Virtualisation

• 
  https://www.linux-kvm.org
• 
  https://www.qemu.org
• 
  https://libvirt.org/
• 
  https://virt-manager.org/

Virtualization is the process of creating several virtual machines (VMs) from one physical machine using software called a hypervisor.

The virtual machines act and perform just like physical machines, sharing the physical machine’s computing resources.

With virtualization you can run multiple servers, desktops, operating systems and networks within the same physical machine.

KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions.

Using KVM, one can run multiple virtual machines running unmodified Linux or Windows images.

Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware: Network, disk, graphics, etc.

The kernel component of KVM is included in mainline Linux, as of 2.6.20., the userspace component of KVM is included in mainline QEMU, as of 1.3.

QEMU is a free and open-source hosted hypervisor that performs hardware virtualization.

LIBVIRT is an open-source API, daemon and management tool for managing platform virtualization.

It can be used to manage KVM, Xen, VMware ESX, QEMU and other virtualization technologies.

These APIs are widely used in the orchestration layer of hypervisors in the development of a cloud-based solution.

VIRT-MANAGER application is a desktop user interface for managing virtual machines through libvirt.

KVM + LIBVIRT + QEMU + VIRT-MANAGER are free and open source – there are no limitations and you can inspect, integrate, extend and modify however you want.