KVM Hypervisor Installation and Configuration

 
Introduction:
KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux. It acts as a hypervisor allowing the creation of both Windows and Linux Virtual Machines (V.M).

Recommended OS:
Debian 6,7 x64

Installation:
Prior to installing, the entries in the attached file sources.txt should be copied at /etc/apt/sources.list
Once done the following commands should be executed:

• apt-get update
• apt-get install bridge-utils
• apt-get install kvm
• apt-get install libvirt-bin
• apt-get install kpartx
• apt-get install virt-manager

Replace the following entries in vi /etc/network/interfaces

auto lo br0
iface lo inet loopback
iface br0 inet static
bridge_ports eth0
address 192.168.0.245
broadcast 192.168.0.255
netmask 255.255.255.0
    gateway 192.168.0.1
 
Note:  Sample IP addresses given above should be replaced with actual IPs of your network and eth0 with the machine network card name holding those IPs.

Then reboot the machine. 

The command to check the Virtual Machine in KVM is virsh list, and if you are using Linux Desktop GUI then you can see virtual machine management interface using command virt-manager
That’s it. KVM is now ready to provision Virtual Machines via HC.