Kernel-based Virtual Machine
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| Original author(s) | Qumranet |
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| Developer(s) | Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) |
| Stable release |
1.2.0 / September 5, 2012
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| Repository | git |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | Unix-like |
| Platform | ARM, IA-64, PowerPC, S/390, x86, x86-64 |
| Type | Hypervisor |
| License | GNU GPL or LGPL |
| Website | www |
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization infrastructure for the Linux kernel that turns it into a hypervisor. It was merged into the Linux kernel mainline in kernel version 2.6.20, which was released on February 5, 2007. KVM requires a processor with hardware virtualization extensions. KVM has also been ported to FreeBSD and illumos in the form of loadable kernel modules.
KVM originally supported x86 processors and has been ported to S/390,PowerPC, and IA-64. An ARM port was merged during the 3.9 kernel merge window.
A wide variety of guest operating systems work with KVM, including many flavours and versions of Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows, Haiku, ReactOS, Plan 9, AROS Research Operating System and OS X. In addition, Android 2.2, GNU/Hurd (Debian K16), Minix 3.1.2a, Solaris 10 U3 and Darwin 8.0.1, together with other operating systems and some newer versions of these listed, are known to work with certain limitations.
Paravirtualization support for certain devices is available for Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Plan 9 and Windows guests using the VirtIO API. This supports a paravirtual Ethernet card, a paravirtual disk I/O controller, a balloon device for adjusting guest memory usage, and a VGA graphics interface using or VMware drivers.
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