Getting Started with the KVM Hypervisor
Here is a good quick start guide on installing and running KVM hypervisor with Ubuntu. I think you will be impressed with the speed and functionality of this hypervisor.
KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is the leading open source virtualisation technology for Linux. It installs natively on all Linux distributions and turns underlying physical servers into hypervisors so that they can host multiple, isolated virtual machines (VMs). KVM comes with no licenses, type-1 hypervisor capabilities and a variety of performance extensions which makes it an ideal candidate for virtualisation and cloud infrastructure implementation.