What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with QEMU and KVM, provides recipes for installing and configuring QEMU, creating and managing disk images, and running virtual machines with the qemu-system utility.

Chapter 2, Using libvirt to Manage KVM, covers everything that is needed to install, configure, and run KVM instances using libvirt. You will learn what packages and tools are required, along with different ways of configuring virtual machines using XML definition files. By the end of this chapter, you will have a Linux system with running KVM instances.

Chapter 3, KVM Networking with libvirt, will present recipes for working with the Linux Bridge and Open vSwitch and will demonstrate how to connect KVM instances using NAT, bridged, and PCI pass-through networking.

Chapter 4, Migrating KVM Instances, will show examples on how to perform offline and online migration of running KVM virtual machines.

Chapter 5, Monitoring and Backup of KVM Virtual Machines, will present examples on how to deploy complete monitoring systems with Sensu and Uchiwa and demonstrate how to create snapshots to use as backups.

Chapter 6, Deploying KVM Instances with OpenStack, demonstrates how to provision KVM instances with OpenStack. It begins by introducing the various components that make OpenStack and how to use the LXC Nova driver to automatically provision virtual machines.

Chapter 7, Using Python to Build and Manage KVM Instances, will present recipes for building, starting, and managing the lifecycle of KVM instances using the Python libvirt library. We will also see examples on how to build a simple RESTful API to work with KVM.

Chapter 8, Kernel Tuning for KVM Performance, shows recipes for tuning the host OS for better I/O, CPU, memory, and network utilization. The presented examples can also be used inside the KVM instances, depending on their workload.