I don't think this was mentioned before, but KVM/libvirt with shell interface, besides gui inteface (virt-manager) there's a shell interface virsh, which let you configure VM using shells scripts.

libvirt, is just a bunch of processes with, and I'm sorry, xml config files located in /etc/libvirt. You can have any number of virtualization technologies (LXC, KVM) and any number user backends -- (virt-manager, virsh); managing all of that requires copying configuration and image files around -- it doesn't get any simpler than that; unlike QEMU, you don't need to pass long line of arguments to start up the machine and you get such niceties as autostarting VMs on machine boot, not to mention that the whole thing is enterpris-y and supported by redhat.

Actually virt-manager works pretty well -- libvirt likes ssh, and uses client/server architecture, so when connecting to a remote host you don't have to  tunnel it through ssh, just have it on a client machine and give it a correct url.

On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 10:37 AM, Giles Orr via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
If I wanted to set up a host for a bunch of headless VMs, what's the
OS/Hypervisor to run these days?  I'm doing this out of curiosity and
for testing purposes.  I don't exactly have appropriate hardware - an
i5 with 16GB of memory - but it should be sufficient to run 5-10 VMs
for my very limited purposes (private network, none of the VMs will be
public-facing).  QEMU/KVM looks like the best choice for a FOSS
advocate?  Other recommendations?  I could particularly use a good
HOWTO or tutorial if anyone knows of one.  Thanks.

--
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr@gmail.com
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