Installation guide

Chapter 17.
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sVirt
sVirt is a technology included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 that integrates SELinux and virtualization.
sVirt applies Mandatory Access Control (MAC) to improve security when using virtualized guests. The
main reasons for integrating these technologies are to improve security and harden the system against
bugs in the hypervisor that might be used as an attack vector aimed toward the host or to another
virtualized guest.
This chapter describes how sVirt integrates with virtualization technologies in Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 6.
Non-virtualized environments
In a non-virtualized environment, hosts are separated from each other physically and each host has
a self-contained environment, consisting of services such as a web server, or a DNS server. These
services communicate directly to their own user space, host kernel and physical host, offering their
services directly to the network. The following image represents a non-virtualized environment:
Virtualized environments
In a virtualized environment, several operating systems can run on a single host kernel and physical
host. The following image represents a virtualized environment: