Libvirt C API Main objects managed by the Libvirti API Object OpenStack, OpenNebula, Eucalyptus, etc.) all use libvirt APIs on the underlying.

virsh, virt-install, virt-manager, etc.) and cloud computing framework platforms (e.g. It uses XML to define various virtual machine-related managed objects.Ĭurrently, libvirt has become the most widely used tool and API for managing various virtual machines, and some common virtual machine management tools (e.g.It acts as an intermediate adaptation layer, allowing the underlying Hypervisor to be completely transparent to the management tools in the upper user space, because libvirt shields the details of the underlying Hypervisor and provides a unified, more stable interface (API) for the upper management tools.Driver source code files like qemu_driver.c, xen_driver.c, xenapi_driver.c, vmware_driver.c, vbox_driver.c can be easily found in the libvirt source code. libvirt provides different drivers for different Hypervisors, including a driver for Xen, a QEMU driver for QEMU/KVM, a VMware driver, and so on. Its support for many different Hypervisors is implemented through a driver-based architecture.Currently, bindings to libvirt are provided in a number of other popular programming languages, and there are already libvirt libraries available directly in Python, Perl, Java, Ruby, PHP, OCaml, and other high-level programming languages.

It provides a more stable set of application programming interfaces in C.

It provides management of the virtualized client and its virtualized devices, network and storage.

It provides a unified, stable, open-source application programming interface (API), a daemon (libvirtd), and a default command-line management tool (virsh).

there is no uniform way to easily define the various manageable objects associated with VMs.

There are many different Hypervisors and no unified programming interface to manage them, which is very important for cloud environments.

Hypervisor such as qemu-kvm has many parameters for command line virtual machine management tools and is difficult to use.

libvirt then acts as a bridge between VMM and high-level functions, receiving user requests and then calling the interface provided by VMM to do the final work. Users only care about the high-level functions, and the implementation details of VMM should be transparent to end users. Libvirt shields different virtualization implementations and provides a unified management interface. The goal is to provide a common and stable software library to manage virtual machines on a node efficiently and securely, and to support remote operations. Libvirt is a set of open source software tools developed by Redhat.

Qemu libvirt tutorial