openSUSE Leap Documentation › Virtualization Guide › Introduction › Supported Guests, Hosts and Features
ContentsContents
Virtualization Guide
  1. About This Manual
  2. I Introduction
    1. 1 Virtualization Technology
    2. 2 Introduction to Xen Virtualization
    3. 3 Introduction to KVM Virtualization
    4. 4 Introduction to Linux Containers
    5. 5 Virtualization Tools
    6. 6 Installation of Virtualization Components
    7. 7 Supported Guests, Hosts and Features
  3. II Managing Virtual Machines with libvirt
    1. 8 Starting and Stopping libvirtd
    2. 9 Guest Installation
    3. 10 Basic VM Guest Management
    4. 11 Connecting and Authorizing
    5. 12 Managing Storage
    6. 13 Managing Networks
    7. 14 Configuring Virtual Machines
  4. III Hypervisor-Independent Features
    1. 15 Disk Cache Modes
    2. 16 VM Guest Clock Settings
    3. 17 libguestfs
  5. IV Managing Virtual Machines with Xen
    1. 18 Setting Up a Virtual Machine Host
    2. 19 Virtual Networking
    3. 20 Managing a Virtualization Environment
    4. 21 Block Devices in Xen
    5. 22 Virtualization: Configuration Options and Settings
    6. 23 Administrative Tasks
    7. 24 XenStore: Configuration Database Shared between Domains
    8. 25 Xen as a High-Availability Virtualization Host
  6. V Managing Virtual Machines with QEMU
    1. 26 QEMU Overview
    2. 27 Setting Up a KVM VM Host Server
    3. 28 Guest Installation
    4. 29 Running Virtual Machines with qemu-system-ARCH
    5. 30 Virtual Machine Administration Using QEMU Monitor
  7. VI Managing Virtual Machines with LXC
    1. 31 Linux Containers
    2. 32 Migration from LXC to libvirt-lxc
  8. Glossary
  9. A Virtual Machine Drivers
  10. B Appendix
  11. C XM, XL Toolstacks and Libvirt framework
  12. D GNU Licenses
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openSUSE Leap Documentation › Virtualization Guide › Introduction › Supported Guests, Hosts and Features
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Applies to openSUSE Leap 42.1

7 Supported Guests, Hosts and Features

7.1 Supported VM Guests
7.2 Supported VM Host Servers for openSUSE Leap 42.1 VM Guests
7.3 KVM Hardware Requirements
7.4 Feature Support

Supported virtualization limits for Xen and KVM are outlined in the Release Notes.

7.1 Supported VM Guests

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).

Table 7.1: Paravirtualized OS Support

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).

7.1.1 Availability of Paravirtualized Drivers

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:

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 / 12 SP1

Included in kernel

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1 / SP2 / SP3

Included in kernel

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP4

Included in kernel

RedHat

Available in RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.4 and newer

Windows

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/.

7.2 Supported VM Host Servers for openSUSE Leap 42.1 VM Guests

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

7.3 KVM Hardware Requirements

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).

Note
Note: KVM Kernel Modules Not Loading

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.

7.4 Feature Support

7.4.1 Host (Dom0)

Table 7.2: Feature Support—Host (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

Note
Note: Adding or Removing Physical CPUs at Runtime Is Not Supported

The addition or removal of physical CPUs at runtime is not supported. However, virtual CPUs can be added or removed for each VM Guest.

7.4.2 Paravirtualized Guest

Table 7.3: Feature Support—Paravirtualized 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.

Note
Note: Intel FlexMigration

For machines that support Intel FlexMigration, CPU-ID masking and faulting allow more flexibility in cross-CPU migration.

7.4.3 Fully Virtualized Guest

Table 7.4: Feature Support—Fully Virtualized Guest

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

Note
Note: Windows Guest

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.

→Part II Managing Virtual Machines with libvirt←Chapter 6 Installation of Virtualization Components
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