KVM (Kernel Virtual Machines, see http://www.linux-kvm.org) has grown very stable and mature over the last few months. Already, a large number of professional services can be provided based on KVM virtualisation, including Windows workstation and Linux server farms.

But KVM is not easy to handle, it has a lot of features, and most of these are not easy to understand. virtualcontrol tries to provide a way of hiding these settings from the user while enabling the expected features based on a high level configuration file.

• Supports easy configuration of both emulated and paravirtualized storage and network devices by simply defining configuration options named hda, hdb, ... or vhda, vhdb, ... and net1, net2, ... or vnet1, vnet2, ... respectively
• Supports easy creation of virtual networks (bridging)
• Supports automatic restart of a virtual machine based on a time of day (for example automatic daily restart of virtual Win2k workstations) or on shutdown (user shuts down virtual Win2k workstation by accident)
• Handles machine specific resources like TAP devices, hugetlb mounts and bridge interfaces transparently
• Supports "pushing the power button" from the command line
• Supports status requests to running virtual machines, including resources like current and past CPU and memory usage
• Is completely command line based and uses the KVM userland tools or other command line tools (stable interface)