KVM is a full virtualization solution for the x86_64 and the System z architectures supporting hardware virtualization.

VM Guests (virtual machines), virtual storage, and virtual networks can be managed with QEMU tools directly, or with the libvirt-based stack. The QEMU tools include qemu-system-ARCH, the QEMU monitor, qemu-img, and qemu-ndb. A libvirt-based stack includes libvirt itself, along with libvirt-based applications such as virsh, virt-manager, virt-install, and virt-viewer.

This full virtualization solution consists of two main components: a set of Kernel modules (kvm.ko, kvm-intel.ko, and kvm-amd.ko) providing the core virtualization infrastructure and processor-specific drivers, and a userspace program (qemu-system-ARCH) that provides emulation for virtual devices and control mechanisms to manage VM Guests (virtual machines). The term KVM more properly refers to the Kernel level virtualization functionality, but is in practice more commonly used to reference the userspace component.

Figure 3.1: KVM Virtualization Architecture #

Note: Hyper-v emulation support

QEMU is able to provide certain Hyper-V hypercalls for Windows* guests to partly emulate a Hyper-V environment. This can be used to achieve better behavior for Windows* guests which are Hyper-V enabled.