The virtualization API
libvirt is:
A toolkit to interact with the virtualization capabilities of recent versions of Linux (and other OSes), see our project goals for details. Free software available under the GNU Lesser General Public License. A long term stable C API A set of bindings for common languages A CIM provider for the DMTF virtualization schema A QMF agent for the AMQP/QPid messaging system
libvirt supports:
The KVM/QEMU Linux hypervisor The Xen hypervisor on Linux and Solaris hosts. The LXC Linux container system The OpenVZ Linux container system The User Mode Linux paravirtualized kernel The VirtualBox hypervisor The VMware ESX and GSX hypervisors The VMware Workstation and Player hypervisors The Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor Virtual networks using bridging, NAT, VEPA and VN-LINK. Storage on IDE/SCSI/USB disks, FibreChannel, LVM, iSCSI, NFS and filesystems
libvirt provides:
Remote management using TLS encryption and x509 certificates Remote management authenticating with Kerberos and SASL Local access control using PolicyKit Zero-conf discovery using Avahi multicast-DNS Management of virtual machines, virtual networks and storage Portable client API for Linux, Solaris and Windows
