From Fedora Project Wiki

F12 Virtualization Release Notes

Final rendered release notes. Original wiki version backup.

Bugs

Features

  • VirtioSerial Adds a virtio-serial device to guests running on top of qemu and kvm - accepted
  • VirtgPXE Replace the deprecated etherboot pxe booting infrastructure with the more modern and currently upstream supported gpxe. - accepted
  • libguestfs Libguestfs is a library for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images. guestfish is an interactive shell tool for editing virtual machine disk images. - accepted
Technically, this actually launched in F11, but not as a "Feature" http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f11/en-US/sect-Release_Notes-Virtualization.html
  • SR-IOV Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) is a PCI feature which allows virtual functions (VF) to be created that share the resources of a physical function (PF). - accepted
  • KVM Huge Page Backed Memory - Enable KVM guests to use huge page backed memory in order to reduce memory consumption and improve performance by reducing CPU cache pressure. - accepted
  • KVM qcow2 Performance - Improve the I/O performance of virtual machines using disk images in the qcow2 image format. - accepted
  • Network Interface Management - Provide tools to easily set up commonly used network configurations, like bridges, bonds, vlan's and sensible combinations thereof, in particular for virtualized hosts. - accepted
  • KSM - Allow KVM guest virtual machines to share identical memory pages. This is especially useful when running multiple guests from the same or similar base operating system image. Because memory is shared, the combined memory usage of the guests is reduced. - accepted
  • KVM NIC Hotplug - Allow the addition of a guest network interface (NIC) a guest virtual machine without needing to restart the guest. - accepted
  • KVM Stable Guest ABI - Allow guest virtual machines to be presented with the same application binary interface across QEMU upgrades. - accepted
  • Virt Privileges - Improve security by adjusting the privileges of QEMU processes managed by libvirt. Also, allow KVM to be used by unprivileged users. - accepted
  • Virt Storage Management - Enable VM hosts to discover new SAN storage and issue NPIV operations. - accepted

Not exactly an accepted feature, but mentioned in rel notes.

Packages

Versions also see Virtualization_bugs (script to make table)

Virtualization Package Versions
Package f11 Release f11 Updates (20090906) f12 Release f12 Updates (20090906) Rawhide Rel Notes
Package-x-generic-16.pnglibvirt 0.6.2-8.fc11 0.6.2-17.fc11 0.7.1-0.1.git3ef2e05.fc12 0.7.1-0.1.git3ef2e05.fc12 0.7.1-0.1.git3ef2e05.fc12 http://www.libvirt.org/news.html
Package-x-generic-16.pnglibguestfs n/a 1.0.68-2.fc11 1.0.68-2.fc12 1.0.68-2.fc12 1.0.68-2.fc12 http://www.libguestfs.org/
Package-x-generic-16.pngguestfish n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a http://www.libguestfs.org/
Package-x-generic-16.pngnetcf 0.1.0-1.fc10 0.1.0-1.fc11 0.1.0-2.fc12 0.1.0-2.fc12 0.1.0-2.fc12 http://fedorahosted.org/netcf/
Package-x-generic-16.pngpython-virtinst 0.400.3-8.fc11 0.400.3-8.fc11 0.500.0-1.fc12 0.500.0-1.fc12 0.500.0-1.fc12 http://virt-manager.et.redhat.com/download.html
Package-x-generic-16.pngvirt-df 2.1.5-1.fc11 n/a n/a n/a n/a http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df/
Package-x-generic-16.pngvirt-inspector n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a http://www.libguestfs.org/
Package-x-generic-16.pngvirt-manager 0.7.0-4.fc11 0.7.0-5.fc11 0.8.0-2.fc12 0.8.0-2.fc12 0.8.0-2.fc12 http://www.virtmanager.org/
Package-x-generic-16.pngvirt-mem 0.3.1-6.fc11 0.3.1-6.fc11 0.3.1-9.fc12 0.3.1-9.fc12 0.3.1-9.fc12 http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-mem/faq.html
Package-x-generic-16.pngvirt-top 1.0.3-4.fc11 1.0.3-4.fc11 1.0.3-5.fc12 1.0.3-5.fc12 1.0.3-5.fc12 http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top/ChangeLog.txt
Package-x-generic-16.pngvirt-viewer 0.0.3-4.fc11 0.0.3-6.fc11 0.2.0-1.fc12 0.2.0-1.fc12 0.2.0-1.fc12 http://www.virtmanager.org/
Package-x-generic-16.pngqemu 0.10-16.fc11 0.10.6-1.fc11 0.10.91-0.9.rc1.fc12 0.10.91-0.9.rc1.fc12 0.10.91-0.9.rc1.fc12 http://www.nongnu.org/qemu/changelog.html
Package-x-generic-16.pngxen 3.3.1-11.fc11 3.3.1-11.fc11 3.4.1-3.fc12 3.4.1-3.fc12 3.4.1-3.fc12 http://www.xen.org/download/
Package-x-generic-16.pngxenner 0.46-6.fc11 0.46-6.fc11 0.47-3.fc12 0.47-3.fc12 0.47-3.fc12 http://cvs.bytesex.org/xenner.html
Package-x-generic-16.pngxenwatch 0.5.4-2.fc11 0.5.4-2.fc11 0.5.4-3.fc12 0.5.4-3.fc12 0.5.4-3.fc12 http://cvs.bytesex.org/xenwatch.html
Changes to Noteworthy Packages
  • libvirt
0.7.0 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue189#New_Release_libvirt_0.7.0
  • Interface implementation based on netcf (Laine Stump Daniel Veillard)
  • Add new net filesystem glusterfs (Harshavardhana)
  • Initial VMWare ESX driver (Matthias Bolte)
  • Add support for VBox 3 and event callbacks on vbox (Pritesh Kothari)
  • First version of the Power Hypervisor driver (Eduardo Otubo)
  • Run QEMU guests as an unprivileged user (Daniel P. Berrange)
  • Support cgroups in QEMU driver (Daniel P. Berrange)
  • QEmu hotplug NIC support (Mark McLoughlin)
  • Storage cloning for LVM and Disk backends(Cole Robinson)
  • Switching to GIT (Jim Meyering)
0.6.5 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue184#New_Release_libvirt_0.6.5
  • create and destroy NPIV support (David Allan)
  • networking in UML driver (Daniel Berrange)
  • HAL driver restart thread safety (Daniel Berrange)
  • capabilities and nodeinfo APIs for LXC (Daniel Berrange)
  • iNUMA API for VBox (Daniel Berrange)
  • dynamically search and use kvm-img qemu-img or qcow-create (Doug Goldstein)
  • fix qemu and kvm version parsing (Mark McLoughlin)
  • serial number for HAL storage (Dave Allan)
  • improve error reporting for virConnectOpen URIs (Daniel Berrange)
  • include OS driver name in device XML (Daniel Berrange)
  • fix qemu command flags fetching (Cole Robinson)
  • check that qemu support -drive format= (Cole Robinson)
  • improve emulator detection (Cole Robinson)
  • changes to config parser to accomodate VMX syntax (Matthias Bolte)
  • update network schemas and driver for missing elements (Satoru SATOH)
  • avoid changing file context if not needed (Tim Waugh)
  • skip labelling if no src path (Cole Robinson)
  • add arm emulation if qemu-system-arm is present (C.J. Adams-Collier)
0.6.4 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue179#New_Release_libvirt_0.6.4
  • new API virStorageVolCreateXMLFrom (Cole Robinson)
  • full VBox graphic capabilities (Pritesh Kothari)
  • Interface config APIs (Laine Stump)
  • APIs for domain XML conversions (Daniel Berrange)
  • initial version of OpenNebula driver (Abel Miguez Rodriguez)
0.6.3 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue173#New_Release_libvirt_0.6.3
  • VirtualBox driver support (Pritesh Kothari)
  • virt-xml-validate new command (Daniel Berrange)
  • qemu
0.10.91 http://www.nongnu.org/qemu/changelog.html
  • virt-manager
0.8.0 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue187#New_Release_virt-manager_0.8.0
  • New 'Clone VM' Wizard
  • Improved UI, including an overhaul of the main 'manager' view
  • System tray icon for easy VM access (start, stop, view console/details)
  • Wizard for adding serial, parallel, and video devices to existing VMs.
  • CPU pinning support (Michal Novotny)
  • Ability to view and change VM security (sVirt) settings (Dan Walsh)
  • Many bug fixes and improvements
  • xen
3.4.1 http://www.xen.org/products/xenhyp.html
  • PCI Pass-through
  • Better Power Management