Part I Introduction #Edit source

Virtualization is a technology that provides a way for a machine (Host) to run another operating system (guest virtual machines) on top of the host operating system.

Virtualization provides several useful capabilities to your organization, for example:

This chapter introduces and explains the components and technologies you need to understand to set up and manage a Xen-based virtualization environment.

libvirt is a library that provides a common API for managing popular virtualization solutions, among them KVM 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.

To run a virtualization server (VM Host Server) that can host one or more guest systems (VM Guests), you need to install required virtualization components on the server. These components vary depending on which virtualization technology you want to use.