Getting ready

In order to start a KVM instance, you will need the following:

• The QEMU binaries, provided after following the Installing and configuring QEMU recipe
• The custom raw Debian image we built in the Installing a custom OS on the image with debootstrap recipe
• Processor that supports virtualization
• The KVM kernel modules

To check whether your CPU supports virtualization, run the following code:

root@kvm:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo | egrep "vmx|svm" | uniq
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid dca sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm epb tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid cqm xsaveopt cqm_llc cqm_occup_llc dtherm arat pln pts
root@kvm:~#

The presence of the vmx (for Intel) or svm (for AMD) flags indicate that your CPU supports the virtualization extensions.

To manually load the KVM kernel module and ensure that it's been loaded, run the following code:

root@kvm:~# modprobe kvm
root@kvm:~# lsmod | grep kvm
kvm                   455843  0
root@kvm:~#