Virtio

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Paravirtualized drivers for kvm/Linux

  • Virtio was chosen to be the main platform for IO virtualization in KVM
  • The idea behind it is to have a common framework for hypervisors for IO virtualization
  • More information (although not uptodate) can be found in [AttachFile&do=get&target=kvm_pv_drv.pdf]
  • At the moment network/block/balloon devices are suported for kvm
  • The host impelementation is in userspace - qemu, so no driver is needed in the host.

How to use Virtio

  • Get kvm version >= 60
  • Get Linux kernel with virtio drivers for the guest
    • Soon a link will be updated
    • As an alternative one can use a standard guest kernel for the guest > 2.6.18 and make use sync backward compatibility option
  • Use model=virtio for the network devices.
  • At the moment the kernel modules are automatically loaded in the guest but the interface should be started manually (dhclient/ifconfig)