Kernel-based Virtual Machine

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KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware that supports x86 virtualization. It consists of a loadable kernel module (named kvm.ko) and a userspace component, both open source software. The kernel component of KVM is included in mainline Linux since version 2.6.20.

KVM allows one to run virtual machines using unmodified disk images containing operating systems. Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware: a network card, disk, graphics adapter, etc.

KVM was created, and is maintained, by Qumranet, a technology start up.

1 Requirements
2 Current development
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Requirements

KVM requires an x86 processor with Virtualization Technology support. It can run Linux guests (32-bit and 64-bit) and Windows guests (32-bit).^[1]

[edit] Current development

KVM uses a modified QEMU program as a front-end. Work is being made to utilize more of the virtualization technology available in the latest Intel and AMD CPUs. It has been benchmarked against Xen (using hardware virtualization and not paravirtualization) and, on some workloads, has been proven to be a faster solution.^[2]