Installation guide

5.2. Inst alling virt ualizat ion packages on an exist ing Red Hat
Ent erprise Linux syst em
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 via Red Hat Subscription
Manager, run the subscri pti o n-manag er reg i ster 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.
In st allin g t h e virt u aliz at io n p ackag es wit h yum
To use virtualization on Red Hat Enterprise Linux you require at least the q emu-kvm and q emu-i mg
packages. These packages provide the user-level KVM emulator and disk image manager on the
host Red Hat Enterprise Linux system.
To install the q emu-kvm and q emu-i mg packages, run the following command:
# yum install qemu-kvm qemu-img
Several additional virtualization management packages are also available:
Reco mmen d ed virt u aliz at io n p ackag es
python-virtinst
Provides the vi rt-i nstal l command 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 l i bvi rtd daemon 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
vi rt-manag er, also known as Virt ual Mach in e Manager, provides a graphical tool for
administering virtual machines. It uses libvirt-client library as the management API.
libvirt-client
Red Hat Ent erp rise Linux 6 Virt ualiz at ion Host Configurat ion and G uest Inst allat ion G uide
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