The Linux Beacon--KVM Developer Launches as Qumranet with Desktop Virtualization

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Volume 4, Number 38 -- October 16, 2007

KVM Developer Launches as Qumranet with Desktop Virtualization

Published: October 16, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The company behind the KVM desktop and server virtualization project for Linux machines has emerged from stealth mode, and it is called Qumranet. Rather than attack the crowded server virtualization market with a commercial product, Qumranet is taking on the virtual desktop space with a product called Sold ICE, which is based on KVM.

KVM is not short for Keyboard-Video-Mouse, at least not in this context, but rather Kernel Virtual Machine. KVM is an alternative hypervisor technology that has been put into the development Linux releases from Red Hat (Fedora 7), Novell (openSUSE 10.3), and Canonical (Ubuntu 7.04). KVM was added to the Linux 2.6.20 kernel, and ports are underway for Linux running on Power, Itanium, and mainframe processors. Like the Xen hypervisor, the KVM hypervisor is based on open source software, and in this case, it is a mix of technologies that Qumranet has created itself or borrowed from other open source projects; specifically, the QEMU hypervisor for PCs is used to virtualize video displays. KVM supports full virtualization using Intel VT and Advanced Micro Devices AMD-V hardware-assisted virtualization, and support paravirtualized Linux and Windows operating systems as well. The KVM hypervisor is around 12,000 lines of code, which is pretty skinny (especially compared to the Xen hypervisor, which weighs in at 300,000 lines).

The Solid ICE virtual desktop solution created by Qumranet allows host desktop operating systems running inside KVM partitions on Linux servers to feed remote screens. One of the sticking points in any virtualized desktop environment is getting native graphics and peripheral performance, and to accomplish this Qumranet has created a remote desktop protocol designed specifically for the way KVM feeds up virtual Windows slices called SPICE, short for Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments. KVM is used to host the guest Windows or Linux desktops, the Linux scheduler is used to keep everything humming along, QEMU handles I/O for the quest operating systems, making them think that they actually own their own hardware. Users can access their remote desktops through a Web browser using either the Remote Desktop Protocol from Microsoft or the SPICE protocol from Qumranet, which is optimized specifically for LAN environments (not remote connections) and for multimedia workloads (graphics, video, and audio). This enhanced multimedia support is done in software, not in hardware like some other virtual desktop solutions that feed virtualized PC environments over the network from blade or rack servers.

Qumranet has had an early adopter program for Solid ICE since May, and five Fortune 1000 companies are using the software, according to Benny Schnaider, Qumranet's founder and chief executive officer. Another 10 companies were lined up to give it a whirl as the product was launched. Solid ICE will be generally available by the end of 2007, according to Schnaider, and is in limited availability now. Pricing was not announced, but Schnaider says that it will be competitive with other virtual desktop offerings, will be priced based on the number of virtual PCs, and will have volume discounts; Qumranet may also offer the product on a subscription basis as well as perpetual licensing.