Mastering Proxmox - Third Edition

Exploring KVM

As the name implies, KVM is merely a virtualization process that adds the hypervisor ability to a Linux kernel. KVM allows you to create fully isolated virtual machines while not being dependent on the host operating system or kernel. The isolation is created by emulating several types of hardware, such as CPU, RAM, sound/video/network cards, PCI bridges, and input devices. In order to create KVM virtual machines, the CPU in the host node must have hardware virtualization extensions (HWE). KVM/Qemu creates a layer that virtualizes physical hardware, allowing full system virtualization and not kernel-level virtualization, as is the case with OpenVZ and LXC containers. This allows a wide range of operating systems to be virtualized, ...