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documentation.suse.com / Documentazione di SUSE Linux Enterprise Server / Virtualization Guide / Introduction / Supported Guests, Hosts and Features
Applies to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP4

7 Supported Guests, Hosts and Features

 

Supported architectures and 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 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP4. 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 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).

Important
Important

Microsoft Windows guests can be rebooted by libvirt/virsh only if paravirtualized drivers are installed in the guest. Refer to https://www.suse.com/products/vmdriverpack/ for more details on downloading and installing PV drivers.

Table 7.1: Paravirtualized OS Support
 

Operating System

FV Support (Xen/KVM)

PV Support (Xen)

SLES 10 SP4

Full

Full

SLES 11 SP3

Full

Full

SLES 11 SP4

Full

Full

SLES 12

Full

Full

SLES 12 SP1

Full

Full

SLES 12 SP2

Full

Full

SLES 12 SP3

Full

Full

SLES 12 SP4

Full

Full

SLES 15

Full

Full

SLED 12 SP2

Technology preview1

Technology preview1

SLED 12 SP3

Technology preview1

Technology preview1

OES 11 SP3

Full

Full2

OES 2015

Full

Full2

OES 2015 SP1

Full

Full2

Netware 6.5 SP8

None

Full (32-bit only)2

RHEL 5.11+

Full/best effort3

Full/best effort3

RHEL 6.9+

Full/best effort3

Full/best effort3

RHEL 7.3+

Full/best effort3

Full/best effort3

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 Server 2016

Full

None

Windows Vista SP2+

Best effort

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.
Red Hat and CentOS guest operating systems are fully supported (L3) if the customer has purchased SUSE Liberty Linux. Refer to the SUSE Liberty Linux documentation at https://documentation.suse.com/liberty for the list of available combinations and supported releases. In other cases, they are supported on a limited basis (L2, 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 / 12 SP2

Included in kernel

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 / 11 SP1 / 11 SP2 / 11 SP3 / 11 SP4

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 https://www.suse.com/products/vmdriverpack/.

7.2 Supported VM Host Servers for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP4 VM Guests

 

This section lists the support status of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP4 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 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP4 VM Guests

  • Full support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP4 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)

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2 (KVM/Xen)

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP3 (KVM/Xen)

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP4 (KVM/Xen)

The following third party host operating systems are supported:

  • KVM for IBM IBM Z 1.1.0

  • PowerKVM

  • VMware ESX 5.5

  • VMware ESXi 6.0

  • VMware ESXi 2016

  • Windows 2008 SP2+

  • Windows 2008 R2 SP1+

  • Windows 2012+

  • Windows 2012 R2+

  • Microsoft Windows 2016

  • Citrix XenServer 6.5

  • Oracle VM 3.3

  • Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor with AOS 5.8

7.3 KVM Hardware Requirements

 

Currently, SUSE supports KVM full virtualization on AMD64/Intel 64 and Arm AArch64 hosts, and on IBM Z.

  • 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). 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).

  • On the Arm AArch64 architecture, virtualization support was initially added to ARMv7-A processors starting with Cortex-A15 and including Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A17. ARMv8-A processors include support for virtualization.

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 outlined in Sezione 2.1, «Requisiti di sistema per l'esecuzione di Linux». 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

VM live migration

Yes, between like virtual host systems with similar resources

Advanced debugging with GDBC

Yes

Dom0 metrics visible to VM

Yes

Memory ballooning

Yes

PCI pass-through

Yes (Netware guests are excluded)

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-bit 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.