RHEA-2009:1624 - Product Enhancement Advisory

Topic

A new package, virtio-win, which adds signed, para-virtualized Windows
drivers for fully-virtualized 32-bit and 64-bit Windows guests is now
available.

Description

Para-virtualized drivers are virtualization-aware drivers used by fully
virtualized guests running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Fully-virtualized
guests using the para-virtualized drivers gain significantly better I/O
performance than fully-virtualized guests running without the drivers.

This new package provides signed, para-virtualized network drivers for the
following guest operating systems:

Windows XP, 32-bit
Windows Server 2003, 32-bit
Windows Server 2003, 64-bit
Windows Server 2008, 32-bit
Windows Server 2008, 64-bit
Windows Server 2008 R2

This new package also provides signed, para-virtualized disk (block)
drivers for the following guest operating systems:

Windows Server 2003, 32-bit
Windows Server 2003, 64-bit
Windows Server 2008, 32-bit
Windows Server 2008, 64-bit
Windows Server 2008 R2

These drivers are provided as four Windows Installer (.msi) files on a
mountable .iso file installed to /usr/share/virtio-win/virtio-win-1.0.0.iso
on the host machine. (BZ#529617)

Note: when the disk drivers for the 32-bit version of Windows Server 2008
are installed using RHEV-Block.msi, the drivers for 32-bit Windows Server
2003 may, incorrectly, be installed. The recommended way to install the
32-bit Windows Server 2008 disk drivers is to attach the included virtual
floppy disk file, /usr/share/virtio-win/virtio-drivers-1.0.0.vfd, to the
guest and install from there.

All users running fully-virtualized instances of Windows on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux-based KVM hosts should install these new packages which
significantly improve I/O performance.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously-released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via the Red Hat Network. Details on how to
use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64 - Extended Update Support 5.4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64

Fixes

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)