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[[Category:Documentation]]
{{header|docs}}
[[Category:Release Notes]]
[[Category:Virtualization]]


{{Admon/note|Under Construction|Work to update this page for F12 has only just begun. You can see a copy of the F11 page [[User:Dale/Drafts/F11_Virtualization_Release_Notes|here]].}}
{{Docs_beat_closed}}


== Virtualization ==
[[Category:Docs Project]]
Virtualization in Fedora 12 includes major changes, and new features, that continue to support KVM, Xen, and many other virtual machine platforms.
[[Category:Draft documentation]]
 
[[Category:Documentation beats]]
KVM and qemu have gained a number of new features in this release. KVM guest memory usage and performance is improved by the addition of [[Features/KSM|KSM]] and [[Features/KVM Huge Page Backed Memory|KVM Huge Page Backed Memory]]. The [[Features/KVM qcow2 Performance|performance of the qcow2 image format]] is greatly improved. Support for both [[Features/SR-IOV|SR-IOV]] and [[Features/KVM NIC Hotplug|NIC hotplug]] has been added. Finally, [[Features/VirtgPXE|gPXE]] is now used in place of etherboot for guest PXE booting.
 
On the libvirt side, APIs have been added for [[Features/VirtStorageManagement|storage management]] and [[Features/Network Interface Management|network interface management]]. libvirt now also [[Features/VirtPrivileges|runs qemu processes unprivileged]].
 
A new library ([[Features/libguestfs|libguestfs]]) and an interactive tool (guestfish) is now available for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images.
 
=== Kernel SamePage Merging and Reduced Guest Memory Usage ===
KSM (Kernel SamePage Merging) allows identical memory pages to be merged by the kernel into a single page shared between one or more processes.
This feature is leveraged by KVM to allow multiple, similar, guest virtual machines to have a reduced memory footprint. Because memory is shared, the combined memory usage of the guests is reduced.
 
* [[Features/KSM|KSM]]
* http://lwn.net/Articles/306704/
 
===  KVM Huge Page Backed Memory ===
* [[Features/KVM_Huge_Page_Backed_Memory | KVM Huge Page Backed Memory]] - Enable KVM guests to use huge page backed memory in order to reduce memory consumption and improve performance by reducing CPU cache pressure.
 
=== KVM NIC Hotplug ===
* [[Features/KVM_NIC_Hotplug|KVM NIC Hotplug]] - Allow the addition of a guest network interface (NIC) a guest virtual machine without needing to restart the guest.
 
=== KVM qcow2 Performance ===
* [[Features/KVM qcow2 Performance | KVM qcow2 Performance]] - Improve the I/O performance of virtual machines using disk images in the qcow2 image format.
 
===KVM Stable Guest ABI ===
* [[Features/KVM_Stable_Guest_ABI|KVM Stable Guest ABI]] - Allow guest virtual machines to be presented with the same application binary interface across QEMU upgrades.
 
=== libguestfs library for accessing and modifying virtual machines ===
* [[Features/libguestfs | libguestfs ]] - A library for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images.  guestfish is an interactive shell tool for editing virtual machine disk images. Technically, this actually launched in F11, but not as a "Feature"<ref>http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f11/en-US/sect-Release_Notes-Virtualization.html</ref>.
=== Network Interface Management ===
* [[Features/Network_Interface_Management|Network Interface Management]] - Provide tools to easily set up commonly used network configurations, like bridges, bonds, vlan's and sensible combinations thereof, in particular for virtualized hosts.
===  Single Root I/O Virtualization ===
* [[Features/SR-IOV | SR-IOV]] - Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) is a PCI feature which allows virtual functions (VF) to be created that share the resources of a physical function (PF).
=== VirtgPXE ===
* [[Features/VirtgPXE | VirtgPXE]] - Replace the deprecated etherboot pxe booting infrastructure with the more modern and currently upstream supported gpxe.
=== Virt Privileges ===
* [[Features/VirtPrivileges|Virt Privileges]] - Improve security by adjusting the privileges of QEMU processes managed by libvirt. Also, allow KVM to be used by unprivileged users.
=== Virt Storage Management ===
* [[Features/VirtStorageManagement|Virt Storage Management]] - Enable VM hosts to discover new SAN storage and issue NPIV operations.
 
=== Other Improvements ===
==== Libvirt Technology Compatibility Kit ====
* [[Features/VirtTCK|Libvirt Technology Compatibility Kit]] - Provides a functional test suite for virtualization and report on hypervisor compatability.
 
=== Xen Kernel Support ===
The <code>kernel</code> package in Fedora 12 supports booting as a guest domU, but will not function as a dom0 until such support is provided upstream. Work is ongoing and hopes are high that support will be included in <code>kernel</code> 2.6.30 and Fedora 12.
 
The most recent Fedora release with dom0 support is Fedora 8.
 
Booting a Xen domU guest within a Fedora 12 host requires the KVM based <code>xenner</code>. Xenner runs the guest kernel and a small Xen emulator together as a KVM guest.
 
{{Admon/important | KVM requires hardware virtualization features in the host system.| Systems lacking hardware virtualization do not support Xen guests at this time. }}
 
 
For more information refer to:
 
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/kvm
* http://kraxel.fedorapeople.org/xenner/
* http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvops
* http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0
 
<noinclude>[[Category:Release Notes]]<noinclude>

Latest revision as of 01:33, 20 September 2016

Beat Closed on Wiki
Work on beats has now moved to git at https://pagure.io/fedora-docs/release-notes. If you have changes or additions, please contact the docs team via #fedora-docs, docs@lists.fedoraproject.org, or with the release-notes BZ component.