There have been a great many advancements in the IT space in the last few decades, and a few technologies have come along that have truly revolutionized the technology industry. I'm sure few would argue that the internet itself is by far the most revolutionary technology to come around, but another technology that has created a paradigm shift in IT is virtualization. This concept changed the way we maintain our data centers, allowing us to segregate workloads into many smaller machines being run from a single server or hypervisor. Since Ubuntu features the latest advancements of the Linux kernel, virtualization is actually built right into it. After installing just a few packages, we can create virtual machines on our Ubuntu Server without the need for a pricey license agreement or support contract. In this chapter, I'll walk you through setting up your own Ubuntu-based virtualization solution. Along the way, I'll walk you through the following topics:

• Setting up a virtual machine server
• Creating virtual machines
• Bridging the virtual machine network
• Simplifying VM creation with cloning
• Managing virtual machines via the command line