One of the questions that regularly crops up as we talk with technologists about PrivateCore’s vCage is how vCage fits into their existing IT infrastructure. vCage makes use of KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) to run virtual machine instances, allowing vCage to run unmodified applications on our secure platform. KVM is an open source product supported by many leading industry players including IBM, Cisco, Intel, RedHat, Ubuntu, and SuSE. KVM has the ability support a wide array of operating systems transparently via full virtualization. In addition, guest virtual machines can make use of the paravirtualized virtio drivers in both Linux and Windows for enhanced I/O performance.

Broad guest operating system support

KVM’s impressive breadth of operating system support enables vCage users to port their existing applications from their current systems to the vCage platform without having to make modifications. This makes vCage a transparent layer that adds security without impacting application development.

Managing VM instances

Paired with KVM, vCage makes use of libvirt, a virtualization management API that is widely used. Libvirt provides a set of APIs and tools for managing virtual machine instances, providing tools to create, monitor, and manage virtual machines running on vCage. When paired with PrivateCore’s own management tools, vCage users can securely create and manage their virtual machines to run applications.

Leveraging the power of Open Source

PrivateCore’s use of KVM and libvirt allows us to debut with a rich management toolset while opening the door for integration with existing cloud infrastructures such as OpenStack. Using libvirt may also enable PrivateCore to provide alternative methods of running application workloads, for example via LXC (Linux Containers).

Focusing on our core goals

Making use of powerful, well supported, tools like KVM and libvirt is important for PrivateCore and to people deploying vCage. These tools allow us to focus our energies on our core security offerings, knowing that we can trust on projects like KVM and libvirt to provide PrivateCore and enterprises using vCage with the ability to run and manage applications on the vCage platform. If you want to see how this all fits together, sign up for our beta program and give it a try.