Installation guide

Chapter 10. KVM Para-virtualized (virtio) Drivers

Para-virtualized drivers enhance the performance of guests, decreasing guest I/O latency and

increasing throughput to near bare-metal levels. It is recommended to use the para-virtualized drivers

for fully virtualized guests running I/O heavy tasks and applications.

Virtio drivers are KVM's para-virtualized device drivers, available for Windows guest virtual machines

running on KVM hosts. These drivers are included in the virtio package. The virtio package supports

block (storage) devices and network interface controllers.

The KVM virtio drivers are automatically loaded and installed on the following:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8 and newer

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 and newer

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and newer

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and newer

Some versions of Linux based on the 2.6.27 kernel or newer kernel versions.

Versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the list above detect and install the drivers, additional

installation steps are not required.

In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (3.9 and above), manual installation is required.

Note

PCI devices are limited by the virtualized system architecture. Refer to Section 4.1, “KVM

restrictions” for additional limitations when using assigned devices.

Using KVM virtio drivers, the following Microsoft Windows versions are expected to run similarly to

bare-metal-based systems.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 and newer (32-bit only)

Windows Server 2003 (32-bit and 64-bit versions)

Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit versions)

Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit only)

Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit versions)

Windows Server 2012 (64-bit only)

Windows Server 2012 R2 (64-bit only)

Windows 8 (32-bit and 64-bit versions)

Windows 8.1 (32-bit and 64-bit versions)

10.1. Inst alling t he KVM Windows virt io drivers

⁠Chapt er 1 0 . KVM Para- virt ualiz ed (virt io) Drivers