Our Virtualization infrastructure was running on VMWare Server 2.0.1 but I've always wanted to use KVM because its integrated with Kernel and lightweight. But simply put, KVM was a pain to configure 2 years ago and even today its not as easy as installing VMware Server 2.x/1.x.
And getting a management tool is another pain-in-the-a!!. Right now, am using virt-manager on my Ubuntu Lucid desktop. I've to manually edit the XML files to enable VirtIO for HDD and network and that is all fine. But i've to use root login to see the console of the VM or even connect to it via virt-manager.
KVM is great in performance compared to VMware Server. But management tools available are very poor. This is one of the reasons why KVM is not a buzz word.
Here is a nice link on Management tools available for KVM.
http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Management_Tools
Most don't work or work after super-heavy troubleshooting. That is the state today. The only thing that actually works is Virtual Machine Manager and if you are using older distros (< 10.04), then that won't work properly either.
There are so many limitations in embracing KVM. Can any KVM experts suggest a practical application that can manage KVM environments for both Windows and Linux and also that doesn't require us to put root passwords everytime we want to see the console.
Thanks.
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