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 5.1 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	Supported
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

Support for para-virtualized x86-32 guests on a x86-64 host environment is planned to be fully supported in 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. 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.