In Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager, a self-hosted engine is a virtualized environment where the engine runs inside a virtual machine on the hosts in the environment. The virtual machine for the engine is created as part of the host configuration process. And, the engine is installed and configured in parallel to the host configuration.

Since the engine runs as a virtual machine and not on physical hardware, a self-hosted engine requires less physical resources. Additionally, since the engine is configured to be highly available, if the host running the Engine virtual machine goes into maintenance mode or fails unexpectedly the virtual machine is migrated automatically to another host in the environment. A minimum of two KVM hosts are required.

To review conceptual information, troubleshooting, and administration tasks, see the oVirt Self-Hosted Engine Guide in oVirt Documentation.

You can also deploy a self-hosted engine using the command line or Cockpit portal. If you want to use the command line, proceed to Use Command Line to Deploy Self-Hosted Engine. If you want to use the Cockpit portal, proceed to Use Cockpit to Deploy Self-Hosted Engine.

If you are required to be compliant with the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS), you can enable FIPS mode for your Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager deployment. See FIPS Mode Deployment in the Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager: Getting Started.