path: root/docs/apps.rst

==========================
Applications using libvirt
==========================

This page provides an illustration of the wide variety of applications
using the libvirt management API.

.. contents::

Add an application
------------------

To add an application not listed on this page, send a message to the
`mailing list <contact.html>`__, requesting it be added here, or simply
send a patch against the documentation in the libvirt.git docs
subdirectory. If your application uses libvirt as its API, the following
graphics are available for your website to advertise support for
libvirt:

|libvirt powered 96| |libvirt powered 128| |libvirt powered 192| |libvirt powered 256|

Command line tools
------------------

`guestfish <https://libguestfs.org>`__
   Guestfish is an interactive shell and command-line tool for examining
   and modifying virtual machine filesystems. It uses libvirt to find
   guests and their associated disks.
virsh
   An interactive shell, and batch scriptable tool for performing
   management tasks on all libvirt managed domains, networks and
   storage. This is part of the libvirt core distribution.
`virt-clone <https://virt-manager.org/>`__
   Allows the disk image(s) and configuration for an existing virtual
   machine to be cloned to form a new virtual machine. It automates
   copying of data across to new disk images, and updates the UUID, MAC
   address, and name in the configuration.
`virt-df <https://people.redhat.com/rjones/virt-df/>`__
   Examine the utilization of each filesystem in a virtual machine from
   the comfort of the host machine. This tool peeks into the guest disks
   and determines how much space is used. It can cope with common Linux
   filesystems and LVM volumes.
`virt-image <https://virt-manager.org/>`__
   Provides a way to deploy virtual appliances. It defines a simplified
   portable XML format describing the pre-requisites of a virtual
   machine. At time of deployment this is translated into the domain XML
   format for execution under any libvirt hypervisor meeting the
   pre-requisites.
`virt-install <https://virt-manager.org/>`__
   Provides a way to provision new virtual machines from a OS
   distribution install tree. It supports provisioning from local CD
   images, and the network over NFS, HTTP and FTP.
`virt-top <https://people.redhat.com/rjones/virt-top/>`__
   Watch the CPU, memory, network and disk utilization of all virtual
   machines running on a host.
`virt-what <https://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/>`__
   virt-what is a shell script for detecting if the program is running
   in a virtual machine. It prints out a list of facts about the virtual
   machine, derived from heuristics.
`stap <https://sourceware.org/systemtap/>`__
   SystemTap is a tool used to gather rich information about a running
   system through the use of scripts. Starting from v2.4, the front-end
   application stap can use libvirt to gather data within virtual
   machines.
`vagrant-libvirt <https://github.com/pradels/vagrant-libvirt/>`__
   Vagrant-Libvirt is a Vagrant plugin that uses libvirt to manage
   virtual machines. It is a command line tool for developers that makes
   it very fast and easy to deploy and re-deploy an environment of vm's.
`virt-lightning <https://github.com/virt-lightning/virt-lightning>`__
   Virt-Lightning uses libvirt, cloud-init and libguestfs to allow
   anyone to quickly start a new VM. Very much like a container CLI, but
   with a virtual machine.
`vms <https://github.com/cbosdo/vms>`__
   vms is a tool wrapping around the libvirt API to manage multiple virtual
   machines at once with name patterns.

Configuration Management
------------------------

`LCFG <https://wiki.lcfg.org/bin/view/LCFG/LcfgLibvirt>`__
   LCFG is a system for automatically installing and managing the
   configuration of large numbers of Unix systems. It is particularly
   suitable for sites with very diverse and rapidly changing
   configurations.
   The lcfg-libvirt package adds support for virtualized systems to
   LCFG, with both Xen and KVM known to work. Cloning guests is
   supported, as are the bridged, routed, and isolated modes for Virtual
   Networking.

Continuous Integration
----------------------

`BuildBot <https://docs.buildbot.net/latest/manual/configuration/workers-libvirt.html>`__
   BuildBot is a system to automate the compile/test cycle required by
   most software projects. CVS commits trigger new builds, run on a
   variety of client machines. Build status (pass/fail/etc) are
   displayed on a web page or through other protocols.

`Jenkins <https://plugins.jenkins.io/libvirt-slave/>`__
   This plugin for Jenkins adds a way to control guest domains hosted on
   Xen or QEMU/KVM. You configure a Jenkins Agent, selecting the guest
   domain and hypervisor. When you need to build a job on a specific
   Agent, its guest domain is started, then the job is run. When the
   build process is finished, the guest domain is shut down, ready to be
   used again as required.

Conversion
----------

`virt-p2v <https://libguestfs.org/virt-p2v.1.html>`__
   Convert a physical machine to run on KVM. It is a LiveCD which is
   booted on the machine to be converted. It collects a little
   information from the user, then copies the disks over to a remote
   machine and defines the XML for a domain to run the guest. (Note this
   tool is included with libguestfs)
`virt-v2v <https://libguestfs.org/virt-v2v.1.html>`__
   virt-v2v converts guests from a foreign hypervisor to run on KVM,
   managed by libvirt. It can convert guests from VMware or Xen to run
   on OpenStack, oVirt (RHEV-M), or local libvirt. It will enable VirtIO
   drivers in the converted guest if possible. (Note this tool is
   included with libguestfs)
   For RHEL customers of Red Hat, conversion of Windows guests is also
   possible. This conversion requires some Microsoft signed pieces, that
   Red Hat can provide.
`vmware2libvirt <https://launchpad.net/virt-goodies>`__
   Part of the *virt-goodies* package, vmware2libvirt is a python script
   for migrating a vmware image to libvirt.

Desktop applications
--------------------

`virt-manager <https://virt-manager.org/>`__
   A general purpose desktop management tool, able to manage virtual
   machines across both local and remotely accessed hypervisors. It is
   targeted at home and small office usage up to managing 10-20 hosts
   and their VMs.
`virt-viewer <https://virt-manager.org/>`__
   A lightweight tool for accessing the graphical console associated
   with a virtual machine. It can securely connect to remote consoles
   supporting the VNC protocol. Also provides an optional mozilla
   browser plugin.
`qt-virt-manager <https://f1ash.github.io/qt-virt-manager>`__
   The Qt GUI for create and control VMs and another virtual entities
   (aka networks, storages, interfaces, secrets, network filters).
   Contains integrated LXC/SPICE/VNC viewer for accessing the graphical
   or text console associated with a virtual machine or container.
`qt-remote-viewer <https://f1ash.github.io/qt-virt-manager/#virtual-machines-viewer>`__
   The Qt VNC/SPICE viewer for access to remote desktops or VMs.
`GNOME Boxes <https://gnomeboxes.org/>`__
   A GNOME application to access virtual machines.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
----------------------------------

`Eucalyptus <https://github.com/eucalyptus/eucalyptus>`__
   Eucalyptus is an on-premise Infrastructure as a Service cloud
   software platform that is open source and AWS-compatible. Eucalyptus
   uses libvirt virtualization API to directly interact with Xen and KVM
   hypervisors.
`Nimbus <https://www.nimbusproject.org/>`__
   Nimbus is an open-source toolkit focused on providing
   Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) capabilities to the scientific
   community. It uses libvirt for communication with all KVM and Xen
   virtual machines.
`OpenStack <https://www.openstack.org>`__
   OpenStack is a "cloud operating system" usable for both public and
   private clouds. Its various parts take care of compute, storage and
   networking resources and interface with the user using a dashboard.
   Compute part uses libvirt to manage VM life-cycle, monitoring and so
   on.
`KubeVirt <https://kubevirt.io/>`__
   KubeVirt is a virtual machine management add-on for Kubernetes. The
   aim is to provide a common ground for virtualization solutions on top
   of Kubernetes.
`Cherrypop <https://github.com/gustavfranssonnyvell/cherrypop>`__
   A cloud software with no masters or central points. Nodes autodetect
   other nodes and autodistribute virtual machines and autodivide up the
   workload. Also there is no minimum limit for hosts, well, one might
   be nice. It's perfect for setting up low-end servers in a cloud or a
   cloud where you want the most bang for the bucks.
`ZStack <https://en.zstack.io/>`__
   ZStack is an open source IaaS software that aims to automate the
   management of all resources (compute, storage, networking, etc.) in a
   datacenter by using APIs, thus conforming to the principles of a
   software-defined datacenter. The key strengths of ZStack in terms of
   management are scalability, performance, and a fast, user-friendly
   deployment.

Libraries
---------

`libguestfs <https://libguestfs.org>`__
   A library and set of tools for accessing and modifying virtual
   machine disk images. It can be linked with C and C++ management
   programs, and has bindings for Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, OCaml, PHP,
   Haskell, and C#.
   Using its FUSE module, you can also mount guest filesystems on the
   host, and there is a subproject to allow merging changes into the
   Windows Registry in Windows guests.
`libvirt-sandbox <https://sandbox.libvirt.org>`__
   A library and command line tools for simplifying the creation of
   application sandboxes using virtualization technology. It currently
   supports either KVM, QEMU or LXC as backends. Integration with
   systemd facilitates sandboxing of system services like apache.
`Ruby Libvirt Object bindings <https://github.com/ohadlevy/virt#readme>`__
   Allows using simple ruby objects to manipulate hypervisors, guests,
   storage, network etc. It is based on top of the `native ruby
   bindings <https://libvirt.org/ruby>`__.

LiveCD / Appliances
-------------------

`virt-p2v <https://libguestfs.org/virt-v2v/>`__
   An older tool for converting a physical machine into a virtual
   machine. It is a LiveCD which is booted on the machine to be
   converted. It collects a little information from the user, then
   copies the disks over to a remote machine and defines the XML for a
   domain to run the guest.

Monitoring
----------

`collectd <https://collectd.org/plugins/libvirt.shtml>`__
   The libvirt-plugin is part of `collectd <https://collectd.org/>`__
   and gathers statistics about virtualized guests on a system. This
   way, you can collect CPU, network interface and block device usage
   for each guest without installing collectd on the guest systems. For
   a full description, please refer to the libvirt section in the
   collectd.conf(5) manual page.
`Host sFlow <https://sflow.net/>`__
   Host sFlow is a lightweight agent running on KVM hypervisors that
   links to libvirt library and exports standardized cpu, memory,
   network and disk metrics for all virtual machines.
`Munin <https://honk.sigxcpu.org/projects/libvirt/#munin>`__
   The plugins provided by Guido Günther allow to monitor various things
   like network and block I/O with
   `Munin <https://munin-monitoring.org/>`__.
`Nagios-virt <https://people.redhat.com/rjones/nagios-virt/>`__
   Nagios-virt is a configuration tool to add monitoring of your
   virtualised domains to `Nagios <https://www.nagios.org/>`__. You can
   use this tool to either set up a new Nagios installation for your Xen
   or QEMU/KVM guests, or to integrate with your existing Nagios
   installation.
`PCP <https://pcp.io/man/man1/pmdalibvirt.1.html>`__
   The PCP libvirt PMDA (plugin) is part of the
   `PCP <https://pcp.io/>`__ toolkit and provides hypervisor and guest
   information and complete set of guest performance metrics. It
   supports pCPU, vCPU, memory, block device, network interface, and
   performance event metrics for each virtual guest.

Provisioning
------------

`Foreman <https://theforeman.org>`__
   Foreman is an open source web based application aimed to be a Single
   Address For All Machines Life Cycle Management. Foreman:

   -  Creates everything you need when adding a new machine to your
      network, its goal being automatically managing everything you
      would normally manage manually (DNS, DHCP, TFTP, Virtual
      Machines,CA, CMDB...)
   -  Integrates with Puppet (and acts as web front end to it).
   -  Takes care of provisioning until the point puppet is running,
      allowing Puppet to do what it does best.
   -  Shows you Systems Inventory (based on Facter) and provides real
      time information about hosts status based on Puppet reports.

Web applications
----------------

`AbiCloud <https://www.abiquo.com/>`__
   AbiCloud is an open source cloud platform manager which allows to
   easily deploy a private cloud in your datacenter. One of the key
   differences of AbiCloud is the web rich interface for managing the
   infrastructure. You can deploy a new service just dragging and
   dropping a VM.
`Kimchi <https://kimchi-project.github.io/kimchi/>`__
   Kimchi is an HTML5 based management tool for KVM. It is designed to
   make it as easy as possible to get started with KVM and create your
   first guest. Kimchi manages KVM guests through libvirt. The
   management interface is accessed over the web using a browser that
   supports HTML5.
`oVirt <https://ovirt.org/>`__
   oVirt provides the ability to manage large numbers of virtual
   machines across an entire data center of hosts. It integrates with
   FreeIPA for Kerberos authentication, and in the future, certificate
   management.
`VMmanager <https://ispsystem.com/en/software/vmmanager>`__
   VMmanager is a software solution for virtualization management that
   can be used both for hosting virtual machines and building a cloud.
   VMmanager can manage not only one server, but a large cluster of
   hypervisors. It delivers a number of functions, such as live
   migration that allows for load balancing between cluster nodes,
   monitoring CPU, memory.
`mist.io <https://mist.io/>`__
   Mist.io is an open source project and a service that can assist you
   in managing your virtual machines on a unified way, providing a
   simple interface for all of your infrastructure (multiple public
   cloud providers, OpenStack based public/private clouds, Docker
   servers, bare metal servers and now KVM hypervisors).
`Ravada <https://ravada.upc.edu/>`__
   Ravada is an open source tool for managing Virtual Desktop
   Infrastructure (VDI). It is very easy to install and use. Following
   the documentation, you'll be ready to deploy virtual machines in
   minutes. The only requirements for the users are a Web browser and a
   lightweight remote viewer.
`Virtlyst <https://github.com/cutelyst/Virtlyst>`__
   Virtlyst is an open source web application built with C++11, Cutelyst
   and Qt. It features:

   -  Low memory usage (around 5 MiB of RAM)
   -  Look and feel easily customized with HTML templates that use the
      Django syntax
   -  VNC/Spice console directly in the browser using websockets on the
      same HTTP port
   -  Host and Domain statistics graphs (CPU, Memory, IO, Network)
   -  Connect to multiple libvirtd instances (over local Unix domain
      socket, SSH, TCP and TLS)
   -  Manage Storage Pools, Storage Volumes, Networks, Interfaces, and
      Secrets
   -  Create and launch VMs
   -  Configure VMs with easy panels or go pro and edit the VM's XML
`Cockpit <https://cockpit-project.org/>`__
   Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for servers. With
   `cockpit-machines <https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit-machines>`__
   it can create and manage virtual machines via libvirt.

Other
-----

`Cuckoo Sandbox <https://cuckoosandbox.org/>`__
   Cuckoo Sandbox is a malware analysis system. You can throw any
   suspicious file at it and in a matter of seconds Cuckoo will provide
   you back some detailed results outlining what such file did when
   executed inside an isolated environment. And libvirt is one of the
   backends that can be used for the isolated environment.

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