Virtual MachinesΒΆ
xCAT supports the following virtualization infrastructures:
- Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM):
- A full virtualization solution for Enterprise Linux distributions, known as the de facto open source virtualization mechanism and currently used by many software companies.
- IBM PowerKVM:
A product that leverages the Power resilience and performance with the openness of KVM, which provides several advantages:
- Higher workload consolidation with processors overcommitment and memory sharing
- Dynamic addition and removal of virtual devices
- Microthreading scheduling granularity
- Integration with IBM PowerVC and OpenStack
- Simplified management using open source software
- Avoids vendor lock-in
- Uses POWER8 hardware features, such as SMT8 and microthreading
The xCAT based KVM solution offers users the ability to:
- provision the hypervisor on bare metal nodes
- provision virtual machines with the any OS supported in xCAT
- migrate virtual machines to different hosts
- install copy on write instances of virtual machines
- clone virtual machines
This section introduces the steps of management node preparation, KVM hypervisor setup and virtual machine management, and presents some typical problems and solutions on xCAT kvm support.