Open Virtualization Alliance FAQs

KVM FAQs

What will the Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) do?
Foster the adoption of KVM as an enterprise-ready open virtualization solution. This entails ecosystem, marketing and educational activities. We’ll document and promote best practices for KVM adoption and showcase usage stories to illustrate successful KVM adoption. We’ll also encourage the development of a third-party ecosystem around KVM, including ISVs. And we’ll help educate the market on the capabilities and benefits of KVM.
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How do the activities of the OVA relate to the open source development of KVM?
The promotional activities of the Alliance are intended to complement the process and structures already in place in the open source community while also recognizing that software, technology roadmaps specification and development will continue to take place within those community processes.
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How will member companies benefit from the formation of the OVA?
The member companies are all part of the Linux® and virtualization ecosystems. Our businesses leverage open source solutions, so all will benefit from increased KVM adoption. Improving awareness of KVM as an enterprise-ready open-virtualization solution will also help users understand their options when adopting virtualization.
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How will other companies and users of virtualization benefit from the OVA?
More organizations are adopting virtualization, which is widely viewed as a valuable way to improve the management of IT infrastructures and cut costs. This consortium will provide information to help those organizations understand and evaluate their virtualization options.
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Can other organizations join? If so, how?
Yes! We encourage new participants to become members. Achieving the OVA’s goals can be best accomplished with a broad, active membership. Find details on joining in our bylaws, which are public.
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How is the OVA set up?
The OVA is a not-for-profit corporation set up to advance the shared goals of the members. Participation is open. Find details on the consortium’s structure and governance in our publicly available bylaws.
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Is there a cost to participate?
Membership is tiered, with governing memberships requiring higher dues than general memberships. Find details on cost and associated benefits in our publicly available bylaws.
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Tell me more about the standardizing function of this group.
The OVA is not a formal standards body. But by encouraging interoperability and the development of common interfaces and application programming interfaces (APIs), we can ease the adoption of KVM for users. The activities of the OVA are intended to complement the processes and structures already in place in the open standards community.
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Will education be available to everyone or only members?
Everyone will benefit, but members can help direct our efforts.
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Will the OVA change the current development process for KVM?
No. Upstream development communities will be unchanged by the Alliance. And we don’t anticipate any changes to IBM’s current development relationship with Red Hat® around KVM. The OVA’s activities are intended to complement the processes and structures already in place in the open source community while recognizing that software, technology roadmaps, specifications, and development will continue to take place within those community processes.
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What exactly will the relationship of the OVA be with upstream KVM development communities?
OVA members are expected to be active in KVM development or deployment. As such, they are already developers or users. As a body, the Alliance can provide requirements and resources to upstream development communities.
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Will the OVA produce any products or offer solutions based on KVM?
No, but OVA members will. One of the criteria for joining the Alliance is to produce or use a product or service that is based on KVM.
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Will the OVA define any APIs?
No, but it will formalize the usage of APIs that are produced by upstream development communities. And it will provide guidelines for API usage to third-party solution providers.
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Some of these member companies are fierce competitors. Why are they coming together around this initiative?
All the OVA members have businesses that leverage open source solutions, including virtualization. Collaborating on a foundational infrastructure to provide a better experience for users will benefit all of our customers. More than a decade ago, many of these same companies began collaborating on Linux technology. That led to Linux improvements – which increased its adoption – and to better IT solutions for our customers. Attempting to differentiate in these areas would add little value and ultimately lead to fragmentation, something that’s not good for members or their customers.
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KVM FAQs

Why KVM?

Simple. KVM is an impressive enterprise-grade alternative to expensive proprietary virtualization solutions. Many leading independent software vendors (ISVs) are committed to KVM and KVM-based solutions for its:

  • Record-breaking performance: Added virtualization-specific performance-enhancing features–like SR-IOV, hugepages, and asynchronous I/O–let Red Hat® Enterprise Virtualization and Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) achieve record-breaking virtualization performance.
  • Superior scalability: KVM can scale up to 4,096 core hosts with 64TB of RAM and 64 vCPU guests with 2TB of RAM – well above what competing proprietary solutions can offer.
  • Advanced security: SELinux allows fine-grained kernel-level security policies to be applied to virtual machines (VMs). No other hypervisor on the market supports this advanced security infrastructure.
  • High quality of service (QoS): Linux® includes C-Groups (control groups), which allow fine-grained QoS policies for Linux processes. Because KVM is part of the Linux kernel, a VM is no different than any other program running on Linux. So administrators can set defined thresholds for CPU, memory, network, and disk I/O, guaranteeing the QoS for given VMs.
  • Lower cost: Companies that have deployed KVM-based solutions saved up to 80% over deploying similar configurations based on proprietary solutions.
  • Open ecosystem: KVM’s open source architecture gives you more choice–unlike proprietary solutions that may limit the type of partners and, thus, the choice of interoperable solutions available. IBM Open Virtualization Pages
  • Educational Resources: IBM has created extensive KVM documentation covering best practices, performance tuning, security, frequently asked questions and more. Learn more about IBM KVM documentation

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Typically, KVM isn’t considered an enterprise-grade solution. Has anything changed?

Yes! Recent technology advances in KVM have enabled it to prove itself as an enterprise-grade solution. This includes:

  • Performance: KVM holds the leading SPECvirt performance benchmarks.
  • Scalability: KVM supports significantly more processors and more memory than other x86 hypervisors.
  • Security: KVM, coupled with SELinux, enabled the advanced mandatory access control level of security.

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Tell me more about the benefits of KVM.

KVM is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). Using KVM, you can run multiple virtual machines running unmodified Linux or Microsoft Windows images.

KVM is open source software that’s included as part of the Linux kernel. So unlike other proprietary solutions, KVM can draw on the experience and support of the community of thousands of developers, which has made Linux the most scalable operating system available in the market today.

KVM, the only virtualization solution embedded in the Linux kernel, inherits the performance, scalability, and security characteristics of Linux. Linux has been enterprise-hardened for more than 10 years and is trusted by millions of organizations in the heart of their datacenters to run mission-critical workloads.
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