Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization infrastructure for the Linux kernel that turns it into a hypervisor. It was merged into the Linux kernel mainline in kernel version 2.6.20, which was released on February 5, 2007.[1] KVM requires a processor with hardware virtualization extensions.[2] KVM has also been ported to FreeBSD[3] and illumos[4] in the form of loadable kernel modules.
KVM originally supported x86 processors and has been ported to S/390,[5] PowerPC,[6] and IA-64. An ARM port was merged during the 3.9 kernel merge window.[7]
A wide variety of guest operating systems work with KVM, including many flavours and versions of Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows, Haiku, ReactOS, Plan 9, AROS Research Operating System[8] and OS X.[9] In addition, Android 2.2, GNU/Hurd[10] (Debian K16), Minix 3.1.2a, Solaris 10 U3 and Darwin 8.0.1, together with other operating systems and some newer versions of these listed, are known to work with certain limitations.[11]
Paravirtualization support for certain devices is available for Linux, OpenBSD,[12] FreeBSD,[13]NetBSD,[14] Plan 9[15] and Windows guests using the VirtIO[16] API. This supports a paravirtual Ethernet card, a paravirtual disk I/O controller,[17] a balloon device for adjusting guest memory usage, and a VGA graphics interface using SPICE or VMware drivers.
Kernel-based Virtual Machine
Jovan Stosic
Kernel-based Virtual Machine was last modified: September 25th, 2017 by