Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform

Virtualization Support in Red Hat Enterprise Linux

A guest instance in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Virtualization can be run in one of two different modes: Para-Virtualized (PV) and Fully-Virtualized (FV).

The Para-Virtualized mode provides high performance but requires a Xen-enabled version of the guest operating system.

The Fully-Virtualized mode allows unmodified guest operating systems to be run, but requires the hardware to provide Virtualization enablement (Intel-VT or AMD-V).

Red Hat generally supports different versions of Enterprise Linux as a guest as well as a well-defined list of third party operating systems. Please refer to the virtualization support matrix² for details on the supported combinations of host and guest operating systems and architectures.

Red Hat also provides a set of optimized "para-virtualized" drivers for fully virtualized guests, that will directly talk to the hypervisor instead of emulated hardware. These drivers require the host operating system to run Enterprise Linux version 5.1 or later. The virtualization support matrix² provides detailed information about the available PV driver support.

For supported third-party operating systems listed in the virtualization support matrix², Red Hat will provide commercially reasonable efforts to isolate problems customers encounter and provide solutions for defects in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Virtualization environment. However, Red Hat is not able to provide any support for the third party operating system itself.

If the problem falls into the domain of the third-party OS, Red Hat will request that the customer contact the OS vendor directly or Red Hat will engage with the vendor on behalf of the customer for further investigation. Please note that a support contract with any third-party OS vendor will be required for continued support.

If the problem falls into the domain of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Virtualization environment, Red Hat will continue to provide support in accordance with the defined Service Level Agreement associated with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription.

Red Hat will also provide para-virtualized drivers for a selected sub-set of the supported third-party guest operating systems.

1.      Please note that running in a virtualized environment may be subject to the third party operating systems license agreement.

2.      Please see chart below for details.

Legend 
PV      Para-Virtualized: Guest kernel optimized for virtualization.   
FV      Fully-Virtualized: Unmodified guest kernel, requires virtualization hardware support.  
Optimized       Supported and PV or optimized PV drivers provided.     
Supported       Supported but no optimized PV drivers provided.
Unsupported     Not supported and may not work 
N/A     Not a valid combination.       
Tech Preview    Technically possible, but not yet supported.   

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 Virtualization Guest Matrix       
        Kernel & Processor Architecture
Guest Operating System  Enterprise Linux 5

x86-64  Enterprise Linux 5
x86-32 (PAE)    Enterprise Linux 5

IA64   
Supported Enterprise Linux Combinations
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 x86-64 FV    Optimized       N/A     N/A    
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 x86-32 FV    Optimized       Optimized       N/A    
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 IA64 FV      N/A     N/A     N/A    
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 x86-64 PV    Optimized       N/A     N/A    
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 x86-64 FV    Optimized       N/A     N/A    
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 x86-32 PV    Tech Preview¹   Optimized       N/A    
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 x86-32 FV    Optimized       Optimized       N/A    
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 IA64 PV      N/A     N/A     N/A    
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 IA64 FV      N/A     N/A     Supported      
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 x86-64 PV    Optimized       N/A     N/A    
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 x86-64 FV    Optimized       N/A     N/A    
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 x86-32 PV    Tech Preview¹   Optimized       N/A    
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 x86-32 FV    Optimized       Optimized       N/A    
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 IA64 PV      N/A     N/A     Optimized      
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 IA64 FV      N/A     N/A     Supported      
Supported 3rd Party Operating Systems  
Windows Server 2000 32-Bit      Supported²      Supported²      N/A    
Windows Server 2000 64-Bit      Unsupported³    N/A     N/A    
Windows Server 2000 IA64        N/A     N/A     Supported      
Windows Server 2003 32-Bit      Supported²      Supported²      N/A    
Windows Server 2003 64-Bit      Unsupported³    N/A     N/A    
Windows Server 2003 IA64        N/A     N/A     Supported      
Windows XP 32-Bit       Supported²      Supported²      N/A    
Windows XP 64-Bit       Unsupported³    N/A     N/A    
Windows Vista 32-Bit    Supported²      Supported²      N/A    
Windows Vista 64-Bit    Supported²      N/A     N/A    

1.      Support for para-virtualized x86-32 guests on a x86-64 host environment is planned to be fully supported in a later update to Enterprise Linux 5.

2.      Red Hat is actively working on optimized PV drivers for Windows guests. These drivers will lead to a significant improvement in the performance of Windows guests and move the support level to "Optimized." Red Hat will announce details on the availability at a later point in time.

3.      64-Bit Windows guests have not been tested and considered lower priority than 32-Bit guests due to a lack of visible adoption. Red Hat plans to add support at a later point in time.  

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