What open source virtualization tools do you use?

Tell us about your virtual machine management tools of choice.
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When it comes to managing virtual machines, there is no shortage of open source tools out there to choose from. Whether you are trying to virtualize a whole data center worth of servers in a cloud environment, test out a new operating system on your desktop, or something in between, it's important to choose the right tool for the job.

Some virtual machine tools ship as all-in-one solutions, like VirtualBox. For professional and enterprise open source users in a Linux environment, there's a good chance you're using the KVM virtualization abilities built right into your kernel as your hypervisor, or perhaps an alternative like Xen, and at least one other tool as an abstraction layer to manage the virtual machines you launch. Perhaps it's a simple command-line tool like virsh, a desktop tool like Virtual Machine Manager, an advanced tool like oVirt, or perhaps even managing them as a part of a cloud with an open source tool like OpenStack.

We can't possibly list all of the potential options for tools you might consider, so in lieu of trying and failing at generating a complete list, we've listed some of our favorites here, and invite you to fill in with your other preferred tools in the comments below. What tools do you use for managing virtual machines, and why? Do you use one of these? Maybe a virtual environment manager, like Vagrant? Share your virtualization toolchain with us!

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Jason was an Opensource.com staff member and Red Hatter from 2013 to 2022. This profile contains his work-related articles from that time. Other contributions can be found on his personal account.

8 Comments

proxmox in my lab, backed by natively-supported zfs storage. three-tiered hybrid storage, with top tier *in ram* - and it's ridiciulously easy to setup. even proxmox root an go right into a zfs pool, then you add caching functionality.

I use kvm/qemu, but I no longer use libvirt or virtual-machine manager. Instead I use custom shell scripts.

Firstly, I do a lot of complex virtual network environments and libvirt's behavior (mostly related to use of dnsmasq) is too prescriptive and limited. It tries to automate too much, and in the process it sacrifices flexibility. This is a recurring problem with code coming from Red Hat.

Secondly, the dependency on systemd. 'nuff said.

Combination of virt-manager and VirtualBox.

proxmox for my customers sites, and bare LXC managed with salt on my own servers.

i should note that we only use LXC containers everywhere. no actual virtual machines.

unlike docker, using LXC these containers feel and act like full virtual machines, but without the overhead and without the secure separation (which we don't need)

greetings, eMBee.

Proxmox VE

ProxMox is awesome! Only recently got exposed to it - was looking for and easy to manage KVM and containers solution - and ProxMox does it out of the box - every VM server is also a management server - put an NFS share into the mix and you've got clustering! "not quite Docker" - but it's LXC... very underrated product that should be in more enterprise solutions...

Just switched to Qemu. VirtualBox (all versions since 16.04 release) crashes/reboots my Ubuntu 16.04 desktop as soon as the VM boots. Very impressed with Qemu but it's a bit of a learning curve. I should probably write an article for opensource.com

I don't use virtual machines. I have enough computers to do bare metal installations on partitioned hard drives if I want to try new distros. or different desktops. I may also try them on different hardware to see the acceptance of new distros or features. I feel this is the only way to go.

I also use older hardware. I don't need unnecessary resource wasteage, either.

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