Chapter 50. Virtualization
USB 3.0 support for KVM guests
USB 3.0 host adapter (xHCI) emulation for KVM guests remains a Technology Preview in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. (BZ#1103193)
Select Intel network adapters now support SR-IOV as a guest on Hyper-V
In this update for Red Hat Enterprise Linux guest virtual machines running on Hyper-V, a new PCI passthrough driver adds the ability to use the single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) feature for Intel network adapters supported by the ixgbevf driver. This ability is enabled when the following conditions are met:
- SR-IOV support is enabled for the network interface controller (NIC)
- SR-IOV support is enabled for the virtual NIC
- SR-IOV support is enabled for the virtual switch
The virtual function (VF) from the NIC is attached to the virtual machine.
The feature is currently supported with Microsoft Windows Server 2016. (BZ#1348508)
No-IOMMU mode for VFIO drivers
As a Technology Preview, this update adds No-IOMMU mode for virtual function I/O (VFIO) drivers. The No-IOMMU mode provides the user with full user-space I/O (UIO) access to a direct memory access (DMA)-capable device without a I/O memory management unit (IOMMU). Note that in addition to not being supported, using this mode is not secure due to the lack of I/O management provided by IOMMU. (BZ#1299662)
virt-v2v can now use vmx configuration files to convert VMware guests
As a Technology Preview, the
virt-v2v utility now includes the vmx input mode, which enables the user to convert a guest virtual machine from a VMware vmx configuration file. Note that to do this, you also need access to the corresponding VMware storage, for example by mounting the storage using NFS. It is also possible to access the storage using SSH, by adding the -it ssh parameter. (BZ#1441197, BZ#1523767)
virt-v2v can convert Debian and Ubuntu guests
As a technology preview, the
virt-v2v utility can now convert Debian and Ubuntu guest virtual machines. Note that the following problems currently occur when performing this conversion:
virt-v2vcannot change the default kernel in the GRUB2 configuration, and the kernel configured in the guest is not changed during the conversion, even if a more optimal version of the kernel is available on the guest.- After converting a Debian or Ubuntu VMware guest to KVM, the name of the guest's network interface may change, and thus requires manual configuration. (BZ#1387213)
Virtio devices can now use vIOMMU
As a Technology Preview, this update enables virtio devices to use virtual Input/Output Memory Management Unit (vIOMMU). This guarantees the security of Direct Memory Access (DMA) by allowing the device to DMA only to permitted addresses. However, note that only guest virtual machines using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 or later are able to use this feature. (BZ#1283251, BZ#1464891)
virt-v2v converts VMWare guests faster and more reliably
As a Technology Preview, the
virt-v2v utility can now use the VMWare Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK) to import a VMWare guest virtual machine to a KVM guest. This enables virt-v2v to connect directly to the VMWare ESXi hypervisor, which improves the speed and reliability of the conversion.
Note that this conversion import method requires the external
nbdkit utility and its VDDK plug-in. (BZ#1477912)
Open Virtual Machine Firmware
The Open Virtual Machine Firmware (OVMF) is available as a Technology Preview in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. OVMF is a UEFI secure boot environment for AMD64 and Intel 64 guests. However, OVMF is not bootable with virtualization components available in RHEL 7. Note that OVMF is fully supported in RHEL 8. (BZ#653382)
GPU-based mediated devices now support the VNC console
As a Technology Preview, the Virtual Network Computing (VNC) console is now available for use with GPU-based mediated devices, such as the NVIDIA vGPU technology. As a result, it is now possible to use these mediated devices for real-time rendering of a virtual machine's graphical output. (BZ#1475770, BZ#1470154, BZ#1555246)
Azure M416v2 as a host for RHEL 7 guests
As a Technology Preview, the Azure M416v2 instance type can now be used as a host for virtual machines that use RHEL 7.6 and later as the guest operating systems. (BZ#1661654)
