Libvirt
| Company type | Open-source software project |
|---|---|
| Industry | Virtualization software |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products | API, daemon, administration utility for virtualization |
| Owner | Red Hat (primary sponsor) |
| Parent | Red Hat |
libvirt represents an open-source API, daemon, and administration utility designed for platform virtualization. It oversees technologies such as KVM, Xen, VMware ESXi, QEMU, among others, functioning as a central orchestration layer for hypervisors within cloud environments.
Internals
At its core, libvirt is developed as a C library, featuring bindings in multiple programming languages including Python, Perl, OCaml, Ruby, Java, JavaScript (through Node.js), and PHP. These bindings encapsulate the primary libvirtmod class, closely mirroring the syntax and capabilities of the original C/C++ codebase.
Supported Hypervisors
- LXC – lightweight container technology for Linux
- OpenVZ – Linux-based container system
- Kernel-based Virtual Machine/QEMU (KVM) – open-source hypervisor compatible with Linux and SmartOS
- Xen – native bare-metal hypervisor
- User-mode Linux (UML) – paravirtualized Linux kernel
- VirtualBox – Oracle’s hypervisor supporting Windows, Linux, macOS, and Solaris
- VMware ESXi and GSX – Intel hardware virtualization platforms
- VMware Workstation and Player – hypervisors for Windows and Linux environments
- Hyper-V – Microsoft’s virtualization solution for Windows
- PowerVM – IBM’s hypervisor targeting AIX, Linux, and IBM i systems
- Bhyve – FreeBSD 10 and later hypervisor (integrated since libvirt version 1.2.2)
User Interfaces
libvirt is incorporated into numerous virtualization ecosystems. Among graphical interfaces are tools like Virtual Machine Manager and GNOME Boxes, while the command line utility virsh remains widely utilized. For more sophisticated administration, platforms such as oVirt provide extended capabilities.
Corporate
The primary development of libvirt is sponsored by Red Hat, with significant input from various organizations and community contributors. It is distributed broadly across Linux variants and supports remote management from both Apple and Microsoft Windows client systems.