libvirt
Supported virtualization limits for Xen and KVM are outlined in the Release Notes.
This section lists the support status for various guest operating systems virtualized on top of openSUSE Leap 42.1. All guest operating systems are supported both fully-virtualized (“FV” in the following table) and paravirtualized (“PV” in the following table) with two exceptions: Windows, which is only supported fully-virtualized, and OES and NetWare operating systems, which are only supported on Xen paravirtualized. All guest operating systems are supported both in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors, unless stated otherwise (see NetWare).
Operating System |
FV Support (Xen/KVM) |
PV Support (Xen) |
---|---|---|
SLES 12 SP1 |
Full |
Full |
SLES 12 |
Full |
Full |
SLES 11 SP4 |
Full |
Full |
SLES 11 SP3 |
Full |
Full |
SLES 10 SP4 |
Full |
Full |
SLED 12 |
Technology preview1 |
Technology preview1 |
SLED 12 SP1 |
Technology preview1 |
Technology preview1 |
OES 11 SP1 |
None |
Full2, 3 |
OES 11 SP2 |
None |
Full2, 3 |
Netware 6.5 SP8 |
None |
Full (32-bit only)2 |
RHEL 5.11+ |
Full/best effort4 |
Full/best effort4 |
RHEL 6.7+ |
Full/best effort4 |
Full/best effort4 |
RHEL 7.2+ |
Full/best effort4 |
Full/best effort4 |
Windows Server 2003 SP2+ |
Full |
None |
Windows Server 2008 SP2+ |
Full |
None |
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1+ |
Full |
None |
Windows Server 2012+ |
Full |
None |
Windows Server 2012 R2+ |
Full |
None |
Windows 7 SP1+ |
Best effort |
None |
Windows 8+ |
Best effort |
None |
Windows 8.1+ |
Best effort |
None |
Windows 10 |
Best effort |
None |
1 Technology preview: The operating system has been tested to install and run successfully. Bugs can be reported and will be tracked by SUSE Technical Services, but no support commitments or service level agreements apply. Potential fixes and patches will be evaluated for future inclusion. |
2 You need a static IP address for each virtual machine running NetWare or OES. |
3 OES can only be installed from a network installation source. |
4 RedHat* guest operating systems are fully supported with Expanded Support. Otherwise, they will be supported on a best-effort basis (fixes if reasonable). |
To improve the performance of the guest operating system, paravirtualized drivers are provided when available. Although they are not required, it is strongly recommended to use them. The paravirtualized drivers are available as follows:
Included in kernel
Included in kernel
Included in kernel
Available in RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.4 and newer
SUSE has developed virtio-based drivers for Windows, which are available in the Virtual Machine Driver Pack (VMDP). For more information, see http://www.suse.com/products/vmdriverpack/.
This section lists the support status of openSUSE Leap 42.1 running as a guest on top of various virtualization hosts (Hypervisor). Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions are supported for the host if available. The support status is defined as follows:
Full support for all SUSE host systems and openSUSE Leap 42.1 VM Guests
Full support for openSUSE Leap 42.1 VM Guests on third-party host systems
The following SUSE host operating systems are supported:
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP4 (KVM/Xen)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP1 (KVM/Xen)
The following third party host operating systems are supported:
KVM for IBM z Systems 1.1.0
Oracle VM 3.2
VMware ESX 5.1
VMware ESXi 5.1
Windows 2008 SP2+
Windows 2008 R2 SP1+
Windows 2012+
Windows 2012 R2+
Citrix XenServer 6.1
Oracle VM 3.2
The following host operating systems will be supported when released:
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2 (KVM/Xen)
VMware ESX 5.2
VMware ESXi 5.2
Citrix XenServer 6.2
Microsoft Windows Server OS future releases and service packs
Oracle VM 3.3
Currently, SUSE only supports KVM full virtualization on AMD64/Intel 64 hosts and on z Systems (only as Technology Preview). On the AMD64/Intel 64 architecture, KVM is designed around hardware virtualization features included in AMD* (AMD-V) and Intel* (VT-x) CPUs. It supports virtualization features of chipsets, and PCI devices, such as an I/O Memory Mapping Unit (IOMMU) and Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV).
On the AMD64/Intel 64 architecture, you can test whether your CPU supports hardware virtualization with the following command:
egrep '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo
If this command returns no output, your processor either does not support hardware virtualization, or this feature has been disabled in the BIOS or Firmware.
The following Web sites identify AMD64/Intel 64 processors that support hardware virtualization: http://ark.intel.com/Products/VirtualizationTechnology (for Intel CPUs), and http://products.amd.com/ (for AMD CPUs).
The KVM kernel modules only load if the CPU hardware virtualization features are available.
The general minimum hardware requirements for the VM Host Server are the same as for a physical machine. However, additional RAM for each virtualized guest is needed. It should at least be the same amount that is needed for a physical installation. It is also strongly recommended to have at least one processor core or hyper-thread for each running guest.
Dom0
) #
Features |
Xen |
---|---|
Network and block device hotplugging |
Yes |
Physical CPU hotplugging |
No |
Virtual CPU hotplugging |
Yes |
Virtual CPU pinning |
Yes |
Virtual CPU capping |
Yes |
Intel* VT-x2: FlexPriority, FlexMigrate (migration constraints apply to dissimilar CPU architectures) |
Yes |
Intel* VT-d2 (DMA remapping with interrupt filtering and queued invalidation) |
Yes |
AMD* IOMMU (I/O page table with guest-to-host physical address translation) |
Yes |
The addition or removal of physical CPUs at runtime is not supported. However, virtual CPUs can be added or removed for each VM Guest.
Features |
Xen |
---|---|
Virtual network and virtual block device hotplugging |
Yes |
Virtual CPU hotplugging |
Yes |
Virtual CPU over-commitment |
Yes |
Dynamic virtual memory resize |
Yes |
VM save and restore |
Yes (excludes SLES 9 SP4 in multiprocessor mode) |
VM live migration |
Yes between like virtual host systems with similar resources (excludes SLES 9 SP4 in multiprocessor mode) |
Advanced debugging with GDBC |
Yes |
Dom0 metrics visible to VM |
Yes |
Memory ballooning |
Yes |
PCI pass-through |
Yes (guests excluded are Netware and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP4) |
For live migration, both source and target system architectures need to match; that is, the processors (AMD* or Intel*) must be the same. Unless CPU ID masking is used, such as with Intel FlexMigration, the target should feature the same processor revision or a more recent processor revision than the source. If VMs are moved among different systems, the same rules apply for each move. To avoid failing optimized code at runtime or application start-up, source and target CPUs need to expose the same processor extensions. Xen exposes the physical CPU extensions to the VMs transparently. To summarize, guests can be 32- or 64-bit, but the VHS must be identical.
For machines that support Intel FlexMigration, CPU-ID masking and faulting allow more flexibility in cross-CPU migration.
Features |
Xen |
KVM |
---|---|---|
Virtual network and virtual block device hotplugging |
Yes |
Yes |
Virtual CPU hotplugging |
No |
No |
Virtual CPU over-commitment |
Yes |
Yes |
Dynamic virtual memory resize |
Yes |
Yes |
VM save and restore |
Yes |
Yes |
VM Live Migration |
Yes between like virtual host systems with similar resources (that is, from 32-bit to 32-bit, 64-bit to 64-bit) |
Yes |
VM snapshot |
Yes |
Yes |
Advanced debugging with GDBC |
Yes |
Yes |
Dom0 metrics visible to VM |
Yes |
Yes |
PCI pass-through |
Yes |
Yes |
Hotplugging of virtual network and virtual block devices, and resizing, shrinking, and restoring dynamic virtual memory are supported in Xen and KVM only if PV drivers are being used (VMDP).
For KVM, a detailed description of supported limits, features,
recommended settings and scenarios, and other useful information is
maintained in kvm-supported.txt
.
This file is part of the KVM package and can be found in
/usr/share/doc/packages/kvm
.