KVM Reviews & Insights

Virtualization was a turning point in technology because of its flexibility and reliability. Before virtualization, we had to deal with all the issues related to bare metal servers. Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine became the industry de-facto for virtualization, especially for *nix related guess operating systems. It is very stable and reliable for production systems. We use virtualized servers for more than a decade on Kernel-based Virtual Machine technology with amazing results.

It is a very stable and reliable technology. Highly recommended for *nix production systems. It is capable of dealing with large amounts of CPU, memory, and disk, as well as, network traffic. I never used it to virtualize Microsoft Windows systems.

Linux KVM is a powerful and free (in the case of using Ubuntu for example) virtualization tool. In our organization KVM plays a significant role in DevNet related implementations (especially by using in pair of network appliances + KVM with a variety of firewall/router/VPN box images). AT&T which is one of our carriers and the most well-known SP is also using KVM in its FlexWare environment (Juniper NFX hardware + KVM + vEX/vSRX images).

KVM is the best solution in the case you need to test and turn up any virtual environment with limited vCPU/RAM resources. The obvious area of its use is a network environment when we want to avoid being tied to one type of hardware/vendor and being able to swap from one instance to another with no downtimes. The use of a vSwitch (that supports VLAN tagging) is a significant bonus for network engineers that some other hypervisors do not provide.

We use virtualisation to segregate workloads and to reduce blast radius of certain classes of problems. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is an open-source, flexible, and performant solution to our needs. It runs natively via virt-manager on SUSE-based products, which we use prefer for production usage.

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is available for Linux systems, and most of the time supported by the operating system vendor. I would recommend using Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)whenever attempting to virtualise workloads on Linux.

I am a consultant who provides KVM-based solutions to customers from all sizes and industries.

At the customers, KVM is usually used by the IT departments, providing virtulization services to all kinds of users, departments and maybe even their customers.

Regarding the business problems KVM adresses:
KVM manages to provide a Linux-integrated virtualization foundation which enables IT departments to provide virtualized systems very fast and efficient. With enough knowledge, IT departments simply install Linux servers and start KVM VMs. The time frame from starting until VMs are up and running is very short, so IT departments don't necessarely have to buy virtualization products if they use KVM.

Kernel-based Virtual Machine is very well suited when one needs a single-node virtualization host or needs to build a complex demo setting on their own notebook (e.g. when demonstrating solutions to a customer).

We are using Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) as part of our storage solution (OpenStack based). Our solution provides low-cost disk volumes to researchers to use for archiving and data backup. The volumes are provided by KVM virtual machines orchestrated by OpenStack Cinder. It was easier to implement this solution with KVM than XenServer Hypervisor.

I recommend using KVM if you want to start a proof of concept of OpenStack services because it is very simple to configure and has much documentation about it. If your IT environment is Linux based, KVM is a great alternative to virtualize your infrastructure. It works with Windows virtual machines, but it is better with Linux obviously.

KVM is the underlying technology for all of the virtualization that we run. We wanted to ensure that we weren't tied into a specific vendor and could easily migrate if one started to misbehave. By using KVM based solutions, we can easily shift to new solutions as things improve, set up low cost lab/testing environments, and provide solid virtualization environments for our clients.

If you are running software from a vendor that doesn't require something specific (like VMWare) KVM is likely a great fit. It performs well (outside of graphics work), supports pretty much all features one would need in a small to mid size enterprise, and doesn't lock you into bad licensing schemes. It also lets you easily move from one vendor to another easily, so it gives you a lot of agility in how you manage your infrastructure.