Look Who it Was Random video

kvmtool - A QEMU Alternative?

4,071 views · Published 4 April 2017 · 54:23 · Indexed 19 October 2026

Channel: The Linux Foundation · 2017 · Science & Technology

Watch on YouTube

kvmtool - A QEMU Alternative? - Andre Przywara, ARM

kvmtool started out as lean, hacker-friendly alternative to QEMU for driving KVM virtual machines, living in the tools directory of the kernel tree. At ARM it was and is used as an early enablement vehicle for testing new KVM kernel features. Now as the tool has been separated from the kernel tree and lives in its own, independent repository, wider interest has sparked to use it in more production like scenarios , for instance in the hope to use less host resources. The presentation will first give an overview about kvmtool, showing the differences and similarities to QEMU. It also looks at how kvmtool performs in terms of resource usage and what obstacles it still needs to overcome to become more useful.

About Andre Przywara

Andre Przywara works in the ARM Linux kernel team in Cambridge/UK, primarily on KVM, but also on other parts of the kernel. Recent work included extending the virtualization support for the ARM interrupt controller and helping with Linux support for the Pine64 board. Before joining ARM Andre spent a year in an early-bird ARM server company, while being assigned to the Linaro group. He gained much experience and knowledge in Linux, KVM, QEMU and Xen while working for AMD in the six years before, mainly, but not exclusively contributing to x86 hardware virtualization code in those projects.

More from this channel