KVM

dman777 · 12-31-2010, 06:53 AM

I was reading an article about KVM. It said that Qemu could be ran without KVM enabled in the Kernel. The article also states:
hypervisor serves as an interface between the guest
operating system and the host. The hypervisor
sits on top of the host system, handling tasks such as scheduling and memory management for the guests. "

So if the Qemu can be ran without the KVM, what exactly is the KVM in the kernel? Is it the actual hypervisor?

Chuck56 · 12-31-2010, 08:39 AM

http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page

Quote:

KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko. KVM also requires a modified QEMU although work is underway to get the required changes upstream.

KVM kernel modules enable the host OS to act as the hypervisor with QEMU managing the guest.