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5.2. Installing Virtualization Packages on an Existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux System
This section describes the steps for installing the KVM hypervisor on a working Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 or newer system.
To install the packages, your machines must be registered. To register using Red Hat Subscription Manager, run the
subscription-manager register command and follow the prompts.
If you do not have a valid Red Hat subscription, visit the Red Hat online store to obtain one.
Note
Red Hat Network (RHN) has now been deprecated. Subscription Manager should now be used for registration tasks.
Installing the Virtualization Packages with
yum
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-installcommand 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
libvirtddaemon 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
virshcommand 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.
Note
Note that the
qemu-img package is installed as a dependency of the Virtualization package group if it is not already installed on the system. It can also be installed manually with the yum install qemu-img command as described previously.
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.
