[ale] Debian virtualization suggestions

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Mon, 8 Jun 2009 09:07:26 -0400
Andrew Grieser <agrieser at gmail.com> wrote:

> So how does KVM compare to Xen in terms of management and
> installation? For running Debian on Debian, which would be
> recommended?

KVM is part of the upstream mainline kernel sources.  On Debian/Ubuntu
systems, you can either install the module and front-end:

 $ sudo apt-get install kvm qemu

Or you can of course just build a newer, up-to-date kernel and ensure
that you enable KVM functionality in it.  There is no configuration
(unless you use something like the Virtual Machine Manager, which is in
Ubuntu and at least a few other distributions), because when you start
a KVM instance all the configuration is on the command line; that
means, of course, that you can just use shell scripts to start up any
VMs that you want.  If you use VMM, you gain the ability to start VMs
at boot time and what not, as well, without hooking into the host's
boot process yourself.

KVM is simple, it requires hardware support for virtualization from the
CPU, and it runs systems very well.  Because the hardware emulation
comes from the well-established QEMU program, it's pretty solid, too.
I've been very happy with it; I use KVM so that I don't have to run a
multi-boot system, I have KVM setup to use various logical volumes
(provided by LVM2) as virtual hard drives, which I used to keep a
snapshot handy of some of the more vulnerable operating systems I may
need to run under it...

	--- Mike

-- 
It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree
of precision which the nature of the subject admits, and not to seek
exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible.
                            --- Aristotle
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