Installing virtualization packages on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

To use virtualization on Red Hat Enterprise Linux you require at least the qemu-kvm and qemu-img packages. These packages provide the user-level KVM emulator and disk image manager on the host Red Hat Enterprise Linux system.

To install the qemu-kvm and qemu-img packages, run the following command: 

 

# yum install qemu-kvm qemu-img

Several additional virtualization management packages are also available:

Recommended virtualization packages

python-virtinst

Provides the virt-install command for creating virtual machines.

libvirt

The libvirt package provides the server and host side libraries for interacting with hypervisors and host systems. The libvirt package provides the libvirtd daemon that handles the library calls, manages virtual machines and controls the hypervisor.

libvirt-python

The libvirt-python package contains a module that permits applications written in the Python programming language to use the interface supplied by the libvirt API.

virt-manager

virt-manager, also known as Virtual Machine Manager, provides a graphical tool for administering virtual machines. It uses libvirt-client library as the management API.

libvirt-client

The libvirt-client package provides the client-side APIs and libraries for accessing libvirt servers. The libvirt-client package includes the virsh command line tool to manage and control virtual machines and hypervisors from the command line or a special virtualization shell.

Install all of these recommended virtualization packages with the following command: 

 

# yum install virt-manager libvirt libvirt-python python-virtinst libvirt-client

Installing Virtualization package groups

The virtualization packages can also be installed from package groups. The following table describes the virtualization package groups and what they provide.

Table 5.1. Virtualization Package Groups

Package Group	Description	Mandatory Packages	Optional Packages
Virtualization	Provides an environment for hosting virtual machines	qemu-kvm	qemu-guest-agent, qemu-kvm-tools
Virtualization Client	Clients for installing and managing virtualization instances	python-virtinst, virt-manager, virt-viewer	virt-top
Virtualization Platform	Provides an interface for accessing and controlling virtual machines and containers	libvirt, libvirt-client, virt-who, virt-what	fence-virtd-libvirt, fence-virtd-multicast, fence-virtd-serial, libvirt-cim, libvirt-java, libvirt-qmf, libvirt-snmp, perl-Sys-Virt
Virtualization Tools	Tools for offline virtual image management	libguestfs	libguestfs-java, libguestfs-tools, virt-v2v

To install a package group, run the yum groupinstall <groupname> command. For instance, to install the Virtualization Tools package group, run the yum groupinstall "Virtualization Tools" command.