
• Migrate virtual machines between hosts
• Create new virtual machines and modify existing ones
• Clone virtual machines using templates
• Run a Java console to the virtual machines
• Get a Global View across your whole cluster
• Manage the physical hosts in the cluster
• Manage disk images used for the virtual machines storage
• Monitor system performance
• Setup networking
• Manage iSCSI connections
• Plus many more features

More details on the Control Panel.