The libvirt Hyper-V driver now supports Hyper-V 2012 and newer. Starting with Hyper-V 2012 the API has changed causing the existing driver to be unable to send and process requests properly. This has been resolved by adding abstractions to handle the differences and ease handling such breaks if they happen in the future.
The virt-host-validate tool now supports bhyve hypervisor Introduce NVDIMM memory model NVDIMM is new type of memory introduced into QEMU 2.6. The idea is that we have a non-volatile memory module that keeps the data persistent across domain reboots and offers much faster data accesses. However, due to a bug in QEMU, this feature is not enabled for QEMUs older than 2.9.0. qemu: Introduce support for generic PCIe Root Ports For new controllers, a generic device (pcie-root-port) will be used by default instead of the Intel-specific device (ioh3420), provided the QEMU binary supports it. qemu: Add support for checking guest CPU ABI compatibility When migrating a domain to a different host, restoring a domain from a file or reverting a snapshot libvirt will make sure the guest CPU QEMU presents to the guest OS exactly matches the one provided on the source host (or before the domain's state was saved). This enhanced check may also be requested when starting a new domain to ensure the virtual CPU exactly matches the one specified in the XML. qemu: Add support to migrate using TLS Add the ability to migrate QEMU guests using TLS via a new flag VIR_MIGRATE_TLS or virsh migrate '--tls' option. Requires using at least QEMU 2.9.0 in order to work properly. qemu: add mediated devices framework support Recent kernel version introduced new mediated device framework, so provide an initial support of this framework for libvirt, mainly by introducing a new host device type in the XML. qemu: Add support for setting TSC frequency Setting TSC frequency is required to enable migration for domains with 'invtsc' CPU feature turned on. Add support for block device threshold event When using thin provisioning, management tools need to resize the disk in certain cases. To avoid having them to poll disk usage this version introduces an event which will be fired when a given offset of the storage is written by the hypervisor. Together with the API it allows registering thresholds for given storage backing volumes and this event will then notify management if the threshold is exceeded. Currently only the qemu driver supports this. bhyve: Add support for UEFI boot ROM, VNC, and USB tablet The bhyve driver now supports booting using the UEFI boot ROM, so non-FreeBSD guests that support UEFI could be booted without using an external boot loader like grub-bhyve. Video is also supported now, allowing to connect to guests via VNC and use an USB tablet as an input device. Please refer to the driver page for domain XML examples.
qemu: Detect host CPU model by asking QEMU on x86_64 Previously, libvirt detected the host CPU model using CPUID instruction, which caused libvirt to detect a lot of CPU features that are not supported by QEMU/KVM. Asking QEMU makes sure we don't start it with unsupported features. perf: Add more perf statistics Add support to get the count of cpu clock time, task clock time, page faults, context switches, cpu migrations, minor page faults, major page faults, alignment faults, emulation faults by applications running on the platform. Write hyperv crash information into vm log qemu's implementation of the hyperv panic notifier now reports information about the crash from the guest os. Starting with this version, libvirt logs the information to the vm log file for possible debugging.
QEMU: Use adaptive timeout for connecting to monitor When starting qemu, libvirt waits for qemu to create the monitor socket which libvirt connects to. Historically, there was sharp 30 second timeout after which the qemu process was killed. This approach is suboptimal as in some scenarios with huge amounts of guest RAM it can take a minute or more for kernel to allocate and zero out pages for qemu. The timeout is now flexible and computed by libvirt at domain startup. Overwrite (clear) 2 KB instead of just 512 bytes when initializing logical device Describe the logical backend requirements better for pool-create-as
storage: Add Virtuozzo storage backend storage pool Add new storage backend to support pool and volume management within the Virtuozzo Storage environment. Virtuozzo Storage is a highly available distributed software defined storage with built-in replication and disaster recovery. qemu: Add support for memory backing with file source Add support in numa topology for file source inside memory backing (hugepages are not needed) Three new elements <source/>,<access/> and <allocation/> were added to <memoryBacking/> element. Also new configuration parameter memory_backing_dir was added to qemu.conf. network: make openvswitch call timeout configurable Adding the ability to specify the timeout value in seconds for openvswitch calls in the libvirtd configuration file. bhyve: add e1000 NIC support Add support for e1000 NIC. Previously, the only available option was virtio-net. libxl: add tunneled migration support Add tunneled migration to libxl driver, which is always capable of strong encryption and doesn't require any extra network connection other than what's required for remote access of libvirtd. qemu: add rendernode argument Add a new attribute 'rendernode' to <gl> spice element. nodedev: add drm capability Add a new 'drm' capability for Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) devices, providing device type information. Add API for individual/specific vCPU hotplug The new API allows selecting specific vCPUs to be added/removed from the VM. The existing APIs allowed only adding/removing from the end which did not play well with NUMA.
virsh: pool-list: allow both --uuid and --name in one command Adjust the virsh-pool command to support the --uuid and/or --name options in order to print just the --name and/or --uuid of pools. Introduce MTU to domain <interface/> and <network> Allow setting MTU size for some types of domain interface and network. libxl: improve support for <timer> configurations Add support for multiple timers. Extend the tsc timer to support the emulate mode. Improve conversion of timer XML to/from xl.cfg. storage: modularize the storage driver Split up the storage driver backends into loadable modules so that binary distributions don't have to compromise on shipping the storage driver with all backends which may pull in too many dependencies.
nodedev: Fabric name must not be required for fc_host capability fabric_name is one of many fc_host attributes in Linux that is optional and left to the low-level driver to decide if it is implemented. For example the zfcp device driver does not provide a fabric name for an fcp host. The requirement for the existence of a fabric name has been removed by making it optional. bhyve: change address allocation schema for SATA disks Previously, the bhyve driver assigned PCI addresses to SATA disks directly rather than assigning that to a controller and using SATA addresses for disks. It was implemented this way because bhyve has no notion of an explicit SATA controller. However, as this doesn't match libvirt's understanding of disk addresses, the bhyve driver was changed to follow the common schema and have PCI addresses for SATA controllers and SATA addresses for disks. If you're having issues because of this, it's recommended to edit the domain's XML and remove <address type='pci'> from the <disk> elements with <target bus='sata'/> and let libvirt regenerate it properly. libxl: maximum memory fixes Fix reporting of domain maximum memory. Fix setting dom0 maximum memory. libxl: fix disk detach when <driver> not specified libxl: fix dom0 autoballooning with Xen 4.8 qemu: Allow empty script path to <interface/> Historically, this was always allowed. Unfortunately, due to some rework done for 1.3.2 release a bug was dragged in which suddenly stop allowing domain with such configuration to start.
Domain events for metadata content changes The domain events framework has a new event ID that can be used to get notifications when domain metadata content changes. Event notifications for the secret object The secret object now supports event notifications, covering lifcycle changes and secret value changes. New localPtr attribute for "ip" element in network XML qemu: Support QEMU group I/O throttling Add the capability to allow group I/O throttling via a new domain <disk> <iotune> subelement "group_name" to allow sharing I/O throttling quota between multiple drives. nss: Introduce libvirt_guest New libvirt_guest nss module that translates libvirt guest names into IP addresses. daemon: Add support for runtime logging settings adjustment Logging-related settings like log outputs and filters can now be adjusted during runtime using the admin interface without the necessity of the daemon's restart. storage: Add virStorageVolInfoFlags API Add the API to support using the VIR_STORAGE_VOL_GET_PHYSICAL flag in order to return the host physical size in bytes of the image container in the allocation field of the _virStorageVolInfo structure. The --physical flag has been added to the virsh vol-info command to access the data. libxl: Implement virDomainGetMaxVcpus API storage: Add overwrite flag checking for logical pool Add support for the OVERWRITE flags for the logical storage backend including checking for existing data on the target volumes when building a new logical pool on target volume(s). qemu: Add support for guest CPU configuration on s390(x)
perf: Add more perf statistics Add support to get the count of branch instructions executed, branch misses, bus cycles, stalled frontend cpu cycles, stalled backend cpu cycles, and ref cpu cycles by applications running on the platform. conf: Display <physical> for volume xml Add a display of the <physical> size of a disk volume in the output of the volume XML. qemu: Use virtio-pci by default for aarch64 mach-virt guests virtio-pci provides several advantages over virtio-mmio, such as the ability to hotplug devices and improved performance. While opting in to virtio-pci has been possible for a while, newly-defined guests will now use it automatically. vbox: remove support for VirtualBox 3.x and older Those old VirtualBox versions have been unsupported by upstream for a long time and the API of 4.0 and newer has diverged enough to require code abstractions to handle differences. Removing support for those old versions drops lots of code from the driver and simplifies the logic to ease implementation of new features going forward. virsh: pool-info: introduce option --bytes Add option --bytes to virsh pool-info in order ti allow display of units in bytes rather than default of human readable output. scsi: Add parent wwnn/wwpn or fabric capability for createVport Improve the algorithm searching for the parent scsi_host device for vHBA/NPIV scsi_host creation. Rather than supplying the "parent" by name, it's now possible to define the parent by it's wwnn/wwpn or fabric_wwn in the node device create XML or the storage pool XML. qemu: aggregate pcie-root-ports onto multiple functions of a slot When pcie-root-ports are added to pcie-root in order to provide a place to connect PCI Express endpoint devices, libvirt now aggregates multiple root ports together onto the same slot (up to 8 per slot) in order to conserve slots. Using this method, it's possible to connect more than 200 endpoint devices to a guest that uses PCIe without requiring setup of any PCIe switches.
lxc: fix accidental killing of containers during libvirtd restart The libvirt_lxc process was previously not moved into the container scope. As a result, if systemd reloads its config after a container is started, when libvirtd is later restarted it will accidentally kill the containers. qemu: Correct GetBlockInfo values For an active domain, correct the physical value provided for a raw sparse file backed storage and the allocation value provided for a qcow2 file backed storage that hasn't yet been opened on the domain. qemu: Make virtio console usable on ppc64 guests The chardev detection code has been improved and can now handle this configuration properly. qemu: Enable mount namespace To avoid funny races with udev relabelling devices under our hands and to enhance security, libvirt now spawns each qemu process with its own /dev. storage: Fix implementation of no-overwrite for file system backend Fix file system storage backend implementation of the OVERWRITE flags to be consistent between code and documentation. Add checks to ensure that when building a new file system on a target volume that there is not something already on the disk in a format that libvirt can recognize. qemu: Create hugepage path on per domain basis Historically, all hugepage enabled domains shared the same path under hugetlbfs. This left libvirt unable to correctly set security labels on it. With this release, however, each domain is put into a separate path which is also correctly labeled. conf: Reject domains with duplicate drive addresses Reject duplicate drive addresses for disks and hostdevs at domain definition. libxl: reverse defaults on HVM net device attach Fixes network interface attach for HVM domains when no model is specified. Emulated hotplug isn't yet supported and hence we should default to the general working scenario. libxl: always enable pae for x86_64 HVM By default pae is disabled in libxl. Without an explicit <pae/> setting in the domain <features> configuration, an x86_64 HVM domain would be get an i686 environment. pae should always be enabled for x86_64 HVM domains. qemu: Fix XML dump of autogenerated websocket As a result autogenerated websocket port is regenerated on domain restore, migration and such as it should be.
shmem: Add support for additional models The shmem device can now utilize QEMU's ivshmem-plain and ivshmem-doorbell, more modern versions of ivshmem. vbox: Add VirtualBox 5.1 support libssh: New transport The new libssh transport allows one to connect to a running libvirtd via SSH, using the libssh library; for example: qemu+libssh://server/system. vhost-scsi: Add support scsi_host hostdev passthrough Add the capability to pass through a scsi_host HBA and the associated LUNs to the guest. Allow debugging of gluster volumes in qemu Users can now enable debug logging for native gluster volumes in qemu using the "gluster_debug_level" option in qemu.conf Pre-allocate memory slots for memory hotplug Slot numbers for memory devices are now automatically allocated and thus persistent. In addition slot numbers can be specified without providing a base address, which simplifies user configuration qemu: Express devices will be placed on PCIe bus by default For machine types that use a PCI Express root bus (e.g. x86_64/Q35 and aarch64/virt), any unaddressed PCI device that is an Express device (all virtio-1.0 devices, e1000e, nec-xhci, vfio assigned devices) will be placed on an Express controller (i.e. a pcie-root-port) instead of a legacy PCI controller (i.e. pci-bridge) with the root ports added as needed.
docs: Better documentation for migration APIs and flags vbox: Address thread safety issues virsh: Add support for passing an alternative persistent XML to migrate command vhostuser: Allow hotplug of multiqueue devices NEWS: Switch to an improved format List user-visible changes instead of single commits for a better high-level overview of differences between libvirt releases. website: Modernize layout and branding The libvirt website looked very cluttered and outdated; it has now been completely overhauled, resulting in a design that's better organized and more pleasant to look at.
vz: Fix migration in P2P mode Forbid newline character in names of some libvirt objects Fix compilation on macOS