Mastering KVM Virtualization

Learn how to configure, automate, orchestrate, troubleshoot, and monitor KVM-based environments capable of scaling to private and hybrid cloud models

Key Features

• Gain expert insights into Linux virtualization and the KVM ecosystem with this comprehensive guide
• Learn to use various Linux tools such as QEMU, oVirt, libvirt, Cloud-Init, and Cloudbase-Init
• Scale, monitor, and troubleshoot your VMs on various platforms, including OpenStack and AWS

Book Description

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) enables you to virtualize your data center by transforming your Linux operating system into a powerful hypervisor that allows you to manage multiple operating systems with minimal fuss. With this book, you'll gain insights into configuring, troubleshooting, and fixing bugs in KVM virtualization and related software.

This second edition of Mastering KVM Virtualization is updated to cover the latest developments in the core KVM components - libvirt and QEMU. Starting with the basics of Linux virtualization, you'll explore VM lifecycle management and migration techniques. You'll then learn how to use SPICE and VNC protocols while creating VMs and discover best practices for using snapshots. As you progress, you'll integrate third-party tools with Ansible for automation and orchestration. You'll also learn to scale out and monitor your environments, and will cover oVirt, OpenStack, Eucalyptus, AWS, and ELK stack. Throughout the book, you'll find out more about tools such as Cloud-Init and Cloudbase-Init. Finally, you'll be taken through the performance tuning and troubleshooting guidelines for KVM-based virtual machines and a hypervisor.

By the end of this book, you'll be well-versed with KVM virtualization and the tools and technologies needed to build and manage diverse virtualization environments.

What you will learn

• Implement KVM virtualization using libvirt and oVirt
• Delve into KVM storage and network
• Understand snapshots, templates, and live migration features
• Get to grips with managing, scaling, and optimizing the KVM ecosystem
• Discover how to tune and optimize KVM virtualization hosts
• Adopt best practices for KVM platform troubleshooting

Who this book is for

If you are a systems administrator, DevOps practitioner, or developer with Linux experience looking to sharpen your open-source virtualization skills, this virtualization book is for you. Prior understanding of the Linux command line and virtualization is required before getting started with this book.

Table of Contents

1. Linux Virtualization
2. KVM as a virtualization solution
3. Installing a KVM hypervisor, Libvirt and ovirt
4. Libvirt Networking
5. Libvirt Storage
6. Virtual Display Devices and Protocols
7. VM: Installation, Configuration, and Life Cycle Management
8. Creating and Modifying VM Disks, Templates and Snapshots
9. Customize a Virtual Machine with Cloud-init
10. Automated Windows guest deployment and customization
11. Orchestration and Automation with Ansible
12. Implementing OpenStack on KVM
13. Implementing KVM with AWS
14. Monitoring KVM Virtualization Platform
15. Performance Tuning and Optimization
16. Troubleshooting KVM

Vedran Dakic works as a head of Department of operating systems at Algebra University College. He began using Linux while in college back in 1995 and became a RedHat Certified Technician/System Administrator, Engineer and Trainer in 2005., and RedHat Certified Virtualization Administrator in 2016. He's also a certified Microsoft Trainer and VMware Instructor, with key areas of expertise being virtualization, application and cloud technologies (OpenStack, OpenShift, Office 365, Exchange, Azure, vRealize, vCloud Director, etc.)

Humble Devassy Chirammal is a senior software engineer in the Storage Engineering team at Red Hat. He has more than 15 years of IT experience, and his area of expertise is in understanding the full stack in an ecosystem, with emphasis on architecting solutions based on demand. These days he primarily concentrates on Ceph and GlusterFS and its integration to container orchestrator systems like Kubernetes. He has hands-on experience of emerging technologies, such as IaaS and PaaS solutions in Cloud and Containers. In the past, he has worked on intrusion detection systems, Clustering solutions, and Virtualization. As an open source advocate, he is a core contributor to many open source projects like Kubernetes. He actively organizes meetups on Openshift/ Kubernetes, Virtualization, GlusterFS, CentOS. His twitter handle is @hchiramm.

Prasad Mukhedkar is a specialist cloud solution architect at Red Hat India with over 10 years of experience in helping customers in their journey to Virtualization and Cloud adoption. He is a Red Hat Certified Architect and has extensive experience in designing and implementing high performing cloud infrastructure. His areas of expertise are Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7/8 performance tuning, KVM virtualization, Ansible Automation, and Red Hat OpenStack. He is a huge fan of the Linux "GNU screen" utility.

Anil Vettathu began his association with Linux while in college and began his career as a Linux System Administrator soon after. He is a generalist, with an interest in open source technologies. He has hands-on experience in designing and implementing large scale virtualization environments using open source technologies and has extensive knowledge in libvirt and KVM. These days he primarily works on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, containers, and real time performance tuning. Currently, he is working as a Technical Account Manager for Red Hat.