What is a Kernel based Virtual Machine (KVM)?

Definition of Kernel based Virtual Machine (KVM)

Kernel based virtual machine (KVM) is a virtualization infrastructure for Linux family of operating systems. It utilizes Linux OS kernel and is designed to create / deliver virtual machines on x86 based processor architecture.

Brief Description of Kernel based Virtual Machine

Kernel based virtual machine primarily is a hypervisor application that emulates and provisions creation of virtual machines on Linux kernel embedded operating systems. These include Fedora, Red Hat, Suse Linux and more.  KVM natively supports integration and deployment on all x86 processors and provide separate instruction set extensions for AMD processors.

Although Kernel based virtual machine only installed on Linux kernel native OS, it’s created virtual machine can be mounted with any guest operating system. Such as a KVM created virtual machine can have Windows, BSD, and Solaris as its operating system. KVM also enables in allocating separate virtualized computing resources for each virtual machine such as the processor, storage, memory.