I would recommend reading the Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualization docs.
They are the best overview of libvirtd and friends.

Then use the Web site to read the fine-grained documentation for things
like the network, domain and storage XML formats so that you can easily
configure those things directly from virsh.
On Dec 3, 2012 9:00 AM, "Michael Mol" <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 3:28 AM, Michael Hampicke <gentoo-user@hadt.biz>
> wrote:
> > Am 03.12.2012 04:22, schrieb Michael Mol:
> >> So, anyone have any experience with libvirt here? I'm familiar with
> >> VMWare and Xen. Not so much libvirt, which I understand to be a
> >> wrapper around other virt models.
> >>
> >> Starting from scratch in virsh...how do I ask libvirtd what pool
> >> formats it supports?
> >>
> >> --
> >> :wq
> >>
> >
> > Do you need a virsh command, or is it enough to know libvirt supports?
> > In the second case you might look at [1]
>
> Well, given that I'm on gentoo, USE flags start getting involved in
> enabling and disabling functionality. Rather than actively examining
> the compile-time factors, I was hoping for a way to simply ask
> libvirtd via virsh. Going that route gives me an approach that works
> weather I'm on Gentoo, Linux, Debian or whatever.
>
> >
> > You also might take a look at virt-manager (in portage) which is a gui
> > for libvirt that manages libvirt on your local machine an remote
> > machines (via ssh tunnel for example).
>
> I've played with virt-manager before. I could use it again, but at
> least part of this exercise is to learn libvirt and kvm using a
> spartan toolchain. So I'm trying to do everything I can via CLI. (I'm
> handy enough with Python that I could use the python API bindings, but
> I presumed virsh would be easier, if not simpler.)
>
> > I am really happy with virt-manager here, it work very well on you don't
> > need to remember all the virsh commands (which becomes pretty handy when
> > managing storage, virtual networks and creating vms)
>
> Yeah, I'm hoping to learn all those commands. I want to
> proof-of-concept an approach for a high-availability NFS server using
> VMs.[2] :)
>
>
> >
> > [1] http://libvirt.org/storage.html
> >
>
> [2] http://mmol-6453.livejournal.com/279980.html
>
> --
> :wq
>
>