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In order to test new ideas and reduce cost I would like to test KVM. I think Vmware has these 3 things which are valuable: - HA which restart VMs (Virtual Machines) in other hosts when a Hardware failure. - DRS which basically is an intelligent VM placement when a hosts is overcommited - vMotion which migrates VMs up and running to other hosts.

So my question: Can I get those 3 features using KVM? I suppose I need a KVM Central Console equivalent to vCenter?

is there such console offering those 3 things? for free? Will Openstack cover those 3?

is just I need to talk to my boss about moving to KVM but I know for sure he will ask OK...does it have the same capabilities as Vmware has?

Which Linux do you recommend to run KVM. CentOS?

thanks a lot guys

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  • Ovirt looks promising like I said now my doubt is. I get there a ovirt management interface like vCenter but is there also Ovirt Hypervisor edition like ESXi? or I can use Ovirt Management Web interface to manage any KVM linux node? Commented Jul 18, 2013 at 16:08

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Some partial answers to get you going in the right direction...too big for a comment.

Pretty sure that Redhat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) can do all that you want. It's not free. oVirt is the open source that it is based on. I have not used it.

Archipel is another orchestrator option.

I don't know what all openstack can do.

You may be tempted to use the RHEL/CentOS virtualization manager GUI - don't bother. It is next to worthless. The only networking it can set up is either host-only or NAT. Bridged is quite possible, and is what you want - but that GUI doesn't have this option.

Also, note that libvirtd (the management layer that works above KVM and other hypervisors) and/or KVM are crippled on RHEL (and presumably CentOS). In particular, they do not include vmotion-equivalent functionality, even though the base open source project does. I suspect you can find builds that include all the functionality, but I haven't looked.

From the command line, you can do (almost?) everything for a standalone hypervisor with libvirtd's virsh shell. I haven't figured out how to make it "own" a bridge device that I created manually, but it can hook VMs into it with no problem.

There are standalone tools for working with disk images. KVM supports lots of different types but you will probably want to use qcow2 images and/or raw devices (likely LVM volumes, but hey, whatever floats your boat). I think qcow2 is the only one that supports snapshots with support from libvirtd.

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  • This archipel software looks interesting still lacking HA capability for what I see. Thanks a lot Commented Jul 17, 2013 at 14:48
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    +1 for Archipel if only for my favorite Github FAQ entry of all time: "-Q: I use Internet Explorer and X doesn't seems to work -A:Are you kidding?" Commented Jul 22, 2013 at 18:28
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VMWare hypervisor cannot do HA/DRS/Live Migration, all it can do is run a VM, just like KVM. The fancier features are the function of a management layer - vsphere suite for vmware and packages like RHEV, Ovirt, proxmox etc for KVM.

Not sure about proxmox, but RHEV can do host load balancing policies (equivalent to DRS), live migration and HA, among a lot of other features. It can also scale well beyond anything vmware has to offer.

Openstack, will not have these featyres, although, if you deploy it on top of RHEV or oVirt, the underlying arch will be able to do that. Openstack, in vmware terms is closer to the cloud orchestrator package

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  • yeah I know for HA-DRS-vMotion vCenter (central management) is needed so basically yes I need to know if this KVM has something like that. Lately I've seen a lot of VPS (Virtual Private Server) online offering. They get you a VM up and running very easy and cheap so my doubt is these too many online services I don't think are running vcloud director or any similar payment option to provision this VMs. Thanks for your comment Commented Jul 17, 2013 at 17:13
  • you probably will not be told by those hosting companies what it is they use to manage their VMs. In the cloud, your workload is never your pet though, it's more like cattle out in the field. Nobody will try to fix things, it's much easier to shoot the VM in the head and start it on another host. So don't expect live migrations and load balancing, if a hosts needs to be rebalanced, the VMs will probably just be killed off, and started elsewhere. Commented Jul 17, 2013 at 20:25
  • by the way both of you pointed Ovirt which is free and looks pretty promising Commented Jul 18, 2013 at 16:03

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