Provisioning the Red Hat KVM hypervisor

You can install the Red Hat KVM hypervisor when you provision the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system to a target server.

You install the Xen hypervisor by selecting it as an operating system component when you create a system package for Red Hat Linux.

The following Red Hat operating system versions include support for the KVM hypervisor:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5.4 and later, x64 architecture.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, x86 and x64 architectures.
  Because only one hypervisor can be active at a time, you can install either the Xen hypervisor or the KVM hypervisor on a server.

Before you begin

Set up and configure the data store for Red Hat Linux provisioning.

To install the Red Hat hypervisor

1. Configure the Red Hat system package type.
2. Create a RHL 5 system package and select Red Hat as the system package type.
3. Define the settings for the system package:
   1. Define these settings as you normally would for a Linux system package: Pre-Install Script, Disk Partition, Basic Config, Computer Settings, Network, KickStart, Post-Install Configuration, and Local Properties. For information, see Defining settings for Red Hat Linux servers
   2. On the OS Components tab, in the Virtualization section, select the hypervisor component:
      • For a Red Hat Linux 5 system package, select KVM.
      • For a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 system package, select Virtualization.
4. Create and execute the Provision Job. See Creating a Provision Job.