99 real KVM & libvirt questions from the Virtualization bank, as asked in Indian campus drives and tech interviews. Every question has a verified answer and an AI-tutor explanation on placd — free to start.
1. What is virtio?
Junior
A.A paravirtualized device standard for KVM/QEMU giving guests efficient virtio-net, virtio-blk and virtio-scsi drivers instead of slow emulated hardware
B.Allocating guest memory from host huge pages to cut TLB misses, commonly required for DPDK and high-performance KVM workloads
C.Copy-on-write QEMU disk format supporting snapshots, thin provisioning, compression, and backing files.
D.A userspace dataplane interface that connects virtio devices to an external process such as a DPDK/OVS poll-mode driver for line-rate networking
2. Which term means: "A paravirtualized device standard for KVM/QEMU giving guests efficient virtio-net, virtio-blk and virtio-scsi drivers instead of slow emulated hardware"?
A.virtio — Allocating guest memory from host huge pages to cut TLB misses, commonly required for DPDK and high-performance KVM workloads
B.virtio — A guest-side tool that configures a freshly booted cloud image (hostname, SSH keys, network, packages) from metadata supplied by the platform
C.virtio — A shared-filesystem device that lets a guest directly access a directory on the host with near-native performance, used heavily by KubeVirt and Kata
D.virtio — A paravirtualized device standard for KVM/QEMU giving guests efficient virtio-net, virtio-blk and virtio-scsi drivers instead of slow emulated hardware
5. Which term means: "A shared-filesystem device that lets a guest directly access a directory on the host with near-native performance, used heavily by KubeVirt and Kata"?
A.virtio-fs — A shared-filesystem device that lets a guest directly access a directory on the host with near-native performance, used heavily by KubeVirt and Kata
B.virtio-fs — A guest-side tool that configures a freshly booted cloud image (hostname, SSH keys, network, packages) from metadata supplied by the platform
C.virtio-fs — The declarative XML definition of a VM (CPU, memory, disks, NICs) that libvirt uses to create and manage the guest across hypervisors
A.AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Secure Nested Paging: encrypts and integrity-protects a VM's memory from the hypervisor, enabling confidential VMs on KVM
B.A shared-filesystem device that lets a guest directly access a directory on the host with near-native performance, used heavily by KubeVirt and Kata
C.A kernel module that moves virtio-net packet processing into the host kernel, bypassing the QEMU userspace data path for higher network throughput
D.Copy-on-write QEMU disk format supporting snapshots, thin provisioning, compression, and backing files.
8. Which term means: "A kernel module that moves virtio-net packet processing into the host kernel, bypassing the QEMU userspace data path for higher network throughput"?
A.vhost-net — Assigns a host PCI device (GPU, NIC) directly to a guest via the vfio-pci driver and IOMMU groups.
B.vhost-net — Paravirtualized device model (net, blk, scsi) giving near-native I/O performance to KVM guests.
C.vhost-net — A kernel module that moves virtio-net packet processing into the host kernel, bypassing the QEMU userspace data path for higher network throughput
D.vhost-net — A Linux framework that carves a physical device, typically a GPU, into virtual instances passed through to VMs, the basis of NVIDIA vGPU on KVM
11. Which term means: "A userspace dataplane interface that connects virtio devices to an external process such as a DPDK/OVS poll-mode driver for line-rate networking"?
A.vhost-user — Copy-on-write QEMU disk format supporting snapshots, thin provisioning, compression, and backing files.
B.vhost-user — A userspace dataplane interface that connects virtio devices to an external process such as a DPDK/OVS poll-mode driver for line-rate networking
C.vhost-user — Paravirtualized device model (net, blk, scsi) giving near-native I/O performance to KVM guests.
D.vhost-user — Assigns a host PCI device (GPU, NIC) directly to a guest via the vfio-pci driver and IOMMU groups.
14. Which term means: "A guest-side tool that configures a freshly booted cloud image (hostname, SSH keys, network, packages) from metadata supplied by the platform"?
A.cloud-init — A copy-on-write base image referenced by a thin overlay qcow2, so many VMs share one read-only base while writing private deltas
B.cloud-init — A guest-side tool that configures a freshly booted cloud image (hostname, SSH keys, network, packages) from metadata supplied by the platform
C.cloud-init — Software bridge (br0) connecting guest tap interfaces to a physical NIC for direct L2 access.
D.cloud-init — virtio-scsi supports more disks, TRIM/discard, and SCSI passthrough; virtio-blk is simpler and slightly faster.
17. Which term means: "A Linux framework that carves a physical device, typically a GPU, into virtual instances passed through to VMs, the basis of NVIDIA vGPU on KVM"?
A.mediated device (mdev) — Paravirtualized device model (net, blk, scsi) giving near-native I/O performance to KVM guests.
B.mediated device (mdev) — Software bridge (br0) connecting guest tap interfaces to a physical NIC for direct L2 access.
C.mediated device (mdev) — A Linux framework that carves a physical device, typically a GPU, into virtual instances passed through to VMs, the basis of NVIDIA vGPU on KVM
D.mediated device (mdev) — A userspace dataplane interface that connects virtio devices to an external process such as a DPDK/OVS poll-mode driver for line-rate networking
A.A guest-side tool that configures a freshly booted cloud image (hostname, SSH keys, network, packages) from metadata supplied by the platform
B.Allocating guest memory from host huge pages to cut TLB misses, commonly required for DPDK and high-performance KVM workloads
C.Paravirtualized device model (net, blk, scsi) giving near-native I/O performance to KVM guests.
D.AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Secure Nested Paging: encrypts and integrity-protects a VM's memory from the hypervisor, enabling confidential VMs on KVM
20. Which term means: "AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Secure Nested Paging: encrypts and integrity-protects a VM's memory from the hypervisor, enabling confidential VMs on KVM"?
A.SEV-SNP — The declarative XML definition of a VM (CPU, memory, disks, NICs) that libvirt uses to create and manage the guest across hypervisors
B.SEV-SNP — A shared-filesystem device that lets a guest directly access a directory on the host with near-native performance, used heavily by KubeVirt and Kata
D.SEV-SNP — AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Secure Nested Paging: encrypts and integrity-protects a VM's memory from the hypervisor, enabling confidential VMs on KVM
23. Which term means: "The declarative XML definition of a VM (CPU, memory, disks, NICs) that libvirt uses to create and manage the guest across hypervisors"?
A.libvirt domain XML — A kernel module that moves virtio-net packet processing into the host kernel, bypassing the QEMU userspace data path for higher network throughput
B.libvirt domain XML — The declarative XML definition of a VM (CPU, memory, disks, NICs) that libvirt uses to create and manage the guest across hypervisors
C.libvirt domain XML — Multilayer virtual switch giving KVM guests VLANs, tunneling, and OpenFlow-controlled networking.
D.libvirt domain XML — Paravirtualized device model (net, blk, scsi) giving near-native I/O performance to KVM guests.
26. Which term means: "A copy-on-write base image referenced by a thin overlay qcow2, so many VMs share one read-only base while writing private deltas"?
A.qcow2 backing file — A userspace dataplane interface that connects virtio devices to an external process such as a DPDK/OVS poll-mode driver for line-rate networking
B.qcow2 backing file — The declarative XML definition of a VM (CPU, memory, disks, NICs) that libvirt uses to create and manage the guest across hypervisors
C.qcow2 backing file — A guest-side tool that configures a freshly booted cloud image (hostname, SSH keys, network, packages) from metadata supplied by the platform
D.qcow2 backing file — A copy-on-write base image referenced by a thin overlay qcow2, so many VMs share one read-only base while writing private deltas
A.A paravirtualized device standard for KVM/QEMU giving guests efficient virtio-net, virtio-blk and virtio-scsi drivers instead of slow emulated hardware
B.The declarative XML definition of a VM (CPU, memory, disks, NICs) that libvirt uses to create and manage the guest across hypervisors
C.virtio-scsi supports more disks, TRIM/discard, and SCSI passthrough; virtio-blk is simpler and slightly faster.
D.Allocating guest memory from host huge pages to cut TLB misses, commonly required for DPDK and high-performance KVM workloads
A.huge pages backing — A userspace dataplane interface that connects virtio devices to an external process such as a DPDK/OVS poll-mode driver for line-rate networking
B.huge pages backing — Allocating guest memory from host huge pages to cut TLB misses, commonly required for DPDK and high-performance KVM workloads
C.huge pages backing — Software bridge (br0) connecting guest tap interfaces to a physical NIC for direct L2 access.
D.huge pages backing — A kernel module that moves virtio-net packet processing into the host kernel, bypassing the QEMU userspace data path for higher network throughput
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