New Deployment Options and Tools for Oracle Linux KVM Image on Oracle Cloud

We are pleased to announce the new Oracle Linux KVM Image release 1.5 for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The Oracle Linux kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) feature provides a set of modules that enable you to use the kernel as a hypervisor. This release extends KVM deployment options with support for Intel virtual machine (VM) shapes, enabling you to take advantage of nested virtualization environments, and AMD bare metal shapes on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. This provides greater flexibility to deploy a KVM host environment from a wider selection of processor instance types and shapes. This release also makes it simpler to configure guest virtual networks and file system storage on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure using new tools provided by the pre-installed oci-utils-kvm utilities. 

You now have the option of deploying the Oracle Linux KVM Image on the following range of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure processor type shapes**:

• BM.Standard2.52 - 2.3 GHz Intel® Xeon® E5-2699 v3
• BM.Standard.E2.64 - 2.0 GHz AMD EPYC 7551 
• BM.DenseIO2.52 - 2.0 GHz Intel® Xeon®Platinum 8167M
• VM.Standard2.* - 2.0 GHz Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8167M 
• VM.DenseIO2.* - 2.0 GHz Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8167M

**processor specifications and list subject to change

The Oracle Linux KVM Image bundles the oci-utils-kvm package which includes scripts to simplify the configuration and management of KVM guests on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. This release provides new KVM tools to simplify the management of VNIC virtual networks and the creation of file system storage pools on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure block volumes and File Storage Service, using the libvirt hypervisor management tools.   

New KVM utilities for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure provided in this release are:

• oci-kvm create-network
  • Creates a VNIC virtual network for a KVM guest
• oci-kvm delete-network
  • Deletes a VNIC virtual network for a KVM guest
• oci-kvm create-storage-pool
  • Creates, mounts and configures a file system on a block storage device or storage allocated on the File Storage Service on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Deployment of a KVM host environment is simple using the click to launch method via the Oracle Cloud Marketplace. You can create a KVM host by navigating to the Oracle Cloud Marketplace, selecting the Oracle Linux KVM Image app, and clicking through to launch the instance directly on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The Oracle Cloud Marketplace also is accessible as an embedded option from within the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure console. The Oracle Linux KVM Image is also conveniently located on the Oracle Images menu from the Images Catalog, accessible via the Create Instance page on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Deploying a KVM host environment in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has never been easier, and what's even better is that support for Oracle Linux KVM deployments is provided at no additional cost to you as an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure subscriber.

To get started, take advantage of the free cloud credits available to new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure users. Experience the ease of getting your KVM environment up and running in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure today.

For More Information

• Oracle Linux KVM Image (Oracle Cloud Marketplace)
• Getting Started: Oracle Linux KVM Image for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (documentation)
• Use Oracle Linux KVM Image on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (Oracle Learning Library video)
• Oracle Linux 7 Administrator's Guide: Using KVM with Oracle Linux (documentation)