Virtualization/History

= History of Virtualization in Fedora =

Fedora has been leading the pack of Linux distributions with the introduction of new virtualization features for many years now. This page provides a history of noteworthy milestones in Fedora's virtualization support.

Fedora 17

 * oVirt
 * OpenNebula

Fedora 16

 * OpenStack

Other Notable Points

 * Due to be released on April 27, 2010.

Feature list

 * Kernel SamePage Merging (KSM)
 * KVM Huge Page Backed Memory
 * KVM NIC Hotplug
 * KVM qcow2 Performance
 * KVM Stable Guest ABI
 * libguestfs
 * Virtual Network Interface Management
 * Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV)
 * Virt Privileges
 * VirtgPXE
 * Virt Storage Management
 * libvirt TCK

Other notable points

 * Released on November 17, 2009.
 * Interview with various members of the team.
 * [[File:F12VirtFeat.pdf]] - an article on virtualization features in Fedora 12 in the Linux For You Magazine.

Feature list

 * PCI device assignment for KVM
 * Merged QEMU and KVM RPMs
 * sVirt confinement of virtual machines
 * Improved VNC console handling
 * SASL authentication for VNC

Other notable points

 * Released on June 9, 2009.
 * Interview with Dan Berrange on Fedora 11 Virtualization.

Feature list

 * Virtual appliance building tools
 * Remote deployment of virtualized guests
 * Storage management in virtualization tools

Other notable points

 * Released on November 25, 2008.

Feature list

 * Xen fullyvirt direct kernel boot
 * SASL authentication support
 * PolicyKit authentication support
 * Xen pv_ops DomU

Other notable points

 * Released on May 13, 2008.
 * Xen Dom0 support dropped, until Xen Dom0 pv-ops work is accepted by upstream kernel community

Feature list

 * Virtualization security

Other notable points

 * Released on November 8, 2007.

Feature list

 * KVM support

Other notable points

 * Released on May 31, 2007.
 * Continued support for Xen
 * The introduction of KVM to native kernels for fullyvirtualized guests.
 * libvirt gains a new hypervisor driver for managing QEMU and KVM guests.
 * libvirt introduces 'virtual networking' capability providing 'out of the box' NAT based network connectivity for guests which plays nicely with NetworkManager.

Fedora Core 6: Virtualization grows up

 * Released on October 24, 2006.
 * Expanded Xen support including fully virtualized guests.
 * Graphical framebuffer for paravirtualized guests
 * Graphical installs of para & fully virtualized guests.
 * Expanded libvirt APIs to allow monitoring of performance
 * Debut of virt-manager tool for managing Xen guests locally with embedded graphical console
 * The foundation of Xen support in RHEL-5

Fedora Core 5: The future is now

 * Released on March 20, 2006.
 * First release to include Xen 3.0 virtualization for host and guest, as officially supported package.
 * Installs of paravirtualized guests, with a text mode installer
 * Early version of libvirt for managing Xen guests

Fedora Core 4: Glimpse of the future

 * Released on June 13, 2005.
 * A preview of Xen (2.x) virtualization as a set of add-on packages, released post-release.