Questions tagged [kvm-virtualization]
KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko. KVM also requires a modified QEMU although work is underway to get the required changes upstream.
2,019
questions
146
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Difference between KVM and QEMU
I have been reading about KVM and Qemu for sometime. As of now I have a clear understanding of what they do.
KVM supports hardware virtualization to provide near native performance to the Guest ...
101
votes
12answers
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How do you increase a KVM guest's disk space?
I setup an Ubuntu guest on a CentOS KVM host with initially 6GB of disk space. How do I go about increasing the Ubuntu guest's disk space from the command line?
EDIT #1: I'm using a disk image file (...
53
votes
2answers
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Difference between Xen PV, Xen KVM and HVM?
I know that Xen is usually better than OpenVZ as the provider cannot oversell in Xen.
However, what is the difference between Xen PV, Xen KVM and HVM (I was going through this provider's specs? Which ...
41
votes
7answers
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Replace VMware vSphere infrastructure with open source alternatives?
We are planning a slow migration from VMware (and third party apps) to open source alternatives (free would be great).
Basically, we want to start with some little cluster lab, then migrate the ...
38
votes
5answers
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Correct way to move kvm vm
I'm wondering what is the correct way of moving a VM between two KVM hosts without using any kind of shared storage
Would copying the disk files and the XML dump from the source KVM machine to the ...
37
votes
7answers
63k views
Xen vs. KVM in performance
What is faster on the same hardware, Xen or KVM?
I'm trying to pick-up a virtualization technology to work, which gives the best performance.
There are some benchmarks here that I found on the ...
34
votes
5answers
66k views
Forwarding ports to guests in libvirt / KVM
How can I forward ports on a server running libvirt/KVM to specified ports on VM's, when using NAT?
For example, the host has a public IP of 1.2.3.4. I want to forward port 80 to 10.0.0.1 and port 22 ...
32
votes
3answers
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KVM/libvirt: How to configure static guest IP addresses on the virtualisation host
What I'd like to do is to set the guests' network configuration (IP address, subnet, gateway, broadcast address) from the host system. The used network setup is in bridge mode. How can I configure the ...
28
votes
6answers
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KVM Guest installed from console. But how to get to the guest's console?
I'm trying to install a fully virtualized guest (Fedora 14 x86_64) on KVM (RHEL 6), using command-line only (both hypervisor and guest). It goes without errors, and without a tangible result . I'd ...
28
votes
7answers
95k views
Is there a way to run virt-manager on Windows?
We've been using KVM for almost a year strictly on CentOS 5.x as the KVM host, with Fedora and Ubuntu workstations accessing the KVM host and its guests using virt-manager, virt-viewer, and ssh.
Is ...
27
votes
3answers
24k views
Windows 7 Setup hangs at “Starting Windows” using Proxmox 4.2
I am trying to install Windows 7 on Proxmox Virtual Environment version 4.2-4/2660193c, running on Debian Jessie. I have followed the instructions on this site.
I uploaded a known-good Win7 ISO (that ...
27
votes
6answers
61k views
Incredibly low KVM disk performance (qcow2 disk files + virtio)
I'm having some serious disk performance problems while setting up a KVM guest. Using a simple dd test, the partition on the host that the qcow2 images reside on (a mirrored RAID array) writes at ...
25
votes
5answers
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how to rename a VM using libvirt+KVM
How can I rename a VM on KVM+libvirt?
I would like it to change the name in the 'inventory' as well as change the name of the storage etc.
25
votes
2answers
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Which is better image format, raw or qcow2, to use as a baseimage for other VMs?
I am using a baseimage and based on that creating many VMs. And now I want to know which is better, qcow2 or raw to use for a baseimage. Moreover, can you please tell me if there is any advantage of ...
24
votes
1answer
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KVM and Libvirt - How do I hotplug a new virtio disk?
I am trying to hot-add a file-based disk to a running KVM virtual server. I've created a new disk from scratch using the command
dd of=/home/cloud/vps_59/test.img bs=1 seek=5G count=0
and I was ...
23
votes
3answers
36k views
free up not used space on a qcow2-image-file on kvm/qemu
we are using kvm/qemu with qcow2-images for our virtual machines.
qcow2 has this nice feature where the image file only allocates the actually needed space by the virtual-machine. but how do i shrink ...
23
votes
9answers
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How do you synchronise huge sparse files (VM disk images) between machines?
Is there a command, such as rsync, which can synchronise huge, sparse, files from one linux server to another?
It is very important that the destination file remains sparse. It may be longer (but ...
22
votes
5answers
78k views
How to connect a cdrom device to a kvm/qemu domain (using command-line tools)?
I have set up a virtual machine running Windows XP on my Ubuntu laptop. Using the virt-manager GUI application, I can insert a CD in my drive and go to Details→IDE CDROM 1 and click on the Connect ...
22
votes
4answers
29k views
KVM/qemu - use LVM volumes directly without image file?
I'm not quite sure how to phrase this question (hence the poor title), so let me provide an example of what I'm trying to do.
On my (old) Xen host, I'm able to present LVM filesystems directly to ...
21
votes
2answers
3k views
Very strange file size (more than 600 PB) on a small filesystem
I had a file on an XFS filesystem which size was about 200 GB. It was a QCOW2 image containing a virtual disk of a KVM-driven virtual machine. Something went wrong (maybe it was some glitch of qemu-...
21
votes
5answers
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KVM: Which CPU features make VMs run better?
We are using Ubuntu 12.04 with the following parameters:
Dell R910
Kernel 3.2.0-25-generic #40-Ubuntu SMP x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
kvm 1:84+dfsg-0ubuntu16+1.0+noroms+0ubuntu13
qemu-kvm 1.0+...
19
votes
2answers
9k views
Converting Windows 2012 R2 from Hyper-V to KVM (qemu)
I have a Windows Server 2012 R2 running SharePoint 2013 which I am trying to migrate from Hyper-V to KVM (qemu). I have converted the vhdx file to qcow2 format
and copied it across to the KVM server (...
19
votes
1answer
57k views
how to delete a guest after creating it with virt-install
I created a KVM guest from the command line with virt-install where I used the command line options --disk pool=vg0,size=20 and --name virt1.example.com.
How can I delete this KVM guest from the ...
18
votes
5answers
15k views
How to keep time on resumed KVM guest with libvirt?
On my host I am using libvirt and a KVM guest. When the host is shutting down, libvirt suspends the guest. When the host is starting up, libvirt resumes the guest. The problem is, if the guest is ...
17
votes
2answers
5k views
understanding relationship between Qemu and KVM
What is the difference between KVM and Qemu? As I understand, latter is able to provide "user mode emulation" which means that one can run a single executable built for some other architecture like ...
17
votes
2answers
12k views
Is KVM a type 1 or type 2 hypervisor? [closed]
Is KVM a type 1 or a type 2 hypervisor?
I understand that type 1 hypervisors run on bare metal while type 2 hypervisors are applications running on top of an operating system (such as VMware ...
16
votes
4answers
22k views
Can KVM suspend or shutdown guests automatically on host shutdown?
We have a CentOS 5.5 KVM host, running guests with various versions of CentOS and possibly other OSes later.
We'd like to be able to either (a) automatically send an ACPI shutdown to all guests or (b)...
15
votes
5answers
22k views
Is online disk resize possible with KVM?
We're evaluting KVM for Linux virtualization on a few projects. All is going well so far. But one of our requirements is the ability to add disk space to a running guest without rebooting or taking it ...
15
votes
3answers
22k views
Hyper Threading and Virtual Machines?
I already looked at this thread: Hyper-V and Hyper-threading: On or off?, but the only answer is Windows specific....
I am building a VM server (using Proxmox VE if that makes a difference) and was ...
15
votes
15answers
42k views
Web based KVM management for Ubuntu
We've got a single Ubuntu 9.10 root server on which we want to run multiple KVM virtual machines. To administer these virtual machines I'd like a web based KVM management tool, but I don't know which ...
15
votes
2answers
41k views
Strongswan vpn tunnel connected but the traffic is not routed through it
I have just set up a vpn tunnel site-to-site with strongswan (4.5). The tunnel looks fine and connected to the other side, but seems there is a problem routing traffic through the tunnel.
Any idea?
...
15
votes
7answers
4k views
recommendations for efficient offsite remote backup solution of vm's
I am looking for recommendations for backing up my current 6 vm's(and soon to grow to up to 20). Currently I am running a two node proxmox cluster(which is a debian base using kvm for virtualization ...
14
votes
4answers
7k views
Improving IO with FlashCache
I have a server with 2 HDD's (2x 1 TB), running in RAID 1 (SW-RAID). I want to improve IO performance by using flashcache. There are running KVM virtual machines on it, using LVM.
Regarding this, I ...
14
votes
7answers
7k views
Tough Choice: Xen or KVM
I'm building a fresh workstation and want to use Linux alongside Windows. This seems like a good opportunity to get acquainted with with either Xen or KVM.
So I face a choice. In favour of using ...
14
votes
4answers
13k views
Port Forwarding from Host to Guest with libvirt 0.8.3 Using KVM on Ubuntu
The host has a single external IP available, so I set my KVM guests up with NAT.
How do I set up a port forwarding to forward some of the requests from the outside to the guests?
I couldn't find ...
14
votes
1answer
5k views
KVM guest cannot write to 9p share owned by non-root
I am aiming to set up full write access to a 9p share for a KVM guest. Both host and guest have the same users/groups with the same IDs. Both host and guest should be able to write to the share using ...
13
votes
8answers
3k views
Free hypervisor for small configuration
I'm building a server for virtualization for a non profit organization. I was planning on employing VMware ESXI free but I'm second guessing my plan because newer ESXI don't seem to be well supported ...
13
votes
4answers
46k views
Change amount of Ram and CPU cores in KVM
How can I Change amount of Ram and CPU cores for a virtual machine in KVM that is already created?
Thanks
13
votes
1answer
40k views
KVM guest io is much slower than host io: is that normal?
I have a Qemu-KVM host system setup on CentOS 6.3. Four 1TB SATA HDDs working in Software RAID10. Guest CentOS 6.3 is installed on separate LVM. People say that they see guest performance almost equal ...
13
votes
5answers
5k views
Considerations when chosing AMD processors over Intel
I work for a company with a lot of legacy LAMP web-applications, where we are trying to refresh our hardware from ~250 physical servers to ~40 new servers w/virtualization. We have received two ...
13
votes
4answers
36k views
How do I enable KVM device passthrough in Linux?
I have an MSI-GD65 Gaming motherboard and an Intel i7 4790. VT-D is enabled in the CPU Features section of the bios.
I'm running Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS and when I try and detach a device, I get the ...
13
votes
4answers
15k views
Backing up qcow2 kvm guests
I can't find any good info on backing up qcow2 kvm guests. I'm not really interested in the guests running state, only the file system. This question suggests using savevm but that creates a snapshot ...
12
votes
5answers
23k views
Why does my Windows 7 VM running under Linux' KVM not use all the virtual processors?
All
I've had a problem on my server since I migrated one of my VM's from Windows 2008 Server to Windows 7 (ultimate): though I've assigned four cores to the VM and it even seems to see them, it seems ...
12
votes
3answers
22k views
How to change the default Storage Pool from libvirt?
I'm trying to use a different Storage Pool on KVM in order to store the virtual disks of my VMs and also the ISOs from the operating systems which I'm using.
For example: I want to use the directory /...
12
votes
5answers
8k views
Solidworks: activation license mode is not supported in this virtual environment (Qemu-KVM)
The question is not around Solidworks actually, so please continue to read.
The whole idea of virtualization is to be hardware independent. Before our eyes a whole new dependency level is being ...
12
votes
2answers
24k views
Is there any way to shrink qcow2 image without converting it raw?
Is there any way to shrink qcow2 image without converting it raw?
I cannot convert it to raw because I don't have disk space enough for raw image.
12
votes
3answers
14k views
Snapshot/rollback for libvirt+KVM?
I've recently begun using KVM for my development/test environment on a Linux host system with 8G memory. Prior, I was using VMware Fusion for my virtual environment, but my Macbook only has 2G memory. ...
12
votes
1answer
1k views
KVM Host with 88 physical cores uses only 14 on 64 core Guest
I do have a server with 2 CPUs (22 Cores each plus HT). I created a KVM Guest with 64 allocated cores. When I run a compilation task the virtual machine shows all 64 cores at 100% (at moderate Disk I/...
12
votes
5answers
27k views
Why is idle windows VM using so much CPU?
I have 2 VMs running as guests on a KVM virtualization platform running on Ubuntu 10.04. One VM is an Ubuntu 10.04 system, the other is a Windows 7 system. When both machines are completely logged ...
12
votes
3answers
8k views
LVM volume group shared between KVM/libvirt host and guests: is this a bad idea?
I have just built a shiny new KVM/libvirt-based virtual machine host, containing 4 SATA II hard drives, and running CentOS 5.5 x86_64.
I have decided to create virtual machine disks as logical ...
