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Technical White Paper
Enterprise Linux
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server:
Supported Virtualization
Technologies
®
Table of Contents
page
Comprehensive Virtualization Support Overview. . . . . . . . . . 2
Upgrade Guidelines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Premium Support Offerings for SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server 11 SP3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Supported Virtualization Technologies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Other Supported Platforms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Enterprise Linux Technical White Paper
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server: Supported Virtualization Technologies
Comprehensive Virtualization
Support Overview
Included with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service
Pack 3 (SP3) are the latest open source virtualization
technologies, Xen and KVM. With these hypervisors,
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server can be used to provision,
de-provision, install, monitor and manage multiple
virtual machines (VMs) on a single physical system.
®
Over the past decade, SUSE has been a pioneer in helping
to develop and commercialize enterprise virtualization technologies—especially the hypervisor. A hypervisor (or virtual
machine monitor—VMM) is the primary component of the
operating system that enables virtualization.
It is a layer of software that runs directly on server hardware
and controls platform resources, sharing them among multiple virtual machines (VMs) and their operating systems by
presenting virtualized hardware interfaces to each VM. With
the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, SUSE was
the first enterprise Linux provider to include the open KVM
hypervisor as a part of its distribution. In 2006, SUSE was
also the first Linux provider to deliver an enterprise-class,
open Xen hypervisor implementation.
Today, SUSE pursues a heterogeneous, multi-platform hypervisor approach that gives our customers maximum
choice, flexibility and value. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
is a “perfect guest” on all major hypervisors, running with
optimized performance in virtual environments. As a host,
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server includes both leading open
source hypervisors, KVM and Xen, with every subscription. In this way, SUSE Linux Enterprise gives enterprises a flexible
and powerful, yet affordable way to virtualize workloads. 2
At the same time, we have worked with Microsoft to ensure
that SUSE’s implementation of the KVM and Xen hyper­visors.
operates as a perfect host for workloads running on Windows. .
We did this by developing a bundle of paravirtualized.
network, bus and block device drivers, for both KVM and
Xen, called the “SUSE Linux Enterprise Virtual Machine Driver
Pack (VMDP).” Enterprises using this bundle can run fully
virtualized Windows workloads on SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server with near-native performance.
As before, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 3
(SP3) includes the latest open source virtualization technologies, Xen and KVM. Both support virtualization on 64-bit
x86-based hardware architectures. Specifically, SUSE Linux.
Enterprise Server 11 SP3 with Xen or KVM acts as a virtuali­
zation host server (VHS) that supports VMs with their own.
guest operating systems. The SUSE VM architecture con­sists
of a hypervisor and management components that consti­
tute the VHS, which runs many application-hosting VMs. In
Xen, the management components run in a privileged VM
often referred to as “dom0.” In KVM, where the Linux kernel
acts as the hypervisor, the management components run
directly on the VHS.
With these hypervisors, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server can be
used to provision, de-provision, install, monitor and manage
multiple VMs on a single physical system. Out-of-the-box,
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server can create VMs running both
modified, highly tuned, paravirtualized operating systems
Figure 1. SUSE Xen virtualization host
server architecture: Hardware, hypervisor
and management domain provide the
foundation to host virtual machines
www.suse.com
and fully virtualized unmodified operating systems. Full virtualization1 allows the guest OS to run unmodified and requires the presence of either Intel Virtualization Technology
(Intel VT) or AMD Virtualization (AMD-V).
__________
1 SUSE strongly recommends using paravirtualized device drivers
for fully v
­ irtualized machines. These drivers enhance network and
storage I/O p
­ erformance. For SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, they
are included directly in the operating system. For Windows, they are
available in the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Virtual Machine Driver
Pack. For additional information on paravirtualized device drivers
for Windows please visit: www.suse.com/products/vmdriverpack
3
Enterprise Linux Technical White Paper
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server: Supported Virtualization Technologies
Upgrade Path: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2
to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3
1. Upgrade
all virtualization host servers (VHSs) running
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2 to run SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server 11 SP3.
2.Upgrade all VMs to run SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 .
SP3 after upgrading the host server. The upgrade is
backward compatible: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
SP2 VMs can run on a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
SP3 host.
Upgrade Path: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP4
to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3
1. With
Figure 2. SUSE KVM virtualization host server architecture: adds
“Guest mode” to traditional Kernel and User modes
SUSE supports various combinations of virtualization hosts
and guest operating systems. Certified systems and their
combinations are listed in certification bulletins at https://
www.suse.com/yessearch/Search.jsp (under Product, select
“SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 for x86 with Xen” or “SUSE
LINUX Enterprise Server 11 for AMD64 & Intel EM64T with
Xen” or “SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 11 for AMD64 & Intel
EM64T with KVM”).
SUSE Technical Support Services require certified system
configurations and are offered in several different service-level.
agreements (SLAs).
Upgrade Guidelines
To upgrade from a previous version of SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server to the latest Service Pack, different options are avail­able:
4
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 or newer VMs,
VMDP must be upgraded to at least to version 2.0 in all
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and newer VMs before
upgrading to SLES 11 SP3 XEN. Without the upgrade
Windows VMs will not use the paravirtual drivers.
2.Upgrade all virtualization host servers (VHSs) running
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP4 to run SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server 11 SP3.
3.Since the use of Xen network scripts is deprecated in
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3, use YaST (or other
tools) to set up any custom networking configuration .
using standard sysconfig networking scripts. See the
SUSE online virtualization documentation for more details: https://www.suse.com/documentation/sles11/
4.Upgrade all VMs to run SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 .
SP3 after upgrading the host server. The upgrade is
backward compatible: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10
SP4 VMs can run on a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
SP3 host.
The 32-bit Xen hypervisor as a virtualization host is no longer
supported. 32-bit virtual guests are not affected and fully
supported with the provided 64-bit hypervisor.
Premium Support Offerings for SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server 11 SP3
SUSE offers subscriptions at different levels—Basic, Standard,
and Priority—as well as premium support services, called
“Enterprise Services,” that might include a Service Account
Manager and dedicated Premium Service Engineers. For the
latest information, visit:
https://www.suse.com/products/server/how-to-buy/
https://www.suse.com/support/programs/
When deploying SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, customers
are required to have a paid subscription to be entitled to re­
ceive maintenance updates. (For terms and conditions, please
visit: https://www.suse.com/products/server/policy.html)
Supported Virtualization Technologies
SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP3 includes Xen 4.2 and KVM
1.4 and fully supports virtualization on 64-bit x86-based
architectures.
Please consult SUSE certification bulletins for certified combinations and configurations. Please check your hardwarespecific information for the limits of supported physical
memory and consult SUSE bulletins for certified combinations and configurations.
Only x86-64 (64bit) VHS is supported for Xen and KVM. For a Xen host, SUSE highly recommends that dom0 has a
minimum of two CPUs at its disposal. We also recommend
disabling ballooning and giving dom0 an explicit amount
of memory.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 Host and VM
Generic Technical Support Limits
The table below summarizes generic limits for the Xen support.
offered by SUSE. Xen might work well with extended para­meters,.
but SUSE support is limited to the values listed be­low. Con­sider that the the virtualization host server needs at least.
www.suse.com
512 MB of memory. If you are adding VMs, you must add additional memory to this base requirement. The limits for KVM are.
equal to the limits for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3.
VHS Limits
Xen
Dom0 CPUs2
64
Logical CPUs
256
Physical Memory
500 GB (dom0), 2 TB (Xen)
Block Devices
12,000 SCSI logical units
iSCSI Devices
128
Network Cards
8
Virtual CPUs Per CPU Core
8
Virtual Devices Per Host
2,048
This second table contains the generic limits for VMs running
with Xen or KVM supported by SUSE:
Virtual Machine Limits Per VM
Xen
KVM
Virtual CPUs, Paravirtualization (PV)
64
—
Virtual CPUs, Full Virtualization (FV)
64
160
Virtual Memory (Min.)
Guest specific3
Guest specific3
Virtual Memory (Max.)
512 GB
2 TB
Virtual NIC
8 per VM
8 per VM
Virtual Block Devices PV
100
—
Virtual Block Devices FV
4 (100 with PV drivers)
4 (100 with PV drivers)
For Windows SVVP, systems are certified with up to 64 vcpus.
and 128 GB memory. For vendor system-specific limits please consult the SUSE YES
Certification page at: https://www.suse.com/yessearch/
Search.jsp
__________
2 Processors are hotpluggable into the available sockets of the
system’s motherboard. Intel and AMD processors can feature one,
two or more CPU cores. CPU cores can provide logical CPUs if
­supported by the CPU design. Logical CPUs are often referred to
as logical hardware threads (LHT). In some circumstance SUSE
­recommends disabling hyperthreading (in old style dual core
hyperthreaded processors) to improve the VM performance.
3 See online documentation for guest-specific guidelines. Also, with
virtio-scsi, KVM virtual block devices for FV support 100 PV drivers.
5
Enterprise Linux Technical White Paper
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server: Supported Virtualization Technologies
Paravirtualization and Full Virtualization OS Support
PARAVIRTUALIZED OS SUPPORT (VMs FOR SUSE LINUX
ENTERPRISE SERVER 11 SP3 HOST)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP4
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP4
Open Enterprise Server 2 SP3
Open Enterprise Server 11 SP1
Novell® NetWare® 6.5 SP8
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 54
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 64
PARAVIRTUALIZED OS SUPPORT (TECHNOLOGY PREVIEW)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 SP3
Note: Technology Preview only—The operating system listed
above has been tested to install and run successfully. Bugs
can be reported to 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.
FULLY VIRTUALIZED OS SUPPORT (VMs FOR SUSE LINUX
ENTERPRISE SERVER 11 SP3 XEN HOST)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP4
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP4
Windows Server 2012 (Enlightened)
Windows Server 2008 SP2 (Enlightened)
Windows Server 2008 R2 (Enlightened)
Windows Server 2003 SP2
Windows 8 (Enlightened4
Windows 7 SP1 (Enlightened)4
Windows Vista SP24
Windows XP SP3 (Uniprocessor only)4
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 54
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 64
6
FULLY VIRTUALIZED OS SUPPORT (VMs FOR SUSE LINUX
ENTERPRISE SERVER 11 SP3 KVM HOST)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP4
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP4
Windows Server 2012
Windows Server 2008 SP2
Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Server 2003 SP2
Windows 84
Windows 7 SP14
Windows Vista SP2 4
Windows XP SP3 (Uniprocessor only)4
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 54
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 64
For the most current support status, please visit the SUSE
certification web pages. SUSE strongly recommends the
use of SUSE paravirtual drivers to enhance fully virtualized
VM performance. As mentioned previously, the drivers for
Windows on Xen and KVM are available through an add-on
product called “SUSE Linux Enterprise Virtual Machine Driver
Pack (VMDP).” SUSE Linux Enterprise VMDP is a fee-based
bundle of paravirtualized network, bus and block device drivers. They let you run fully virtualized Windows workloads on
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with near-native performance,
opening additional channels of communication between the.
Xen and KVM hypervisors in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and.
the unmodified guest operating systems running in a virtual
environment. This accelerates network and storage input/
output and improves overall efficiency.
Also, any guest OS support is valid as long as the original
vendor supports that OS as part of the product lifecycle.
__________
4 Supported by SUSE with Best Effort
Feature Support for VHS
SUSE LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 11 SP3 FEATURE SUPPORT—
HOST (dom0)
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 supported features for KVM are the same as the supported features for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3.
Note: The addition or removal of physical CPUs at runtime
is not supported; however, virtual CPUs can be added or
removed for each VM. CPU pinning allows logical CPU to
virtual CPU assignment for a specific VM.
__________
5 For machines that have Intel FlexMigration, CPU-ID masking allows
more flexibility in cross-CPU migration.
6 Specific guests excluded are NetWare and SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server 9 SP4.
SUSE LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 11 SP3 FEATURE SUPPORT—
PARAVIRTUALIZED GUEST
Xen
Virtual Network and Virtual Block Device Hotplugging
Yes
Virtual CPU Hotplugging
Yes
Virtual CPU Overcommitment
Yes
Dynamic Virtual Memory Resize
Yes
VM Save and Restore
Yes (excludes SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server 9 SP4
in ­Multiprocessor mode)
VM Live Migration
Yes
Between like virtual host
systems with similar
resources5
(Excludes SUSE Linux
­Enterprise Server 9 SP4
in Multiprocessor mode)
Advanced Debugging with GDBC
Yes
Dom0 Metrics Visible to VM
Yes
Memory Ballooning
Yes
PCI Pass Through6
Yes
Note: Virtual CPU capping allows you to set vCPU capacity
to 1–100 percent of the physical CPU capacity.
Virtual CPU overcommitment is the ability to assign more
virtual CPUs to VMs than the actual number of physical CPUs
present in the physical system. This procedure does not increase the overall performance of the system, but might be
useful for testing purposes.
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 Intel’s 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 startup, 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
virtual host servers must be identical.
www.suse.com
7
SUSE LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 11 SP3 FEATURE SUPPORT—
FULL VIRTUALIZATION GUEST
Xen
KVM
Virtual Network and Virtual Block
Device Hotplugging7
Yes
Yes
Virtual CPU Hotplugging
No
No
Virtual CPU Overcommitment
Yes
Yes
Dynamic Virtual Memory Resize8
Yes
Yes
VM Save and Restore
Yes
Yes
VM Live Migration
Yes
Between like virtual host systems with similar
resources (i.e., from 32-bit to 32-bit, 64-bit to 64-bit)9
Yes
VM Snapshot
No
Yes
Advanced Debugging with GDBC
Yes
Yes
Dom0 Metrics Visible to VM
Yes
Yes
PCI Pass Through10
Yes
Yes
For KVM, a detailed description of supported limits, features, recommended
settings and scenarios and other useful
information is maintained in the kvmsupported.txt document, available as
a part of the kvm package, located at
/usr/share/doc/packages/kvm path
on an installed SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server 11 SP3 system.
Other Supported Platforms
www.suse.com
Supported Hardware
Virtualization Technologies
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 is
supported on z9, z10 and IBM zEnterprise class systems, in both logical partition (LPAR) and z/VM versions 5.4, 6.1
and subsequent releases. SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server 11 SP3 (64-bit) features a 32-bit application environment
to deploy legacy 31-bit applications.
Supported Software
Virtualization Technologies
Non-supported Virtualization
Technologies
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 has
been optimized to function as a performance-tuned guest OS on other thirdparty hypervisors, such as VMware ESX,
Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V. The paravirtualized SUSE Linux Enter­
prise Server kernel extracts better response times in interactions with Citrix.
XenServer. Also, SUSE has partnered with.
Microsoft to develop a shim (or hyper­call.
adapter) that translates Xen-specific calls.
from the paravirtualized SUSE Linux
En­terprise Server kernel into Hyper-V
com­patible calls. This allows SUSE Linux.
Enterprise Server 11 SP3 to run as a
paravirtualized guest. SUSE Linux En­
terprise Server 11 SP3, in various forms, is
a supported guest OS on these leading
host platforms with YES Certification
assurances.
Xen and KVM are not available nor
sup­ported with SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server 11 SP3 for POWER and Itanium
Processor Family (IPF) hardware. Re­
source virtualization can be achieved for
IPF by using CPUSETs or using LXC (con­
tainer type tech­nol­ogy). IBM POWER
provides a different technology, called.
“dynamic logical partitions” (DLPARs),
to operate VMs.
KVM is now included on the s390x platform as a technology preview.
Virtuozzo and OpenVZ are not included.
in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3. .
Special offers are available from Paral­
lels. Please contact Parallels for in­for­
mation on specific product and sup­port
offerings.
__________
7 Windows guest: Virtual network and virtual block device h
­ otplug­ging is supported in Xen
and KVM only if PV drivers are b
­ eing used (VMDP).
8 Windows guest: Dynamic virtual memory resize, shrinking and restoring is supported in Xen
and KVM only if PV drivers are being used (VMDP).
9 For machines that have Intel FlexMigration, CPU-ID masking allows more flexibility in crossCPU migration.
10 IOMMU is needed for PCI pass through, which requires ­underlying support from the hardware (e.g., Intel VT-d extensions or AMD IOMMU extensions).
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