Workloads run on full physical servers or are managed as virtual machines. KubeVirt brings cloud-native approach to fleet management and makes VMs first-class Kubernetes resources.
1. Physical Infrastructure
Typically, things begin with a physical server. A Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) provides hardware management, while firmware initializes CPU and memory resources. At this stage, all resources belong to a single system with no virtualization.
Key point: Physical hardware only, with no abstraction layer.
2. Traditional Virtualization
A host operating system such as RHEL, SUSE, or Ubuntu runs on the server. Libvirt and QEMU provide virtualization services, allowing multiple VMs to share the same hardware.
Key point: Virtual machines improve hardware utilization while remaining tied to individual hosts.
3. Kubernetes + KubeVirt
KubeVirt integrates virtualization into Kubernetes. Instead of managing VMs directly on each host, Kubernetes manages VM lifecycle through KubeVirt components such as Virt Operator, Virt Controller, and Virt Launcher.
Virtual machines become Kubernetes-managed workloads that can be scheduled, automated, and operated alongside containers.
Conclusion
The progression is straightforward Physical Server run Libvirt/QEMU Virtualization and are managed as a fleet with Kubernetes-Orchestrated Virtualization with KubeVirt.
Note: based on an ad-hoc presentation….
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