Intro

Here’s how to turn a minimal Centos install into a KVM / QEMU based virtual machine host.

Installation

The installation is actually quite straight forward.

yum install qemu-kvm libvirt
systemctl start libvirtd
virt-host-validate

Using KVM / QEMU

When it comes to configuring and managing virtual machines in linux, you have a few different options. The most powerful tools usually require the most reading.

Using Virt-Manager to configure KVM / QEMU

One of the most accessible tools I’ve found is Virt-Manager. If you’re using windows or OSX, your best bet is to fire up a linux virtual machine on your desktop using software like Virtualbox. We’ll call this the client machine.

Install virt-manager on the client machine. Open a terminal (‘Applications’, ‘Utilities’) and run:

yum install virt-manager

Install your ssh key

Create an SSH key. Follow the default options by pressing enter a few times.

ssh-keygen

Install the client key on the server, then try to connect. The server will let you connect without asking for a password.

ssh-copy-id root@homelab
ssh root@homelab

Configure virt-manager to connect to the server

Open Virtual Machine Manager (‘Applications’, ‘System Tools’).

Select ‘File’, ‘Add Connection’.

Tick ‘Connect to remote host’, enter the server’s IP and select ‘Connect’.

You should now be able to right click the host new entry and select ‘New’ to create a virtual machine on that host.