Virtualization Getting Started Guide Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Dayle Parker

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Virtualization Getting Started Guide

An introduction to virtualization concepts

Dayle Parker
Scott Radvan

Laura Novich

Jacquelynn East

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization Getting Started Guide

An introduction to virtualization concepts
Dayle Parker
Red Hat Engineering Co ntent Services
dayleparker@redhat.co m
Laura No vich
Red Hat Engineering Co ntent Services
lno vich@redhat.co m
Jacquelynn East
Red Hat Engineering Co ntent Services
jeast@redhat.co m
Sco tt Radvan
Red Hat Engineering Co ntent Services
sradvan@redhat.co m

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Abstract
The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Virtualizatio n Getting Started Guide describes the basics o f
virtualizatio n and the virtualizatio n pro ducts and techno lo gies that are available with Red Hat
Enterprise Linux.

T able of Cont ent s

T able of Contents
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⁠1.1. Who s ho uld read this g uid e?
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⁠1.2. Virtualiz atio n in Red Hat Enterp ris e Linux 6
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⁠1.3. Red Hat Enterp ris e Virtualiz atio n (RHEV)
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⁠1.4. Do c umentatio n s uite
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. . . . . . . . . .
⁠2 .1. What is virtualiz atio n?
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⁠2 .2. Mig ratio n
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⁠2 .2.1. Benefits o f mig rating virtual mac hines
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⁠2 .3. Virtualiz ed to virtualiz ed mig ratio n (V2V)
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⁠3 .1. Virtualiz atio n c o s ts
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⁠3 .2. Virtualiz atio n learning c urve
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⁠3 .3. Perfo rmanc e
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⁠3 .4. Dis as ter rec o very
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⁠3 .5. Sec urity
⁠ .5.1. Virtualiz atio n s ec urity features
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⁠3 .6 . Virtualiz atio n fo r s ervers and ind ivid uals
⁠3 .6 .1. Virtualiz atio n d ep lo yment s c enario s

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⁠4 .1. KVM and virtualiz atio n in Red Hat Enterp ris e Linux
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⁠4 .2. lib virt and lib virt to o ls
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⁠4 .3. Virtualiz ed hard ware d evic es
⁠4 .3.1. Virtualiz ed and emulated d evic es
⁠4 .3.2. Para-virtualiz ed d evic es
⁠4 .3.3. Phys ic al ho s t d evic es
⁠4 .4. G ues t CPU mo d els
⁠4 .5. Sto rag e

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⁠4 .5.1. Sto rag e p o o ls
⁠4 .5.2. Sto rag e vo lumes

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⁠4 .5.3. Emulated s to rag e d evic es
⁠4 .5.4. Ho s t s to rag e

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⁠5 .1. virs h
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⁠5 .2. virt-manag er
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⁠5 .3. virt-ins tall
⁠5 .4. g ues tfis h
⁠5 .5. O ther us eful to o ls

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. .ppendix
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Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

Chapter 1. Introduction
The Virtualization Getting Started Guide introduces the basics of virtualization and assists with the
navigation of other virtualization documentation and products that Red Hat provides.
This guide also explains the advantages of virtualization and dispels some common myths that exist
regarding virtualization.

1.1. Who should read t his guide?
This guide is designed for anyone wishing to understand the basics of virtualization, but may be of
particular interest to:
Those who are new to virtualization and seeking knowledge about the benefits offered.
Those considering deployment of virtualized machines in their environment.
Those looking for an overview of the virtualization technologies that Red Hat produces and
supports.

1.2. Virt ualiz at ion in Red Hat Ent erprise Linux 6
Red Hat Enterprise Linux contains packages and tools to support a variety of virtualized
environments.
Virtualization in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is carried out by KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine).
KVM is a full virtualization solution built into Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Refer to Chapter 4, Introduction to Red Hat virtualization products for more about the virtualization
products available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

1.3. Red Hat Ent erprise Virt ualiz at ion (RHEV)
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) is a complete enterprise virtualization management solution
for server and desktop virtualization, based on Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) technology.
D esigned for enterprise-class scalability and performance, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization enables
management of your entire virtual infrastructure, including hosts, virtual machines, networks,
storage, and users from a centralized graphical interface.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization includes the RHEV Manager infrastructure management system and
the RHEV Hypervisor, which supports a wide range of Windows and Linux server and desktop
operating systems — all while delivering reliability, stability, and the lowest total cost of ownership in
its class.
D ownload a fully supported 60-day evaluation version of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization from
http://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/virtualization/enterprise-virtualization.

1.4 . Document at ion suit e
Red Hat offers a wealth of documentation solutions across its various virtualization products.
Coverage of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its inbuilt virtualization products includes:

⁠Chapt er 1 . Int roduct ion

Red Hat Enterprise Linux — Virtualization Getting Started Guide: This guide provides an introduction
to virtualization concepts, advantages, and tools, and an overview of Red Hat virtualization
documentation and products.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux — Virtualization Host Configuration and Guest Installation Guide: This guide
covers the installation of virtualization software and configuration of guest machines on a
virtualization host.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux — Virtualization Administration Guide: This guide covers administration of
hosts, networking, storage, and device and guest management using either virt-manager or virsh
as primary configuration tools. This guide also includes a libvirt and QEMU reference, as well as
troubleshooting information.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux — Virtualization Security Guide: This guide provides an overview of
virtualization security technologies provided by Red Hat. Also included are recommendations for
securing hosts, guests, and shared infrastructure and resources in virtualized environments.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux — Virtualization Tuning and Optimization Guide: This guide provides tips,
tricks and suggestions for making full use of virtualization performance features and options for
your systems and guest virtual machines.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux — V2V Guide: This guide describes importing virtual machines from KVM,
Xen and VMware ESX/ESX(i) hypervisors to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and KVM managed
by libvirt.
The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization documentation suite provides information on installation,
development of applications, configuration and usage of the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization
platform and its related products.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization — Installation Guide: This guide describes how to prepare for and set
up a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization environment, and how to upgrade a Red Hat Enterprise
Virtualization environment to the latest release. It also outlines how to set up hypervisors and
perform initial configuration of a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization environment.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization — Administration Guide: This guide describes how to configure and
administer a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization environment after that environment has been set up
for the first time, including how to add hypervisors, storage domains, and external providers to the
environment, how to manage resources such as virtual machines, virtual disks, and templates,
and how to take and restore backups.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization — User Guide: This guide describes how to use the User Portal of a
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization environment, including the functionality provided by the Basic
and Extended tabs, how to create and work with virtual machines and templates, and how to
monitor resource usage.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization — Technical Guide: This guide describes how to use the REST API,
the Python and Java software development kits, and command-line tools specific to Red Hat
Enterprise Virtualization. It also outlines the underlying technical concepts behind Red Hat
Enterprise Virtualization.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization — Manager Release Notes: This guide contains information on the
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager specific to the current release.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization — Technical Notes: This guide describes the changes that have
been made between the current release and the previous release.

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

Note
All of the guides for these products are available at the Red Hat Customer Portal:
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/

⁠Chapt er 2 . What is virt ualiz at ion and migrat ion?

Chapter 2. What is virtualization and migration?
This chapter discusses terms related to virtualization and migration.

2.1. What is virt ualiz at ion?
Virtualization is a broad computing term used for running software, usually multiple operating
systems, concurrently and in isolation from other programs on a single system. Most existing
implementations of virtualization use a hypervisor, a software layer or subsystem that controls
hardware and provides guest operating systems with access to underlying hardware. The hypervisor
allows multiple operating systems, called guests, to run on the same physical system by offering
virtualized hardware to the guest operating system. There are various methods for virtualizing
operating systems:
Fu ll virt u aliz at io n
Full virtualization uses the hardware features of the processor to provide guests with total
abstraction of the underlying physical system. This creates a new virtual system, called a
virtual machine, that allows guest operating systems to run without modifications. The guest
operating system and any applications on the guest virtual machine are unaware of their
virtualized environment and run normally. Hardware-assisted virtualization is the technique
used for full virtualization with KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) in Red Hat Enterprise
Linux.
Para- virt u aliz at io n
Para-virtualization employs a collection of software and data structures that are presented
to the virtualized guest, requiring software modifications in the guest to use the paravirtualized environment. Para-virtualization can encompass the entire kernel, as is the case
for Xen para-virtualized guests, or drivers that virtualize I/O devices.
So f t ware virt u aliz at io n ( o r emu lat io n )
Software virtualization uses slower binary translation and other emulation techniques to
run unmodified operating systems. Software virtualization is unsupported by Red Hat
Enterprise Linux.

Note
For more information and detailed instructions on guest installation, refer to the Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization Host Configuration and Guest Installation Guide.

2.2. Migrat ion
Migration describes the process of moving a guest virtual machine from one host to another. This is
possible because the virtual machines are running in a virtualized environment instead of directly on
the hardware. There are two ways to migrate a virtual machine: live and offline.
Mig rat io n T yp es
O f f lin e mig rat io n

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

An offline migration suspends the guest virtual machine, and then moves an image of the
virtual machine's memory to the destination host. The virtual machine is then resumed on
the destination host and the memory used by the virtual machine on the source host is
freed.
Live mig rat io n
Live migration is the process of migrating an active virtual machine from one physical host
to another.

2.2.1. Benefit s of migrat ing virt ual machines
Migration is useful for:
Lo ad b alan cin g
When a host machine is overloaded, one or many of its virtual machines could be migrated
to other hosts using live migration.
U p g rad in g o r makin g ch an g es t o t h e h o st
When the need arises to upgrade, add, or remove hardware devices on one host, virtual
machines can be safely relocated to other hosts. This means that guests do not experience
any downtime due to changes that are made to any of the hosts.
En erg y savin g
Virtual machines can be redistributed to other hosts and the unloaded host systems can be
powered off to save energy and cut costs in low usage periods.
G eo g rap h ic mig rat io n
Virtual machines can be moved to another physical location for lower latency or for other
special circumstances.
It is important to understand that the migration process moves the virtual machine's memory, and
from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3, the disk volume associated with the virtual machine is also
migrated. This process is done using live block migration.
Shared, networked storage can be used to store guest images to be migrated. When migrating virtual
machines, it is recommended to use lib virt -managed storage pools for shared storage.

Note
For more information on migration, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization
Administration Guide.

2.3. Virt ualiz ed t o virt ualiz ed migrat ion (V2V)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 provides tools for converting virtual machines from other types of
hypervisors to KVM. The vi rt-v2v tool converts and imports virtual machines from Xen, other
versions of KVM, VMware ESX, and Hyper-V.
From Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5, the vi rt-v2v tool converts and imports virtual machines with
virtual disk image formats including VHD X, VMD K, OVF, raw, and qcow2.

⁠Chapt er 2 . What is virt ualiz at ion and migrat ion?

Note
For more information on V2V, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 V2V Guide.

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

Chapter 3. Advantages and misconceptions of virtualization
There are many advantages to virtualization and perhaps an equal amount of misconceptions
surrounding it. This chapter explores these points.

3.1. Virt ualiz at ion cost s
A common misconception is that virtualization is too expensive to justify the change. Virtualization
can be expensive to introduce but often it saves money in the long term. It is important to perform a
Return on Investment (ROI) analysis to determine the best use of virtualization in your environment.
Consider the following benefits:
Less p o wer
Using virtualization negates much of the need for multiple physical platforms. This equates
to less power being drawn for machine operation and cooling, resulting in reduced energy
costs. The initial cost of purchasing multiple physical platforms, combined with the
machines' power consumption and required cooling, is drastically cut by using
virtualization.
Less main t en an ce
Provided adequate planning is performed before migrating physical systems to virtualized
ones, less time is spent maintaining them. This means less money being spent on parts and
labor.
Ext en d ed lif e f o r in st alled so f t ware
Older versions of software may not run on newer, bare metal machines directly. However, by
running the older software virtually on a larger, faster system, the life of the software may be
extended while taking advantage of the performance from the newer system.
Pred ict ab le co st s
A Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription provides support for virtualization at a fixed rate,
making it easy to predict costs.
Less sp ace
Consolidating servers onto fewer machines means less physical space is required. This
means the space normally occupied by server hardware can be used for other purposes.

3.2. Virt ualiz at ion learning curve
A misconception exists that virtualization is difficult to learn. In truth, virtualization is no more difficult
or easy to learn than any new process. The skills required for managing and supporting a physical
environment are easily transferable to a virtual one. Virtual environments function similarly to their
physical counterparts, ensuring the learning curve remains a slight one.

3.3. Performance
On older virtualization versions that supported only a single CPU, virtual machines experienced
noticeable performance limitations. This created a long-lasting misconception that virtualization
solutions are slow.

⁠Chapt er 3. Advant ages and misconcept ions of virt ualiz at ion

This is no longer the case; modern virtualization technology has greatly improved the speed of
virtual machines. Benchmarks show that virtual machines can run typical server applications nearly
as efficiently as bare metal systems:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 and KVM recorded an industry-leading TPC-C benchmark with an
IBM D B2 database running in an entirely virtualized x86 environment and delivering 88% of bare
metal performance. D ue to resource demands, databases have previously been reserved for baremetal deployments only, and represent one of the last strongholds within a datacenter to be
virtualized.
The industry standard SAP Sales and D istribution (SD ) Standard Application Benchmark found
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 and KVM to demonstrate a virtualization efficiency of 85% when
comparing a bare metal system running on identical hardware.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 and KVM achieved record-setting virtualization performance in the
SPECvirt_sc2010 benchmark recorded by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation
(SPEC), setting the best virtual performance mark of any published SPECvirt result. The
SPECvirt_sc2010 metric measures the end-to-end performance of system components in
virtualized data center servers.

Note
For more details on these virtualization benchmarks, visit:
Red Hat and IBM Achieve Leading Performance Benchmark Results at
http://www.redhat.com/about/news/archive/2013/2/red-hat-and-ibm-achieve-leadingperformance-benchmark-results
Red Hat Knowledgebase, SAP-SD Benchmark running in a VM – Leadership Performance using
RHEL 6 / KVM at https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/articles/216943
The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) at http://www.spec.org
Red Hat Achieves New Top Virtualization Performance Benchmark with HP at
http://investors.redhat.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID =617594
For more information on performance tuning for virtualization, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 6 Virtualization Tuning and Optimization Guide.

3.4 . Disast er recovery
D isaster recovery is quicker and easier when the systems are virtualized. On a physical system, if
something serious goes wrong, a complete re-install of the operating system is usually required,
resulting in hours of recovery time. However, if the systems are virtualized this is much faster due to
migration ability. If the requirements for live migration are followed, virtual machines can be restarted
on another host, and the longest possible delay would be in restoring guest data. Also, because
each of the virtualized systems are completely separate to each other, one system's downtime will not
affect any others.

3.5. Securit y
A virtual machine uses SELinux and sVirt to improve security in virtualization. This section includes
an overview of the security options available.

3.5.1. Virt ualiz at ion securit y feat ures

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

SELin u x
SELinux was developed by the US National Security Agency and others to provide Mandatory
Access Control (MAC) for Linux. Under control of SELinux, all processes and files are given what is
known as a type, and access is limited by fine-grained controls. SELinux limits the abilities of an
attacker and works to prevent many common security exploits such as buffer overflow attacks and
privilege escalation.
SELinux strengthens the security model of Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosts and virtualized Red Hat
Enterprise Linux guests. SELinux is configured and tested to work, by default, with all virtualization
tools shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
sVirt
sVirt is a technology included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 that integrates SELinux and
virtualization. It applies Mandatory Access Control (MAC) to improve security when using virtual
machines, and improves security and hardens the system against bugs in the hypervisor that might
be used as an attack vector for the host or to another virtual machine.

Note
For more information on security for virtualization, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Virtualization Security Guide.

3.6. Virt ualiz at ion for servers and individuals
Virtualization is not just for servers; it can be useful for individuals as well. D esktop virtualization
offers centralized management, an improved desktop solution, and better disaster recovery. By using
connection software, it is possible to connect to a desktop remotely.
For servers, virtualization is not only for larger networks, but for any situation with two or more
servers. It provides live migration, high availability, fault tolerance, and streamlined backups.

3.6.1. Virt ualiz at ion deployment scenarios
These are examples of common deployment scenarios for virtualization, and the tools that can be
used to deploy these scenarios.
Small d ep lo ymen t s o f u p t o 3 p h ysical h o st s an d 10 g u est s: virt - man ag er
A tool such as virt-manager can be useful to a small business running several servers that
do not have strict uptime requirements or service-level agreements (SLAs). In this
environment, a single administrator may be responsible for the entire infrastructure, and
maintaining procedural flexibility is important if a component needs to be changed. This
environment may contain applications such as web servers, file and print servers, and
application servers.
Larg e d ep lo ymen t s o r missio n - crit ical ap p licat io n s: R ed H at En t erp rise
Virt u aliz at io n ( R H EV)
A full virtualization platform such as Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) might suit an
enterprise running larger deployments or mission-critical applications. In this environment,
the physical infrastructure is large enough to require an IT department and the business
requirements demand a defined response to new needs. Some examples of a large

⁠Chapt er 3. Advant ages and misconcept ions of virt ualiz at ion

deployment suited to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization may include databases, trading
platforms, or messaging systems that must run continuously without any downtime.
So f t ware d evelo p ers p ro d u cin g man ag emen t ap p licat io n s: lib virt
Both virt-manager and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) use libvirt to manage
virtual machines. libvirt is a virtualization application programming interface (API) that
allows software developers to produce and adapt management applications.

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

Chapter 4. Introduction to Red Hat virtualization products
This chapter introduces the various virtualization products available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

4 .1. KVM and virt ualiz at ion in Red Hat Ent erprise Linux
Wh at is K VM?
KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on AMD 64 and
Intel 64 hardware that is built into the standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 kernel. It can run
multiple, unmodified Windows and Linux guest operating systems. The KVM hypervisor in
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is managed with the lib virt API and tools built for lib virt (such
as vi rt-manag er and vi rsh). Virtual machines are executed and run as multi-threaded
Linux processes controlled by these tools.
O verco mmit t in g
The KVM hypervisor supports overcommitting of system resources. Overcommitting means
allocating more virtualized CPUs or memory than the available resources on the system.
Memory overcommitting allows hosts to utilize memory and virtual memory to increase guest
densities.

Important
Overcommitting involves possible risks to system stability. For more information on
overcommitting with KVM, and the precautions that should be taken, refer to the Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization Administration Guide.
T h in p ro visio n in g
Thin provisioning allows the allocation of flexible storage and optimizes the available
space for every guest virtual machine. It gives the appearance that there is more physical
storage on the guest than is actually available. This is not the same as overcommitting as
this only pertains to storage and not CPUs or memory allocations. However, like
overcommitting, the same warning applies.

Important
Thin provisioning involves possible risks to system stability. For more information on
thin provisioning with KVM, and the precautions that should be taken, refer to the
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization Administration Guide.
K SM
Kernel Same-page Merging (KSM), used by the KVM hypervisor, allows KVM guests to share
identical memory pages. These shared pages are usually common libraries or other
identical, high-use data. KSM allows for greater guest density of identical or similar guest
operating systems by avoiding memory duplication.

⁠Chapt er 4 . Int roduct ion t o Red Hat virt ualiz at ion product s

Note
For more information on KSM, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization
Administration Guide.
Q EMU G u est Ag en t
The QEMU Guest Agent runs on the guest operating system and allows the host machine to
issue commands to the guest operating system.

Note
For more information on the QEMU Guest Agent, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Virtualization Host Configuration and Guest Installation Guide.
H yp er- V En lig h t en men t
KVM in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 implements several Hyper-V compatible functions that
are used by Windows guests to improve performance and stability, allowing Windows
guests to perform as if they were running on a Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor.

Note
For more information on Hyper-V Enlightenment, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Virtualization Host Configuration and Guest Installation Guide.
D isk I/O t h ro t t lin g
When several virtual machines are running simultaneously, they can interfere with system
performance by using excessive disk I/O. D isk I/O throttling in KVM provides the ability to
set a limit on disk I/O requests sent from virtual machines to the host machine. This can
prevent a virtual machine from over utilizing shared resources, and impacting the
performance of other virtual machines.

Note
For instructions on using disk I/O throttling, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Virtualization Tuning and Optimization Guide.
K VM g u est virt u al mach in e co mp at ib ilit y
To verify whether your processor supports the virtualization extensions and for information
on enabling the virtualization extensions if they are disabled, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 6 Virtualization Administration Guide.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 servers have certain support limits.
The following URLs explain the processor and memory amount limitations for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux:

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

For host systems: https://access.redhat.com/site/articles/rhel-limits
For the KVM hypervisor: https://access.redhat.com/site/articles/rhel-kvm-limits
For a complete chart of supported operating systems and host and guest combinations
refer to https://access.redhat.com/site/supported-hypervisors.

4 .2. libvirt and libvirt t ools
The libvirt package is a hypervisor-independent virtualization API that is able to interact with the
virtualization capabilities of a range of operating systems.
The libvirt package provides:
A common, generic, and stable layer to securely manage virtual machines on a host.
A common interface for managing local systems and networked hosts.
All of the APIs required to provision, create, modify, monitor, control, migrate, and stop virtual
machines, but only if the hypervisor supports these operations. Although multiple hosts may be
accessed with lib virt simultaneously, the APIs are limited to single node operations.
lib virt focuses on managing single hosts and provides APIs to enumerate, monitor and use the
resources available on the managed node, including CPUs, memory, storage, networking and NonUniform Memory Access (NUMA) partitions. The management tools can be located on separate
physical machines from the host using secure protocols.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports lib virt and includes lib virt -based tools as its default method
for virtualization management (as in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Management).
The libvirt package is available as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License. The
libvirt project aims to provide a long term stable C API to virtualization management tools, running on
top of varying hypervisor technologies. The libvirt package supports Xen on Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5, and it supports KVM on both Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
virsh
The vi rsh command-line tool is built on the lib virt management API and operates as an
alternative to the graphical vi rt-manag er application. The vi rsh command can be used
in read-only mode by unprivileged users or, with root access, full administration
functionality. The vi rsh command is ideal for scripting virtualization administration.
virt - man ag er
vi rt-manag er is a graphical desktop tool for managing virtual machines. It allows access
to graphical guest consoles and can be used to perform virtualization administration,
virtual machine creation, migration, and configuration tasks. The ability to view virtual
machines, host statistics, device information and performance graphs is also provided. The
local hypervisor and remote hypervisors can be managed through a single interface.

Note
For more information on vi rsh and virt - man ag er, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Virtualization Administration Guide.

⁠Chapt er 4 . Int roduct ion t o Red Hat virt ualiz at ion product s

Note
Some virtualization commands in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 allow you to specify a remote
libvirt connection. For example:
virt-df -c qemu://remote/system -d Guest
However, libguestfs in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 cannot access remote guests, and
commands using remote URLs like this do not work as expected. This affects the following Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 6 commands:
guestfish
guestmount
virt-alignment-scan
virt-cat
virt-copy-in
virt-copy-out
virt-df
virt-edit
virt-filesystems
virt-inspector
virt-inspector2
virt-list-filesystems
virt-list-partitions
virt-ls
virt-rescue
virt-sysprep
virt-tar
virt-tar-in
virt-tar-out
virt-win-reg

4 .3. Virt ualiz ed hardware devices
Virtualization on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 presents three distinct types of system devices to virtual
machines. The three types include:
Virtualized and emulated devices
Para-virtualized devices
Physically shared devices
These hardware devices all appear as being physically attached to the virtual machine but the
device drivers work in different ways.

4 .3.1. Virt ualiz ed and emulat ed devices
KVM implements many core devices for virtual machines in software. These emulated hardware
devices are crucial for virtualizing operating systems.
Emulated devices are virtual devices which exist entirely in software.

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

Emulated drivers may use either a physical device or a virtual software device. Emulated drivers are a
translation layer between the virtual machine and the Linux kernel (which manages the source
device). The device level instructions are completely translated by the KVM hypervisor. Any device, of
the same type (storage, network, keyboard, and mouse) and recognized by the Linux kernel, may be
used as the backing source device for the emulated drivers.
Virt u al C PU s ( vC PU s)
A host system can have up to 160 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) that can be presented to guests for
their use, regardless of the number of host CPUs.
Emu lat ed g rap h ics d evices
Two emulated graphics devices are provided. These devices can be connected to with the
SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments) protocol or with VNC:
A Cirrus CLGD 5446 PCI VGA card (using the cirrus device)
A standard VGA graphics card with Bochs VESA extensions (hardware level, including
all non-standard modes)
Emu lat ed syst em co mp o n en t s
The following core system components are emulated to provide basic system functions:
Intel i440FX host PCI bridge
PIIX3 PCI to ISA bridge
PS/2 mouse and keyboard
EvTouch USB Graphics Tablet
PCI UHCI USB controller and a virtualized USB hub
Emulated serial ports
EHCI controller, virtualized USB storage and a USB mouse
Emu lat ed so u n d d evices
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 and above provides an emulated (Intel) HD A sound device,
i ntel -hd a. This device is supported on the following guest operating systems:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, for i386 and x86_64 architectures
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, for i386 and x86_64 architectures
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, for i386 and x86_64 architectures
Windows 7, for i386 and x86_64 architectures
Windows 2008 R2, for the x86_64 architecture
The following two emulated sound devices are also available, but are not recommended
due to compatibility issues with certain guest operating systems:
ac9 7, an emulated Intel 82801AA AC97 Audio compatible sound card
es1370 , an emulated ENSONIQ AudioPCI ES1370 sound card
Emu lat ed wat ch d o g d evices

⁠Chapt er 4 . Int roduct ion t o Red Hat virt ualiz at ion product s

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 provides two emulated watchdog devices. A watchdog can be
used to automatically reboot a virtual machine when it becomes overloaded or
unresponsive.
The watchdog package must be installed on the guest.
The two devices available are:
i 6 30 0 esb, an emulated Intel 6300 ESB PCI watchdog device. It is supported in guest
operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 6.0 and above, and is the
recommended device to use.
i b70 0 , an emulated iBase 700 ISA watchdog device. The i b70 0 watchdog device is
only supported in guests using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 and above.
Both watchdog devices are supported in i386 and x86_64 architectures for guest operating
systems Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 and above.
Emu lat ed n et wo rk d evices
There are two emulated network devices available:
The e10 0 0 device emulates an Intel E1000 network adapter (Intel 82540EM, 82573L,
82544GC).
The rtl 8139 device emulates a Realtek 8139 network adapter.
Emu lat ed st o rag e d rivers
Storage devices and storage pools can use these emulated devices to attach storage
devices to virtual machines. The guest uses an emulated storage driver to access the
storage pool.
Note that like all virtual devices, the storage drivers are not storage devices. The drivers are
used to attach a backing storage device, file or storage pool volume to a virtual machine.
The backing storage device can be any supported type of storage device, file, or storage
pool volume.
T h e emu lat ed ID E d river
KVM provides two emulated PCI ID E interfaces. An emulated ID E driver can be
used to attach any combination of up to four virtualized ID E hard disks or
virtualized ID E CD -ROM drives to each virtual machine. The emulated ID E driver
is also used for virtualized CD -ROM and D VD -ROM drives.
T h e emu lat ed f lo p p y d isk d rive d river
The emulated floppy disk drive driver is used for creating virtualized floppy drives.

4 .3.2. Para-virt ualiz ed devices
Para-virtualization provides a fast and efficient means of communication for guests to use devices
on the host machine. KVM provides para-virtualized devices to virtual machines using the Virtio API
as a layer between the hypervisor and guest.
Some para-virtualized devices decrease I/O latency and increase I/O throughput to near bare-metal
levels, while other para-virtualized devices add functionality to virtual machines that is not otherwise
available. It is recommended to use para-virtualized devices instead of emulated devices for virtual
machines running I/O intensive applications.

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

All virtio devices have two parts: the host device and the guest driver. Para-virtualized device drivers
allow the guest operating system access to physical devices on the host system.
The para-virtualized device drivers must be installed on the guest operating system. By default, the
para-virtualized device drivers are included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.7 and newer, Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5.4 and newer and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 and newer. The para-virtualized
device drivers must be manually installed on Windows guests.

Note
For more information on using the para-virtualized devices and drivers, refer to the Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization Host Configuration and Guest Installation Guide.
T h e p ara- virt u aliz ed n et wo rk d evice ( virt io - n et )
The para-virtualized network device is a virtual network device that provides network
access to virtual machines with increased I/O performance and lower latency.
T h e p ara- virt u aliz ed b lo ck d evice ( virt io - b lk)
The para-virtualized block device is a high-performance virtual storage device with that
provides storage to virtual machines with increased I/O performance and lower latency. The
para-virtualized block device is supported by the hypervisor and is attached to the virtual
machine (except for floppy disk drives, which must be emulated).
T h e p ara- virt u aliz ed co n t ro ller d evice ( virt io - scsi)
The para-virtualized SCSI controller device is a new feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4
that provides a more flexible and scalable alternative to virtio-blk. A virtio-scsi guest is
capable of inheriting the feature set of the target device, and can handle hundreds of
devices compared to virtio-blk, which can only handle 28 devices.
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 and above, virtio-scsi is fully supported for the following
guest operating systems:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 and above
Windows Server 2008
Windows 7
Windows Server 2012
Windows 8 (32/64 bit)
T h e p ara- virt u aliz ed clo ck
Guests using the Time Stamp Counter (TSC) as a clock source may suffer timing issues.
KVM works around hosts that do not have a constant Time Stamp Counter by providing
guests with a para-virtualized clock. Additionally, the para-virtualized clock assists with
time adjustments needed after a guest runs S3 or suspend to RAM operations.
T h e p ara- virt u aliz ed serial d evice ( virt io - serial)
The para-virtualized serial device is a bytestream-oriented, character stream device, and
provides a simple communication interface between the host's user space and the guest's
user space.

⁠Chapt er 4 . Int roduct ion t o Red Hat virt ualiz at ion product s

T h e b allo o n d evice ( virt io - b allo o n )
The balloon device can designate part of a virtual machine's RAM as not being used (a
process known as balloon inflation), so that the memory can be freed for the host (or for
other virtual machines on that host) to use. When the virtual machine needs the memory
again, the balloon can be deflated and the host can distribute the RAM back to the virtual
machine.
T h e p ara- virt u aliz ed g rap h ics card ( Q XL)
The para-virtualized graphics card works with the QXL driver to provide an efficient way to
display a virtual machine's graphics from a remote host. The QXL driver is required to use
SPICE.

4 .3.3. Physical host devices
Certain hardware platforms allow virtual machines to directly access various hardware devices and
components. This process in virtualization is known as device assignment. D evice assignment is also
known as passthrough.
PC I d evice assig n men t
The KVM hypervisor supports attaching PCI devices on the host system to virtual machines.
PCI device assignment allows guests to have exclusive access to PCI devices for a range of
tasks. It allows PCI devices to appear and behave as if they were physically attached to the
guest virtual machine.
D evice assignment is supported on PCI Express devices, with the exception of graphics
cards. Parallel PCI devices may be supported as assigned devices, but they have severe
limitations due to security and system configuration conflicts.

Note
For more information on device assignment, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Virtualization Host Configuration and Guest Installation Guide.
U SB p asst h ro u g h
The KVM hypervisor supports attaching USB devices on the host system to virtual
machines. USB device assignment allows guests to have exclusive access to USB devices
for a range of tasks. It allows USB devices to appear and behave as if they were physically
attached to the virtual machine.

Note
For more information on USB passthrough, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Virtualization Administration Guide.
SR - IO V
SR-IOV (Single Root I/O Virtualization) is a PCI Express standard that extends a single
physical PCI function to share its PCI resources as separate, virtual functions (VFs). Each
function is capable of being used by a different virtual machine via PCI device assignment.

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

An SR-IOV capable PCI-e device, provides a Single Root Function (for example, a single
Ethernet port) and presents multiple, separate virtual devices as unique PCI device
functions. Each virtual device may have its own unique PCI configuration space, memorymapped registers, and individual MSI-based interrupts.

Note
For more information on SR-IOV, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization
Host Configuration and Guest Installation Guide.
N PIV
N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) is a functionality available with some Fibre Channel
devices. NPIV shares a single physical N_Port as multiple N_Port ID s. NPIV provides
similar functionality for Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) that SR-IOV provides for
PCIe interfaces. With NPIV, virtual machines can be provided with a virtual Fibre Channel
initiator to Storage Area Networks (SANs).
NPIV can provide high density virtualized environments with enterprise-level storage
solutions.

Note
For more information on NPIV, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization
Administration Guide.

4 .4 . Guest CPU models
CPU models define which host CPU features are exposed to the guest operating system. q emu - kvm
and lib virt contain definitions for several current processor models, allowing users to enable CPU
features that are available only in newer CPU models. The set of CPU features that can be exposed to
guests depends on support in the host CPU, the kernel, and q emu - kvm code.
To allow safe migration of virtual machines between hosts with different sets of CPU features, q emu kvm does not expose all features from the host CPU to guest operating systems by default. Instead,
CPU features are exposed based on the chosen CPU model. If a virtual machine has a given CPU
feature enabled, it is not possible to migrate it to a host that does not support exposing that feature to
guests.

Note
For more information on guest CPU models, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization
Host Configuration and Guest Installation Guide.

4 .5. St orage
Storage for virtual machines is abstracted from the physical storage used by the virtual machine. It is
attached to the virtual machine using the para-virtualized or emulated block device drivers.

⁠Chapt er 4 . Int roduct ion t o Red Hat virt ualiz at ion product s

4 .5.1. St orage pools
A storage pool is a file, directory, or storage device managed by lib virt for the purpose of providing
storage to virtual machines. Storage pools are divided into storage volumes that store virtual
machine images or are attached to virtual machines as additional storage. Multiple guests can share
the same storage pool, allowing for better allocation of storage resources. Refer to the Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization Administration Guide for more information.
Lo cal st o rag e p o o ls
Local storage pools are directly attached to the host server. They include local directories,
directly attached disks, physical partitions, and LVM volume groups on local devices. Local
storage pools are useful for development, testing and small deployments that do not require
migration or large numbers of virtual machines. Local storage pools may not be suitable for
many production environments as they do not support live migration.
N et wo rked ( sh ared ) st o rag e p o o ls
Networked storage pools include storage devices shared over a network using standard
protocols. Networked storage is required when migrating virtual machines between hosts
with virt - man ag er, but is optional when migrating with vi rsh. Networked storage pools
are managed by lib virt .

4 .5.2. St orage volumes
Storage pools are further divided into storage volumes. Storage volumes are an abstraction of
physical partitions, LVM logical volumes, file-based disk images and other storage types handled by
lib virt . Storage volumes are presented to virtual machines as local storage devices regardless of the
underlying hardware.

4 .5.3. Emulat ed st orage devices
The host emulates a range of storage devices that can be presented to virtual machines. Each type of
storage device is appropriate for specific use cases. Choice between different types of storage
devices allows for maximum flexibility and compatibility with guest operating systems.
virt io - scsi
virtio-scsi is the recommended para-virtualized storage device for guests using large
numbers of disks, or advanced storage features such as TRIM.
virt io - b lk
virtio-blk is a para-virtualized storage device suitable for exposing image files to guests.
virtio-blk can provide the best disk I/O performance for virtual machines, but has fewer
features than virtio-scsi.
ID E
ID E is recommended for legacy guests that do not support virtio drivers. ID E performance is
lower than virtio-scsi or virtio-blk, but it is widely compatible with different systems.
CD-RO M
ATAPI CD -ROMs and virtio-scsi CD -ROMs are available for presenting ISO files or the host
CD -ROM drive to guests. virtio-scsi CD -ROMs can be used with guests that have the virtioscsi driver installed. ATAPI CD -ROMs offer wider compatibility but lower performance.

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

U SB mass st o rag e d evices an d f lo p p y d isks
USB mass storage devices and floppy disks are available when removable media is
required. USB mass storage devices are preferable to floppy disks due to their larger
capacity.

4 .5.4 . Host st orage
D isk images can be stored on a range of local and remote storage technologies connected to the
host.
Imag e f iles
Image files are stored on a host file system. The image files can be stored on a local file
system, such as ext4 or xfs, or a network file system, such as NFS.
Tools such as lib g u est f s can manage, back up, and monitor files. D isk image formats on
KVM include:
raw
Raw image files contain the contents of the disk with no additional metadata.
Raw files can either be pre-allocated or sparse, if the host file system allows it.
Sparse files allocate host disk space on demand, and are therefore a form of thin
provisioning. Pre-allocated files are fully provisioned but have higher
performance than sparse files.
Raw files are desirable when disk I/O performance is critical and transferring the
image file over a network is rarely necessary.
q co w2
qcow2 image files offer a number of advanced disk image features including
backing files, snapshots, compression, and encryption. They can be used to
instantiate virtual machines from template images.
qcow2 files are typically more efficient to transfer over a network, because only
sectors written by the virtual machine are allocated in the image.
LVM vo lu mes
Logical volumes can be used for disk images and managed using the system's LVM tools.
LVM offers higher performance than file systems because of its simpler block storage model.
LVM thin provisioning offers snapshots and efficient space usage for LVM volumes, and
can be used as an alternative to migrating to qcow2.
H o st d evices
Host devices such as physical CD -ROMs and raw disks or logical unit numbers (LUNs) can
be presented to the guest. This allows a guest to use storage area network (SAN) or iSCSI
LUNs, as well as local CD -ROM media, with good performance.
Host devices can be used when storage management is done on a SAN instead of on
hosts.
D ist rib u t ed st o rag e syst ems
Gluster volumes can be used as disk images. This allows high-performance clustered
storage over the network.

⁠Chapt er 4 . Int roduct ion t o Red Hat virt ualiz at ion product s

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 and above includes native support for creating virtual
machines with GlusterFS. This enables a KVM host to boot virtual machine images from
GlusterFS volumes, and to use images from a GlusterFS volume as data disks for virtual
machines. When compared to GlusterFS FUSE, the native support in KVM delivers higher
performance.

Note
For more information on storage and virtualization, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Virtualization Administration Guide.

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

Chapter 5. Virtualization Tools
This chapter provides an introduction to the many tools available to assist with virtualization.

5.1. vi rsh
virsh is a command line interface (CLI) tool for managing the hypervisor and guest virtual machines.
The vi rsh command line tool is built on the lib virt management API and operates as an alternative
to the q emu-kvm command and the graphical virt - man ag er application. The vi rsh command can
be used in read-only mode by unprivileged users or, with root access, full administrative
functionality. The vi rsh command is ideal for scripting virtualization administration. In addition the
vi rsh tool is a main management interface for vi rsh guest domains and can be used to create,
pause, and shut down domains, as well as list current domains. This tool is installed as part of the
libvirt-client package.

Note
Refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization Administration Guide for more information
about managing virtual machines with vi rsh.

5.2. vi rt-manag er
virt-manager is a lightweight graphical tool for managing virtual machines. It provides the ability to
control the life cycle of existing machines, provision new machines, manage virtual networks, access
the graphical console of virtual machines, and view performance statistics. This tool ships in its own
package called virt-manager.

Note
Refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization Administration Guide for more information
about managing virtual machines with vi rt-manag er.

5.3. vi rt-i nstal l
virt-install is a command line tool to provision new virtual machines. It supports both text-based and
graphical installations, using serial console, SD L, SPICE, or VNC client/server pair graphics.
Installation media can be local, or exist remotely on an NFS, HTTP, or FTP server. The tool can also
be configured to run unattended and kickstart the guest when installation is complete, allowing for
easy automation of installation. This tool is installed as part of the python-virtinst package.

Note
Refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization Host Configuration and Guest Installation Guide
for more information about vi rt-i nstal l .

⁠Chapt er 5. Virt ualiz at ion T ools

5.4 . g uestfi sh
guestfish is a shell and command line tool for examining and modifying virtual machine disk images.
This tool uses libguestfs and exposes all functionality provided by the g uestfs API.

Warning
Using g uestfi sh on running virtual machines can cause disk-image corruption. Use the
g uestfi sh command with the --ro (read-only) option if the disk image is being used by a
running virtual machine.

Note
Refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Virtualization Administration Guide for more information
about g uestfi sh.

5.5. Ot her useful t ools
The following tools are used to access a guest virtual machine's disk via the host. The guest's disk is
usually accessed directly via the d i sk-i mag e file located on the host. However it is sometimes
possible to gain access via the lib virt domain. The commands that follow are part of the lib virt
domain and are used to gain access to the guest's disk image.
g uestmo unt
A command line tool used to mount virtual machine file systems and disk images on the
host machine.

Warning
Using g uestmo unt in --r/w (read/write) mode to access a disk that is currently
being used by a guest can cause the disk to become corrupted. D o not use
g uestmo unt in --r/w (read/write) mode on live virtual machines. Use the
g uestmo unt command with the --ro (read-only) option if the disk image is being
used.
vi rt-cat
A command line tool that can be used to quickly view the contents of one or more files in a
specified virtual machine's disk or disk image. This tool is installed as part of the libguestfstools package.
vi rt-d f
A command line tool used to show the actual physical disk usage of virtual machines,
similar to the command line tool d f. Note that this tool does not work across remote
connections. It is installed as part of the libguestfs-tools package.

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

vi rt-ed i t
A command line tool used to edit files that exist on a specified virtual machine. This tool is
installed as part of the libguestfs-tools package.

Warning
Using vi rt-ed i t on live virtual machines can cause disk corruption in the virtual
machine. Although the vi rt-ed i t command will try to prevent users from editing
files on live virtual machines, it is not guaranteed to catch all instances. D o not use
vi rt-ed i t on a live virtual machine.
vi rt-fi l esystems
A command line tool used to discover file systems, partitions, logical volumes and their
sizes in a disk image or virtual machine. One common use is in shell scripts, to iterate over
all file systems in a disk image. This tool is installed as part of the libguestfs-tools package.
This tool replaces vi rt-l i st-fi l esystems and vi rt-l i st-parti ti o ns.
vi rt-i nspecto r
A command line tool that can examine a virtual machine or disk image to determine the
version of its operating system and other information. It can also produce XML output,
which can be piped into other programs. Note that vi rt-i nspecto r can only inspect one
domain at a time. This tool is installed as part of the libguestfs-tools package.
vi rt-i nspecto r2
An alternative tool to vi rt-i nspecto r, written in C. This tool is installed as part of the
libguestfs-tools package.
vi rt-l s
A command line tool that lists files and directories inside a virtual machine. This tool is
installed as part of the libguestfs-tools package.
vi rt-make-fs
A command line tool for creating a file system based on a tar archive or files in a directory. It
is similar to tools like mki so fs and mksq uashfs, but it can create common file system
types such as ext2, ext3 and NTFS, and the size of the file system created can be equal to
or greater than the size of the files it is based on. This tool is provided as part of the
libguestfs-tools package.
vi rt-p2v
A graphical tool to convert physical machines into virtual machines. This tool is installed
as part of the virt-v2v package in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 and later.
vi rt-rescue
A command line tool that provides a rescue shell and some simple recovery tools for
unbootable virtual machines and disk images. It can be run on any virtual machine known
to lib virt , or directly on disk images. This tool is installed as part of the libguestfs-tools
package.

⁠Chapt er 5. Virt ualiz at ion T ools

Warning
Using vi rt-rescue on running virtual machines can cause disk corruption in the
virtual machine. vi rt-rescue attempts to prevent its own use on running virtual
machines, but cannot catch all cases. Using the command with the --ro (read-only)
option will not cause disk corruption, but may give strange or inconsistent results.
Avoid using vi rt-rescue on a running virtual machine.

vi rt-resi ze
A command line tool to resize virtual machine disks, and resize or delete any partitions on a
virtual machine disk. It works by copying the guest image and leaving the original disk
image untouched. This tool is installed as part of the libguestfs-tools package.

Important
Using vi rt-resi ze on running virtual machines can give inconsistent results. It is
best to shut down virtual machines before attempting to resize them.
vi rt-sysprep
A command line tool to reset, customize, or unconfigure virtual machines to prepare a
template for creating clones. This tool is installed as part of the libguestfs-tools package.

Important
Virtual machines must be shut down before running vi rt-sysprep. To preserve a
virtual machine's existing contents, snapshot, copy or clone the disk before running
vi rt-sysprep.
vi rt-tar
A command line archive tool for downloading and uploading parts of a virtual machine's
file system. This tool is commonly used for making backups, uploading data, reviewing
guest activity, and fixing or customizing guests. This tool is installed as part of the
libguestfs-tools package.

Warning
Using vi rt-tar with the -u (upload) option on running virtual machines can cause
disk corruption in the virtual machine. vi rt-tar attempts to prevent its own use on
running virtual machines, but cannot catch all cases.
Using vi rt-tar with the -x (extract) option on running virtual machines will not
cause disk corruption, but may give strange or inconsistent results. It is best to shut
down virtual machines before attempting to extract files from them.

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

vi rt-to p
A command line utility similar to to p, which shows statistics related to virtualized domains.
This tool ships in its own package: virt-top.
vi rt-v2v
A graphical tool to convert virtual machines from Xen and VMware hypervisors to run on
KVM. This tool ships in its own package: virt-v2v.
vi rt-vi ewer
A minimal tool for displaying the graphical console of a virtual machine via the VNC and
SPICE protocols. This tool ships in its own package: virt-viewer.
vi rt-what
A shell script that detects whether a program is running in a virtual machine. This tool ships
in its own package: virt-what.
vi rt-who
The virt-who package is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux host agent that queries lib virt for guest
UUID s. It then passes that data to the local entitlement server for the purposes of issuing
certificates. This tool ships in its own package: virt-who.
vi rt-wi n-reg
A command line tool to export and merge Windows Registry entries from a Windows virtual
machine, and perform simple Registry operations. This tool is installed as part of the
libguestfs-tools package.

Warning
Using vi rt-wi n-reg on running virtual machines will cause irreversible disk
corruption in the virtual machine. vi rt-wi n-reg attempts to prevent its own use on
running virtual machines, but cannot catch all cases.

Warning
Modifying the Windows Registry is an inherently risky operation, as the format is
deliberately obscure and undocumented. Changes to the registry can leave the
system unbootable, so ensure you have a reliable backup before you use the -merg e option.
vi rt-xml -val i d ate
A command line tool to validate lib virt XML files for compliance with the published schema.
This tool is installed as part of the libvirt-client package.

⁠Appendix A. Revision Hist ory

Appendix A. Revision History
R evisio n 1.1- 5
Version for 6.7 GA release

Mo n Ju l 14 2015

R evisio n 1.1- 03
T h u rs Ap r 16 2015
Preparing document for 6.7 Beta publication.

Jiri H errman n

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 1.1- 02
Wed Mar 18 2015
Sco t t R ad van
Add list of commands affected by lack of remote libguestfs support in 6.x. BZ #1070166.
R evisio n 1.0- 16
Edited typo in libvirt section.

T h u rs Mar 5 2015

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 1.0- 15
Version for 6.6 GA release.

Fri O ct 10 2014

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 1.0- 12
T u e O ct 07 2014
Sco t t R ad van
Apply SME feedback on guestfish manipulation of images from BZ #1043235.
R evisio n 1.0- 11
T h u rs Au g 28 2014
Made minor clarity and accuracy fixes forBZ #1043235.

Jo d i B id d le

R evisio n 1.0- 10
Fri Au g 8 2014
D ayle Parker
Build for beta release.
Added reference to the Virtualization Tuning and Optimization Guide to performance section.
R evisio n 1.0- 04
Mo n Ju ly 28 2014
D ayle Parker
Revised documentation suite list, updated links for BZ #1043235.
Added sections describing emulated storage devices and host storage for BZ #971226.
R evisio n 1.0- 03
Wed Ju ly 16 2014
Added QXL driver description for BZ #1097974.

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 1.0- 02
Fri Ju n e 6 2014
D ayle Parker
Edited performance section for BZ #1097973.
Updated support limit URLs under " KVM guest virtual machine compatibility" for BZ #1097627.
R evisio n 1.0- 01
Fri May 30 2014
Updated guest CPU models section for BZ #1097621.

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.3- 4 3
Version for 6.5 GA release.

D ayle Parker

Fri N o v 15 2013

R evisio n 0.3- 4 2
Fri O ct 18 2013
D ayle Parker
Removed Windows 2003 from virtio-scsi support list in Para-virtualized devices section.
R evisio n 0.3- 4 1
Wed O ct 2 2013
Removed edition number from front page.

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.3- 4 0

D ayle Parker

Wed Sep t 25 2013

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

Minor edits for beta release.
R evisio n 0.3- 39
Mo n Sep t 16 2013
D ayle Parker
Minor wording edit to disk I/O throttling description for BZ #991252.
Included Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 benchmark details for BZ #919330.
R evisio n 0.3- 36
T h u rs Sep t 12 2013
D ayle Parker
Added disk I/O throttling description for BZ #991252.
Revised GlusterFS description based on SME feedback for BZ #979271.
R evisio n 0.3- 33
Mo n Sep t 9 2013
D ayle Parker
Added GlusterFS description for BZ #979271.
Removed Hypervisor D eployment Guide from documentation list.
R evisio n 0.3- 32
Mo n Sep t 2 2013
D ayle Parker
Corrected terminology in Para-virtualized devices section for BZ #983371.
Edited Hyper-V Enlightenment description for BZ #923342.
R evisio n 0.3- 31
Fri Au g u st 30 2013
Included Hyper-V Enlightenment description for BZ #923342.

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.3- 30
T u e Au g u st 20 2013
D ayle Parker
Corrected terminology in Para-virtualized devices section for BZ #983371.
R evisio n 0.3- 29
T h u rs Au g u st 15 2013
D ayle Parker
Added list of virtual disk image formats supported for conversion by vi rt-v2v to section 2.3,
including VHD X, VMD K and OVF - BZ #982846.
Added description of virt-sysprep to section 5.5 for BZ #988156.
R evisio n 0.3- 28
Mo n Au g u st 12 2013
Added Hyper-V to section 2.3 for BZ #990333.

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.3- 25
Fri Ap r 26 2013
Added documentation suite list to Chapter 1.

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.3- 24
Version for 6.4 GA release.

Mo n Feb 18 2013

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.3- 20
Updated 4.4.1 Storage pools.

T h u rs Jan 31 2013

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.3- 18
T u e Jan 29 2013
D ayle Parker
Updated virtio-scsi support details in 4.3.2. Para-virtualized devices for BZ #903891.
R evisio n 0.3- 16
Wed Jan 16 2013
Minor grammatical edits in virtualization products chapter.

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.3- 15
T u es N o v 27 2012
Minor grammatical edits throughout book.

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.3- 13

D ayle Parker

T h u O ct 18 2012

⁠Appendix A. Revision Hist ory

Applied SME feedback to RHEV introduction for BZ #798104.
Revised virtualization guide descriptions in introduction.

R evisio n 0.3- 11
Wed O ct 17 2012
D ayle Parker
Made corrections, revised RHEV section in 1.3, added virtualization benchmarks in 3.3 for
BZ #798104.
Added virtualization deployment scenarios for BZ #847924.
R evisio n 0.3- 10
Mo n O ct 8 2012
Revised 1.3 RHEV description in introduction for BZ #798104.

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.3- 8
T h u rs O ct 4 2012
D ayle Parker
Added tech preview note about virtio-scsi in Ch.4 from SME review.
Added QEMU Guest Agent description.
Moved configuration-specific part of 4.3.4. Guest CPU Models to Virtualization Host Configuration
and Guest Installation Guide for BZ #842970.
R evisio n 0.3- 7
Wed O ct 3 2012
D ayle Parker
Applied peer feedback to Virtualization in Red Hat Enterprise Linux introduction.
Added virtio-scsi description for BZ #847167.
R evisio n 0.3- 6
T u e Sep 25 2012
Added Section 1.2: Virtualization in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.3- 5
Mo n Sep 3 2012
Added reference to Virt Security Guide in Ch.3 - BZ #838009.

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.3- 2
Wed Au g 29 2012
D ayle Parker
Corrected links from http://docs.redhat.com/ to new location:
http://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/
Corrected migration details in sections: 2.2. Migration and 4.4.1. Storage pools for BZ #831901.
R evisio n 0.3- 1
Mo n Au g 27 2012
D ayle Parker
Placed references to other guides in admonitions; corrected terms for BZ #813620.
R evisio n 0.2- 83
Version for 6.3 GA release.

Mo n Ju n e 18 2012

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.2- 82
Mo n Ju n e 18 2012
Corrected " 64 vCPUs" to " 160 vCPUs" for BZ #832415.

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.2- 80
T u es Ju n e 12 2012
Clarified emulated watchdog device section for BZ #827307.

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.2- 78
Fri Ju n e 8 2012
Corrected typos and markup for BZ #827305.
General corrections made to Chapter 4 BZ #827307.

D ayle Parker

R evisio n 0.2- 73
Mo n Ap ril 23 2012
Corrections made to chapter 5 (BZ #798108).

Lau ra N o vich

Virt ualiz at ion G et t ing St art ed G uide

R evisio n 0.2- 72
Mo n Ap ril 23 2012
Corrections made to chapter 4 (BZ #798106).

Lau ra N o vich

R evisio n 0.2- 71
T h u r Ap ril 19 2012
Corrections made to chapter 5 (BZ #798108).

Lau ra N o vich

R evisio n 0.2- 6 9
Wed Ap ril 18 2012
Corrections made to chapter 4 (BZ #798106).

Lau ra N o vich

R evisio n 0.2- 6 8
T u e Ap ril 17 2012
D ayle Parker
Corrected terminology to " virtual machine" where needed (BZ #798063).
R evisio n 0.2- 6 4
Mo n Ap ril 2 2012
Corrections to Chapter 2 (BZ #800401).

Lau ra N o vich

R evisio n 0.2- 6 1
Fri March 30 2012
D ayle Parker
Made corrections in Chapter 3: Advantages (BZ #800409).
Adjusted terms to " virtual machine" and " virtualized guest" where appropriate; corrected outdated
link in 4.1; corrected terms in Emulated network devices (from drivers) in (BZ #798063).
R evisio n 0.2- 52
Wed Jan u ary 11 2012
BZ #772859 clarified acronym.

Jacq u elyn n East

R evisio n 0.2- 51
BZ #750969 minor typos.

Jacq u elyn n East

Fri N o vemb er 4 2011

R evisio n 0.2- 4 7
Fri O ct o b er 14 2011
BZ #744156 added paragraph about emulated watchdogs.

Jacq u elyn n East

R evisio n 0.2- 4 4
BZ #734614

Fri Sep t emb er 16 2011

Jacq u elyn n East

R evisio n 0.2- 4 3
BZ #734618 minor edit.

Fri Sep t emb er 16 2011

Jacq u elyn n East

R evisio n 0.2- 37
BZ #734619, BZ #734614

Fri Sep t emb er 2 2011

Jacq u elyn n East

R evisio n 0.2- 34
T h u Sep t emb er 1 2011
Jacq u elyn n East
BZ #734619, BZ #734511, BZ #734618, BZ #734616, BZ #715476, BZ #734613
R evisio n 0.2- 33
Wed Au g u st 31 2011
BZ #734618, BZ #734613, BZ #734619

Jacq u elyn n East

R evisio n 0.2- 22
Wed Ju ly 27 2011
Advantages chapter completed (BZ #715476).

Jacq u elyn n East

R evisio n 0.2- 17
Mo n Ju ly 25 2011
Minor edits for BZ #715473 and BZ #715474.

Jacq u elyn n East

R evisio n 0.2- 15

Jacq u elyn n East

Mo n Ju ly 25 2011

⁠Appendix A. Revision Hist ory

Chapter 4 draft BZ #715476.
R evisio n 0.1- 1
Wed May 4 2011
Sco t t R ad van
Arranged basic layout and book infrastructure. Imported introductory text.
R evisio n 0.0- 1
Wed May 4 2011
Initial creation of book by Publican.

Sco t t R ad van

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Virtualization Getting Started Guide Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Dayle Parker

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