What is KVM?

KVM or Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is an open-source virtualization technology built into Linux®. Specifically, KVM lets you turn Linux into a hypervisor that allows a host machine to run multiple, isolated virtual environments called guests or virtual machines (VMs). These virtual machines are supported across a huge range of licensed and Free and Open-Source Software infrastructure stacks for enterprises and service providers.

Why are people moving to KVM?

There are several reasons why an IT organization may consider migrating to KVM.

Firstly, KVM is a cost-effective solution. As an open-source technology, KVM does not require any licensing fees, making it an attractive option for organizations looking to reduce their IT costs, especially as their needs grow. 

Secondly, KVM provides high performance and scalability. KVM is built into the Linux kernel, which means that it can leverage the performance and scalability benefits of Linux. KVM can support a large number of VMs, each with its own dedicated resources, providing a high level of flexibility and scalability.

Thirdly, KVM provides excellent security. KVM uses the Linux kernel’s security features, such as SELinux, to provide robust security for VMs. Additionally, KVM can isolate VMs from each other and from the host system, providing an additional layer of security.

Also, KVM is well-supported and has a large user community. As an open-source technology, KVM benefits from the contributions of a large community of developers and users. This means that bugs and security issues are quickly identified and addressed, and there are many resources available for troubleshooting and support. Not only that, KVM is supported by all of the major Cloud Management Platforms (CMPs). Being the leading open-source virtualization platform, KVM could even be argued to be “first among equals” with open-source CMPs such as OpenStack and CloudStack, and OpenNebula. KVM is especially popular with larger-scale operations such as cloud service providers, hosting providers, and bigger managed service providers. Some larger enterprises are looking to KVM as a way to cut costs and move to more of a cloud-like operating model. 

It could also be market events that have people considering a change. As The Register notes, people are concerned about Broadcom’s impending acquisition of VMware. And they are looking at the open-source community, and especially KVM, as an alternative.

With all this momentum behind KVM, StorPool customers asked for help migrating their VMs and even bare metal applications to KVM. So we did.

We got together with partners and customers to give a talk. 

We’ve written papers with step-by-step instructions.
Migrate to a New-Age IT Stack with KVM — a step-by-step guide from StorPool Storage
How to: Migrate from XenServer to KVM – a step-by-step guide from StorPool Storage

We included KVM support in many of our repositories posted on GitHub, including our OpenNebula add-on and our CloudStack integration.

And once you’ve migrated to KVM, we’ve even done a talk about how to supercharge the performance of your applications.

KVM makes a lot of sense for our customers for reasons from cost to open-source philosophy to fit with their cloud management system. But we know that not everyone wants to or can immediately migrate every workload to KVM. This is why we support all of the common virtualization and automation stacks, including KVM, VMware, Microsoft, Kubernetes, and the rest.