Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) is an OpenVZ and KVM based Open Source virtualization platform for running Virtual Appliances and Virtual Machines. Proxmox VE is an open source project, developed and maintained by Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH with financial support from Internet Foundation Austria (IPA).
Does your CPU support the VT-x feature needed for KVM virtualisation ?
Now you can find out at http://ark.intel.com/VTList.aspx. Its not as simple as you may think since some Atoms do (Z520) and some Xeons dont (L3014) !
http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.4/html/Virtualization_Guide
AMD-V or Intel VT virtualisation extensions are required for full KVM or Xen virtualisation.
Use $ cat /proc/cpuinfo to see what your CPU supports. You need either ‘svm’ or ‘vmx’ but note that some older Intel XEONs do not have this !
now includes full support for the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor on x86_64 based architectures. KVM is integrated into the Linux kernel, providing a virtualization platform that takes advantage of the stability, features, and hardware support inherent in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Note
Xen is the default hypervisor that is shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. As such all configuration defaults are tailored for use with the Xen hypervisor. For details on configuring a system for KVM, please refer to the Virtualization Guide.
Important
Xen based virtualization is fully supported. However, Xen-based virtualization requires a different version of the kernel to function. The KVM hypervisor can only be used with the regular (non-Xen) kernel.
Warning
While Xen and KVM may be installed on the same system, the default networking configuration for these are different. Users are strongly recommended to only install one hypervisor on a system.
ConVirt provides enterprise-class management of open source virtualization platforms, making open source virtualization an extremely viable and cost-effective choice for enterprises.
ConVirt lets you manage the complete lifecycle of Xen and KVM virtualization platforms from a central, GUI dashboard.
With sophisticated template-based provisioning, centralized monitoring, configuration management and administration, IT administrators can now automate the entire virtual machine lifecycle on open source platforms.
The howtoforge has a great set of virtualisation howto‘s for Xen, KVM and more !
http://www.virtualization.info/ continues to be a source of some of the best virtualisation articles available
http://www.virtualization.info/2007/01/hidden-risk-of-virtual-appliances.html
http://www.virtualization.info/2006/12/choosing-between-vmware-server-and-esx.html
http://www.virtualization.info/2007/11/thinsy-announces-7th-xen-based.html
http://www.virtualization.info/2007/11/red-hat-adopts-xen-31-in-its-new.html
http://www.virtualization.info/2007/11/whitepaper-understanding-full.html
( http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware_paravirtualization.pdf )
KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko.