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Virtualization in Fedora 7 supports both Xen and KVM virtualization
platforms. The libvirt API
and its corresponding tools, virt-manager
and virsh, have been updated to support both KVM
and Xen. Users can choose which virtualization platform to install,
and use the same tools without regard to that choice.
Xen in Fedora 7 is based on version 3.1.0.
KVM in Fedora 7 is based on version 19-1.
For more information on the differences between Xen and KVM, refer to http://virt.kernelnewbies.org/TechComparison. For more information on installing and using virtualization in Fedora 7, refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Fedora7VirtQuickStart.
Using Xen 3.0.4, both paravirtualization and full virtualization can be implemented. Under KVM, only full virtualization is supported. Full virtualization requires a VT-capable processor. Paravirtualization does not require special hardware, but does require the guest OS to be modified.
The Fedora 7 development team has tested Xen with Fedora 6, Fedora 7, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 and 5.0 guests. Other guests have not been tested. With full virtualization, users can expect reasonable success with a larger variety of operating systems, including some proprietary operating systems.
The following improvements have been made in the virtualization packages in Fedora 7:
The applications virt-manager and
virshcan now work with inactive domains. Previously, onlyxmcould handle inactive domains.The mouse cursor problems with the virtual frame buffer have been fixed, for a better user experience in GUI modes.
Miscellaneous other small improvements and fixes have been made.
32-bit paravirtualized guests can run on a 64-bit hypervisor.
Fully virtualized guests support save, restore, and migration.
When migrating guests, the guest config is saved on the destinaton host.
The Xen
network-bridgescript does not use thenetloopkernel module anymore. The default bridge device is now calledeth0instead ofxenbr0. The physical device is still renamed topeth0.The virt-manager utility provides a virtual network enabling NAT for guests on laptops, instead of the Xen
network-bridgescript.The virt-manager utility is translated into more languages.
The virt-manager can add and remove disks and interfaces to existing guests.
The virt-manager utility provides progress feedback when downloading images, creating disks, and starting guests.