Specifications

Operating System Support

Red Hat Virtualization's paravirtualization mode allows you to utilize high performance

virtualization on architectures that are potentially difficult to virtualize such as x86 based

systems. To deploy para-virtualization across your operating system(s), you need access to the

paravirtual guest kernels that are available from a respective Red Hat distro (for example, RHEL

4.0, RHEL 5.0, etc.). Whilst your operating system kernels must support Red Hat Virtualization,

it is not necessary to modify user applications or libraries.

Red Hat Virtualization allows you to run an unmodified guest kernel if you have Intel VT and

AMD SVM CPU hardware. You do not have to port your operating system to deploy this

architecture on your Intel VT or AMD SVM systems. Red Hat Virtualization supports:

• Intel VT-x or AMD-V Pacifica and Vanderpool technology for full and paravirtualization.

• Intel VT-i for ia64

• Linux and UNIX operating systems, including NetBSD, FreeBSD, and Solaris.

• Microsoft Windows as an unmodified guest operating system with Intel Vanderpool or AMD's

Pacifica technology.

To run full virtualization guests on systems with Hardware-assisted Virtual Machine (HVM),

Intel, or AMD platforms, you must check to ensure your CPUs have the capabilities needed to

do so.

To check if you have the CPU flags for Intel support, enter the following:

grep vmx /proc/cpuinfo

The output displays:

flags : fpu tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts

acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm syscall nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor

ds_cpl vmx est tm2 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm

If a vmx flag appears then you have Intel support.

To check if you have the CPU flags for AMD support, enter the following:

grep svm /proc/cpuinfo

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep svm

Chapter 2.