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openSUSE Leap Documentation › Virtualization Guide › Introduction › Virtualization Tools
ContentsContents
Virtualization Guide
  1. About This Manual
  2. I Introduction
    1. 1 Virtualization Technology
    2. 2 Introduction to Xen Virtualization
    3. 3 Introduction to KVM Virtualization
    4. 4 Virtualization Tools
    5. 5 Installation of Virtualization Components
  3. II Managing Virtual Machines with libvirt
    1. 6 Starting and Stopping libvirtd
    2. 7 Guest Installation
    3. 8 Basic VM Guest Management
    4. 9 Connecting and Authorizing
    5. 10 Managing Storage
    6. 11 Managing Networks
    7. 12 Configuring Virtual Machines with Virtual Machine Manager
    8. 13 Configuring Virtual Machines with virsh
    9. 14 Managing Virtual Machines with Vagrant
  4. III Hypervisor-Independent Features
    1. 15 Disk Cache Modes
    2. 16 VM Guest Clock Settings
    3. 17 libguestfs
    4. 18 QEMU Guest Agent
  5. IV Managing Virtual Machines with Xen
    1. 19 Setting Up a Virtual Machine Host
    2. 20 Virtual Networking
    3. 21 Managing a Virtualization Environment
    4. 22 Block Devices in Xen
    5. 23 Virtualization: Configuration Options and Settings
    6. 24 Administrative Tasks
    7. 25 XenStore: Configuration Database Shared between Domains
    8. 26 Xen as a High-Availability Virtualization Host
  6. V Managing Virtual Machines with QEMU
    1. 27 QEMU Overview
    2. 28 Setting Up a KVM VM Host Server
    3. 29 Guest Installation
    4. 30 Running Virtual Machines with qemu-system-ARCH
    5. 31 Virtual Machine Administration Using QEMU Monitor
  7. VI Managing Virtual Machines with LXC
    1. 32 Linux Containers
    2. 33 Migration from LXC to libvirt-lxc
  8. Glossary
  9. A Appendix
  10. B XM, XL Toolstacks and Libvirt framework
  11. C GNU Licenses
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4 Virtualization Tools Edit source

libvirt is a library that provides a common API for managing popular virtualization solutions, among them KVM, LXC, and Xen. The library provides a normalized management API for these virtualization solutions, allowing a stable, cross-hypervisor interface for higher-level management tools. The library also provides APIs for management of virtual networks and storage on the VM Host Server. The configuration of each VM Guest is stored in an XML file.

With libvirt you can also manage your VM Guests remotely. It supports TLS encryption, x509 certificates and authentication with SASL. This enables managing VM Host Servers centrally from a single workstation, alleviating the need to access each VM Host Server individually.

Using the libvirt-based tools is the recommended way of managing VM Guests. Interoperability between libvirt and libvirt-based applications has been tested and is an essential part of SUSE's support stance.

4.1 Virtualization Console Tools
4.2 Virtualization GUI Tools

4.1 Virtualization Console Tools Edit source

The following libvirt-based tools for the command line are available on openSUSE Leap:

virsh (Package: libvirt-client)

A command line tool to manage VM Guests with similar functionality as the Virtual Machine Manager. Allows you to change a VM Guest's status (start, stop, pause, etc.), to set up new guests and devices, or to edit existing configurations. virsh is also useful to script VM Guest management operations.

virsh takes the first argument as a command and further arguments as options to this command: 

virsh [-c URI] COMMAND DOMAIN-ID [OPTIONS]

Like zypper, virsh can also be called without a command. In this case it starts a shell waiting for your commands. This mode is useful when having to run subsequent commands: 

~> virsh -c qemu+ssh://wilber@mercury.example.com/system
Enter passphrase for key '/home/wilber/.ssh/id_rsa':
Welcome to virsh, the virtualization interactive terminal.

Type:  'help' for help with commands
       'quit' to quit

virsh # hostname
mercury.example.com
virt-install (Package: virt-install)

A command line tool for creating new VM Guests using the libvirt library. It supports graphical installations via VNC or SPICE protocols. Given suitable command line arguments, virt-install can run completely unattended. This allows for easy automation of guest installs. virt-install is the default installation tool used by the Virtual Machine Manager.

4.2 Virtualization GUI Tools Edit source

The following libvirt-based graphical tools are available on openSUSE Leap. All tools are provided by packages carrying the tool's name.

Virtual Machine Manager (Package: virt-manager)

The Virtual Machine Manager is a desktop tool for managing VM Guests. It provides the ability to control the lifecycle of existing machines (start/shutdown, pause/resume, save/restore) and create new VM Guests. It allows managing various types of storage and virtual networks. It provides access to the graphical console of VM Guests with a built-in VNC viewer and can be used to view performance statistics. virt-manager supports connecting to a local libvirtd, managing a local VM Host Server, or a remote libvirtd managing a remote VM Host Server.

To start the Virtual Machine Manager, enter virt-manager at the command prompt.

Note
Note

To disable automatic USB device redirection for VM Guest using spice, either launch virt-manager with the --spice-disable-auto-usbredir parameter or run the following command to persistently change the default behavior: 

tux > dconf write /org/virt-manager/virt-manager/console/auto-redirect false
virt-viewer (Package: virt-viewer)

A viewer for the graphical console of a VM Guest. It uses SPICE (configured by default on the VM Guest) or VNC protocols and supports TLS and x509 certificates. VM Guests can be accessed by name, ID, or UUID. If the guest is not already running, the viewer can be told to wait until the guest starts, before attempting to connect to the console. virt-viewer is not installed by default and is available after installing the package virt-viewer.

Note
Note

To disable automatic USB device redirection for VM Guest using spice, add an empty filter using the --spice-usbredir-auto-redirect-filter='' parameter.

yast2 vm (Package: yast2-vm)

A YaST module that simplifies the installation of virtualization tools and can set up a network bridge:

→Chapter 5 Installation of Virtualization Components←Chapter 3 Introduction to KVM Virtualization
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