oVirt is an enterprise virtualization management platform built around the KVM hypervisor. It provides centralised administration of virtual machines, compute hosts, storage resources and virtual networks, allowing organisations to manage virtualization infrastructure through a web interface.
The platform uses a management engine to coordinate hosts and their virtual machines. The engine communicates with host-side VDSM services, which work with libvirt and KVM to control virtual machine execution. Administrators can organise hosts into clusters, define data centres and configure storage domains from a central location.
oVirt is designed for environments where multiple servers must be managed as a single infrastructure. It provides mechanisms for moving workloads between hosts, monitoring resource consumption and applying high-availability policies. Virtual machine templates simplify deployment, while resource quotas and permission controls help administrators manage shared infrastructure.
The project also provides REST APIs and software development interfaces for automating administration. Its web interface uses modern PatternFly-based components, replacing the older GWT-based interface described in the original LinuxLinks entry.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Centralised management of KVM-based virtual machines and compute hosts.
- Web-based administration of data centres, clusters, storage and networking.
- Manage multiple virtualization hosts from a single administration environment.
- Create, clone, configure and remove virtual machines.
- Use virtual machine templates to simplify workload deployment.
- Live migration of compatible virtual machines between hosts.
- Configure high-availability policies for supported workloads.
- Monitor virtual machine and host resource usage.
- Support NFS, iSCSI, Fibre Channel and other compatible storage backends.
- Manage storage domains, virtual disks and disk snapshots.
- Configure logical networks, virtual network interfaces and VLANs.
- Control CPU and memory allocation to virtual machines.
- Support memory overcommit and Kernel Samepage Merging where applicable.
- Configure virtual machine scheduling and host affinity policies.
- Resource quotas and permission management for shared infrastructure.
- Role-based access control and external authentication integration.
- REST API and SDK facilities for infrastructure automation.
- Self-service access to virtual machine resources through user-oriented interfaces.
Website: www.ovirt.org
Support:
Developer: oVirt Project contributors
License: Apache License 2.0
oVirt is written in Java. Learn Java with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Software | |
|---|---|
| OpenStack | Delivers a massively scalable cloud operating system |
| CloudStack | Turnkey solution that includes the entire "stack" of features |
| OpenNebula | Cloud computing toolkit |
| n8n | Workflow automation tool |
| Harvester | Interoperable, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution |
| oVirt | Virtualization platform with an easy-to-use web interface |
| OpenQRM | Automated, rapid-deployment, storage-manage, virtualization and cloud |
| ZStack | Designed to tackle two problems -- complexity and stability |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Hypervisors | |
|---|---|
| Proxmox | Virtualization management platform |
| Xen Hypervisor | Fastest and most secure infrastructure virtualization solution |
| KVM | Full virtualization solution for x86 hardware |
| oVirt | Virtualization solution for your entire enterprise |
| Firecracker | Create and run lightweight microVMs |
| XCP-ng | High performance enterprise level virtualization platform |
| Lguest | Little hypervisor designed for experimentation with virtualization |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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