Resolving No hypervisor options were found for this connection error in kvm gui virt-manager

When trying to run the GUI “virt-manager,” I ran into this problem on a Dell server:

When I invoke virt-manager from the command line as root, then click new to create a guest OS, I get a warning/error message that reads:

Error: No hypervisor options were found for this connection.

This usually means qemu or kvm is not installed on your machine.  Please insure they are installed as intended.

When I go on to enter a name for the guest in the box, the forward button is grayed out.  However, clicking enter takes me to step 2.

Errors you’d see in /var/log/messages:

 Mar 11 06:18:27 myserver kernel: kvm: disabled by bios
Mar 11 07:11:31 myserver kernel: kvm: disabled by bios
Mar 11 08:39:09 myserver kernel: kvm: disabled by bios

 As it turns out, this quite annoying problem wasted a lot of time.  The solution was actually on the BIOS of the server, where there’s a switch to enable Virtualization.  After doing this and rebooting, KVM was able to load properly and allow for new VMs to be installed.

References:

http://willsnotes.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/rhel6-virtualization-issues-with-error-no-hypervisor-options-were-found-for-this-connection/