Previously, the Xen kernel was created by forward-porting Xen bits from the 2.6.18 kernel into the current Fedora kernel. This task was arduous and labor intensive, and resulted in the Xen kernel being several releases behind the bare-metal kernel. The inclusion of paravirt ops now makes this process unnecessary. Once paravirt ops is merged upstream, Xen will no longer require a separate kernel.

Fullyvirtualized Linux guests now have 3 possible installation methods:

The latter allows for fully automated installation through the use of kickstart files. This provides parity between Xen HVM and KVM guests in terms of installation methods.

For more information refer to: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenFullvirtKernelBoot.

Previously, Fedora introduced the ability to manage existing guest domains remotely using libvirt . It was not possible to create new guests due to the lack of storage management capabilities. In Fedora 9, new storage management can create and delete storage volumes from a remote host using libvirt .

Previously, the virt-manager application ran as root when managing a local hypervisor, and used consolehelper to authenticate from a desktop session. Running GTK applications as root is bad practice. PolicyKit integration now permits running virt-manager as a regular user.

Previously, Fedora introduced support for secure remote management using TLS/SSL, and x509 certificates. Fedora 9 improves remote management capabilities by adding support for authentication by password database, Kerberos domain controller, or system authentication using PAM. This feature applies to all tools using libvirt .

Fedora also includes the following virtualization improvements: