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| [[Category:Documentation]]
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| [[Category:Release Notes]]
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| [[Category:Virtualization]]
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| {{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}} |
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| == 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.
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| 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]].
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| A new library ([[Features/libguestfs|libguestfs]]) and an interactive tool (guestfish) is now available for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images.
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| === Kernel SamePage Merging and Reduced Guest Memory Usage ===
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| KSM (Kernel SamePage Merging) allows identical memory pages to be merged by the kernel into a single page shared between one or more processes.
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| 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.
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| * [[Features/KSM|KSM]]
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| * http://lwn.net/Articles/306704/
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| === KVM Huge Page Backed Memory ===
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| * [[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.
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| === KVM NIC Hotplug ===
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| * [[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.
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| === KVM qcow2 Performance ===
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| * [[Features/KVM qcow2 Performance | KVM qcow2 Performance]] - Improve the I/O performance of virtual machines using disk images in the qcow2 image format.
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| ===KVM Stable Guest ABI ===
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| * [[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.
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| === libguestfs library for accessing and modifying virtual machines ===
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| * [[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>.
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| === Network Interface Management ===
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| * [[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.
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| === Single Root I/O Virtualization ===
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| * [[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).
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| === VirtgPXE ===
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| * [[Features/VirtgPXE | VirtgPXE]] - Replace the deprecated etherboot pxe booting infrastructure with the more modern and currently upstream supported gpxe.
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| === Virt Privileges ===
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| * [[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.
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| === Virt Storage Management ===
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| * [[Features/VirtStorageManagement|Virt Storage Management]] - Enable VM hosts to discover new SAN storage and issue NPIV operations.
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| === Other Improvements ===
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| ==== Libvirt Technology Compatibility Kit ====
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| * [[Features/VirtTCK|Libvirt Technology Compatibility Kit]] - Provides a functional test suite for virtualization and report on hypervisor compatability.
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| === Xen Kernel Support ===
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| 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.
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| The most recent Fedora release with dom0 support is Fedora 8.
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| 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.
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| {{Admon/important | KVM requires hardware virtualization features in the host system.| Systems lacking hardware virtualization do not support Xen guests at this time. }}
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| For more information refer to:
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| * http://sourceforge.net/projects/kvm
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| * http://kraxel.fedorapeople.org/xenner/
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| * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvops
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| * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0
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| <noinclude>[[Category:Release Notes]]<noinclude>
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