Installing kvm on RHEL 6

Installing KVM Virtualization Packages on existing RHEL 6 System

 To install virt packages on RHEL 6 you can register your host machine to RHN Satellite  and entitle you host to virtualization entitlement  or you can create a local yum repository using your RHEL 6 DVD or downloaded iso and run the below commands .

#yum install kvm

Finally install additional virtualization management packages

#yum install virt-manager libvirt libvirt-python python-virtinst libvirt-client

Once you installed the kvm packages check the kvm modules are properly loaded using

# lsmod  |grep kvm
kvm_intel              45674  0
kvm                   291811  1 kvm_intel

So you are ready to spindle up the new virtual machines . But before that  Configure Network Ethernet  Bridge  Interface  to use  with virtual machines to talk to the external world .

Note: Steps are same for RHEL5 as well as RHEL6 but KVM is available on RHEL5 Update 4 and later releases of RHEL.