Chapter 20. Virtualization

With this update, the virt-v2v utility preserves the CPU topology of the converted virtual machines (VMs). This ensures that the VM CPU works the same way after the conversion as it did before the conversion, which avoids potential runtime problems. (BZ#1541908)

The virt-v2v utility is now able to output a converted virtual machine (VM) directly to a Red Hat Virtualization (RHV) client. As a result, importing VMs converted by virt-v2v using the Red Hat Virtualization Manager (RHVM) is now easier, faster, and more reliable.

Note that this feature requires RHV version 4.2 or later to work properly. (BZ#1557273)

With this update, the libvirt API supports the i6300esb watchdog device. As a result, KVM virtual machines can use this device to automatically trigger a specified action, such as saving a core dump of the guest if the guest OS becomes unresponsive or terminates unexpectedly. (BZ#1447169)

With this update, the paravirtualized sched_clock() function has been integrated in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel. This improves the performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machines (VMs) running on VMWare hypervisors.

Note that the function is enabled by default. To disable it, add the no-vmw-sched-clock option to the kernel command line. (BZ#1507027)

This update enables the virtio-gpu kernel configuration in guests running on the IBM Z architecture. As a result, KVM guests on an IBM Z host are now able to use the VNC console to display their graphical output. (BZ#1570090)

To maintain qemu-guest-agents compatibility with the latest version of VDSM, a number of features have been backported from the most recent upstream version.

These include the addition of qemu-get-host-name, qemu-get-users, qemu-get-osinfo, and qemu-get-timezone commands, which improve the diagnostic capabilities of QEMU Guest Agent. (BZ#1569013)