Part II Managing Virtual Machines with libvirt

libvirt is a library that provides a common API for managing popular virtualization solutions, among them KVM, LXC, and Xen. The library provides a normalized management API for these virtualization solutions, allowing a stable, cross-hypervisor interface for higher-level management tools. The libra…

A VM Guest is comprised of an image containing an operating system and data files and a configuration file describing the VM Guest's virtual hardware resources. VM Guests are hosted on and controlled by the VM Host Server. This section provides generalized instructions for installing a VM Guest.

Most management tasks, such as starting or stopping a VM Guest, can either be done using the graphical application Virtual Machine Manager or on the command line using virsh. Connecting to the graphical console via VNC is only possible from a graphical user interface.

Having to manage several VM Host Servers, each hosting a couple of VM Guests, quickly becomes difficult to handle. One of the major benefits of libvirt is the ability to connect to several VM Host Servers at once, providing a single interface to manage all VM Guests and to connect to their graphical…

When managing a VM Guest on the VM Host Server itself, it is possible to access the complete file system of the VM Host Server in order to attach or create virtual hard disks or to attach existing images to the VM Guest. However, this is not possible when managing VM Guests from a remote host. For t…

Virtual Machine Manager's Details view offers in-depth information about the VM Guest's complete configuration and hardware equipment. Using this view, you can also change the guest configuration or add and modify virtual hardware. To access this view, open the guest's console in Virtual Machine Manager and either choose View › Details from the menu, or click the bulb icon in the toolbar.