Kernel-based Virtual Machine

Kernel-based Virtual Machine is one of the virtualization technologies supported by License Metric Tool.

Purpose

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a full virtualization solution for Linux®. In the KVM architecture, each guest (virtual machine) is implemented as a regular Linux process. After you install KVM, you can run multiple guests, with each of them running a different operating system image. Each of these virtual machines has private, virtualized hardware, which includes memory, storage, graphics adapter, and a network card. This allows KVM to benefit from all the features of the Linux kernel.

Collecting capacity data

Capacity data is collected from virtual machines that are managed by KVM hosts in two ways:

By the VM Manager Tool. Data is collected this way from the following hosts:
- x86 Red Hat KVM hosts that are controlled by RHV-M
- x86 Oracle Linux KVM hosts that are controlled by Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager
Directly from the host. Data is collected this way from the following hosts:
- x86 KVM hosts that are not controlled by RHV-M nor Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager
- PowerKVM hosts
For more information, see the following links:
- Collecting capacity data from virtualization hosts for Xen and KVM (BigFix scenario)
- Collecting capacity data from virtualization hosts with disconnect scanner (disconnected scenario)

Red Hat Virtualization Manager (RHV-M)

Red Hat Virtualization (RHV, previously known as Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization) is an enterprise virtualization product based on the KVM hypervisor. RHV-M is a service running on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux server that provides interfaces for controlling the virtualization platform. It manages provisioning, connection protocols, user sessions logins and logoffs, virtual desktop pools, virtual machine images, and the high availability and clustering systems. RHV-M provides the REST API that is used by License Metric Tool to collect information about the whole infrastructure that is managed by RHV-M.

The default URL that is to be used:

https://{manager-address}/ovirt-engine/api

Diagram showing the communication between the server and RHV-M

Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager

Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager is a management platform that can be used to manage Oracle Linux KVM environment. It can be used to manage hosts, virtual machines, storage, and other. Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager provides REST API that is used by License Metric Tool to collect information about the whole infrastructure that it manages. The default URL that is to be used:

https://{manager-address}/ovirt-engine/api

Supported versions

For information about supported versions, go to IBM® License Metric Tool 9.2 - Supported Operating Systems and click Supported Hypervisor.