This section lists the support status for various guest operating systems virtualized on top of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12. All guest operating systems are supported both fully-virtualized and paravirtualized with two exceptions: Windows, which is only supported fully-virtualized, and OES and NetWare operating systems, which are only supported on Xen paravirtualized. All guest operating systems are supported both in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors, unless stated otherwise (see NetWare).

Note: Netware and OES Installation Requirements

You need a static IP address for each virtual machine running NetWare or OES. Open Enterprise Server (OES) 2 Linux can only be installed from a network installation source.

Note: Red Hat Guest

The Red Hat* guest Operating Systems will be fully supported if the customer has purchased Expanded Support, otherwise they will be supported on a best-effort basis (fixes if reasonable).

Note: Technology Preview

The operating system listed above has been tested to install and run successfully. Bugs can be reported to and will be tracked by SUSE Technical Services, but no support commitments or service level agreements apply. Potential fixes and patches will be evaluated for future inclusion.

This section lists the support status of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 running as a guest on top of various virtualization hosts (Hypervisor). Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions are supported. There is full support for SUSE host operating (for both guest and host). There is full support for third party host operating (for guest).

The following SUSE host operating systems are supported:

The following third party host operating systems are supported:

The following SUSE and 3rd party host operating systems will be supported when released:

Currently, SUSE only supports KVM full virtualization on x86_64 hosts and on System z (only as Technology Preview). On the x86_64 architecture, KVM is designed around hardware virtualization features included in AMD* (AMD-V) and Intel* (VT-x) CPUs. It supports virtualization features of chipsets, and PCI devices, such as an I/O Memory Mapping Unit (IOMMU) and Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV).

On the x86_64 architecture, you can test whether your CPU supports hardware virtualization with the following command:

egrep '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo

If this command returns no output, your processor either does not support hardware virtualization, or this feature has been disabled in the BIOS or Firmware.

The following Web sites identify x86_64 processors that support hardware virtualization: http://ark.intel.com/Products/VirtualizationTechnology (for Intel CPUs), and http://products.amd.com/ (for AMD CPUs).

Note: KVM Kernel Modules Not Loading

The KVM kernel modules only load if the CPU hardware virtualization features are available.

The general minimum hardware requirements for the VM Host Server are the same as outlined in Section “System Requirements for Operating Linux”, Chapter 2, Installation on AMD64 and Intel 64, Deployment Guide. However, additional RAM for each virtualized guest is needed. It should at least be the same amount that is needed for a physical installation. It is also strongly recommended to have at least one processor core or hyper-thread for each running guest.