RHEL / CentOS 6.x KVM Virtualization Installation and Configuration Guide

Installing KVM on RHEL/CentOS 6.x involves the following steps:

1. Verify hardware virtualization support: Make sure that your hardware supports virtualization. You can check this by running the following command:

grep -E 'vmx|svm' /proc/cpuinfo

1. Install KVM packages: The KVM packages can be installed using the "yum" package manager. Run the following command in your terminal:

yum install qemu-kvm libvirt libvirt-python libvirt-client virt-install

1. Load the KVM module: Load the KVM module by running the following command:

modprobe kvm

1. Start the libvirtd service: Start the libvirtd service by running the following command:

systemctl start libvirtd

1. Verify the installation: Verify the installation by running the following command:

virsh list

This command should return an empty list, indicating that no virtual machines are running.

1. Configure network bridge: Configure a network bridge for your virtual machines to use. The bridge can be created using the following commands:

nmcli connection add type bridge con-name br0 ifname br0
nmcli connection modify br0 ipv4.method manual ipv4.addresses 192.168.122.1/24
nmcli connection modify br0 ipv4.dns "192.168.122.1"
nmcli connection up br0

1. Create virtual machines: To create virtual machines, you can use the "virt-install" tool. The syntax for creating a virtual machine is as follows:

virt-install --name   --memory   --vcpus   --disk   --network bridge=br0 --graphics vnc,listen=0.0.0.0 --os-type   --os-variant   --noautoconsole

Replace the placeholder values in square brackets with the appropriate values for your virtual machine.

This is a high-level overview of the steps involved in installing and configuring KVM on RHEL/CentOS 6.x. For more detailed information, refer to the official KVM documentation.