KVM is configured as the default hypervisor for Compute. There are several sections about hypervisor selection in this document. If you are reading this document linearly, you do not want to load the KVM module prior to installing nova-compute. The nova-compute service depends on qemu-kvm which installs /lib/udev/rules.d/45-qemu-kvm.rules, which sets the correct permissions on the /dev/kvm device node. To enable KVM explicitly, add the following configuration options /etc/nova/nova.conf:compute_driver=libvirt.LibvirtDriver libvirt_type=kvm The KVM hypervisor supports the following virtual machine image formats: Raw QEMU Copy-on-write (qcow2) QED Qemu Enhanced Disk VMWare virtual machine disk format (vmdk) The rest of this section describes how to enable KVM on your system. You may also wish to consult distribution-specific documentation: Fedora: Getting started with virtualization from the Fedora project wiki. Ubuntu: KVM/Installation from the Community Ubuntu documentation. Debian: Virtualization with KVM from the Debian handbook. RHEL: Installing virtualization packages on an existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux system from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Virtualization Host Configuration and Guest Installation Guide. openSUSE: Installing KVM from the openSUSE Virtualization with KVM manual. SLES: Installing KVM from the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Virtualization with KVM manual.

The processors of your compute host need to support virtualization technology (VT) (mainly Intel VT -x or AMD AMD-v technologies) to use KVM. In order to check if your processor has VT support (which has to be enabled in the BIOS), issue as root:# apt-get install cpu-checker # kvm-ok $ egrep '(vmx|svm)' --color=always /proc/cpuinfo If KVM is supported, the output should look something like: INFO: /dev/kvm exists KVM acceleration can be used flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm arat dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid If KVM is not supported, the output should look something like:INFO: Your CPU does not support KVM extensions KVM acceleration can NOT be used If KVM is not supported, you should get no output. Some systems require that you enable VT support in the system BIOS. If you believe your processor supports hardware acceleration but the above command produced no output, you may need to reboot your machine, enter the system BIOS, and enable the VT option. In the case that KVM acceleration is not supported, Compute should be configured to use a different hypervisor, such as QEMU or Xen.

KVM requires the kvm and either kvm-intel or kvm-amd modules to be loaded. This may have been configured automatically on your distribution when KVM is installed. You can check that they have been loaded using lsmod, as follows, with expected output for Intel-based processors:$ lsmod | grep kvm kvm_intel 137721 9 kvm 415459 1 kvm_intelThe following sections describe how to load the kernel modules for Intel-based and AMD-based processors if they were not loaded automatically by your distribution's KVM installation process.

If your compute host is Intel-based, run the following as root to load the kernel modules:# modprobe kvm # modprobe kvm-intel Add the following lines to /etc/modules so that these modules will load on reboot:kvm kvm-intel

If your compute host is AMD-based, run the following as root to load the kernel modules:# modprobe kvm # modprobe kvm-amd Add the following lines to /etc/modules so that these modules will load on reboot:kvm kvm-amd

The Compute service allows you to control the guest CPU model that is exposed to KVM virtual machines. Use cases include: To maximize performance of virtual machines by exposing new host CPU features to the guest To ensure a consistent default CPU across all machines, removing reliance of variable QEMU defaults In libvirt, the CPU is specified by providing a base CPU model name (which is a shorthand for a set of feature flags), a set of additional feature flags, and the topology (sockets/cores/threads). The libvirt KVM driver provides a number of standard CPU model names. Examples of model names include: "486", "pentium", "pentium2", "pentiumpro", "coreduo", "n270", "pentiumpro", "qemu32", "kvm32", "cpu64-rhel5", "cpu64-rhel5", "kvm64", "pentiumpro", "Conroe" "Penryn", "Nehalem", "Westmere", "pentiumpro", "cpu64-rhel5", "cpu64-rhel5", "Opteron_G1", "Opteron_G2", "Opteron_G3", "Opteron_G4" These models are defined in the file /usr/share/libvirt/cpu_map.xml. Check this file to determine which models are supported by your local installation. There are two Compute configuration options that determine the type of CPU model exposed to the hypervisor when using KVM, libvirt_cpu_mode and libvirt_cpu_model. The libvirt_cpu_mode option can take one of four values: none, host-passthrough, host-model and custom. If your nova.conf contains libvirt_cpu_mode=host-model, libvirt will identify the CPU model in /usr/share/libvirt/cpu_map.xml which most closely matches the host, and then request additional CPU flags to complete the match. This should give close to maximum functionality/performance, which maintaining good reliability/compatibility if the guest is migrated to another host with slightly different host CPUs. If your nova.conf contains libvirt_cpu_mode=host-passthrough, libvirt will tell KVM to passthrough the host CPU with no modifications. The difference to host-model, instead of just matching feature flags, every last detail of the host CPU is matched. This gives absolutely best performance, and can be important to some apps which check low level CPU details, but it comes at a cost with respect to migration: the guest can only be migrated to an exactly matching host CPU. If your nova.conf file contains libvirt_cpu_mode=custom, you can explicitly specify one of the supported named model using the libvirt_cpu_model configuration option. For example, to configure the KVM guests to expose Nehalem CPUs, your nova.conf should contain: libvirt_cpu_mode=custom libvirt_cpu_model=Nehalem If your nova.conf contains libvirt_cpu_mode=none, then libvirt will not specify any CPU model at all. It will leave it up to the hypervisor to choose the default model. This setting is equivalent to the Compute service behavior prior to the Folsom release.

A recommended resource to help you improve the performance of KVM is the VHostNet kernel module. This module improves network performance. To load the kernel module, as root: # modprobe vhost_net

Trying to launch a new virtual machine instance fails with the ERROR state, and the following error appears in /var/log/nova/nova-compute.loglibvirtError: internal error no supported architecture for os type 'hvm' This is a symptom that the KVM kernel modules have not been loaded. If you cannot start VMs after installation without rebooting, it's possible the permissions are not correct. This can happen if you load the KVM module before you've installed nova-compute. To check the permissions, run ls -l /dev/kvm to see whether the group is set to kvm. If not, run sudo udevadm trigger.