Howto: Linux and Windows virtualization with KVM and Qemu

"In the wise words of Wikipedia, "Virtualisation is a broad term that refers to the abstraction of computer resources". Within this definition sits a whole variety of products - Sun's VirtualBox, Parallels, Bochs, Xen, KVM, Qemu, various flavours of VMware and many others. And there's a great deal of jargon to confuse the unwary - emulation, full virtualisation, paravirtualisation, virtual appliance, hypervisor... the list goes on. And not everyone agrees exactly what all these terms actually mean.

"We're going to deliberately sidestep the jargon and the hype to take a practical look at the virtualisation technologies in Ubuntu, in particular KVM and Qemu and the related userspace tools that create and manage virtual machines. Although the discussion centres on Ubuntu, the technology is applicable to all Linux distros.

"Warning: if you're a little less experienced (or a little more time constrained!) you might find our other article, virtualisation made easy, a little easier to read.

"The diagram below is an attempt to show how some of the virtualisation components in Linux relate. The lower part of the diagram shows the underlying technologies. On the left, Xen is a software layer that conceptually sits below the operating system. It's called a hypervisor..."

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