White Paper: Exploiting HiperSockets in a KVM Environment Using IP Routing with Linux on Z

Our performance group has published a new white paper titled "Exploiting HiperSockets in a KVM Environment Using IP Routing with Linux on Z".
Abstract:

"The IBM Z platforms provide the HiperSockets technology feature for high-speed communications. This paper documents how to set up and configure KVM virtual machines to use HiperSockets with IP routing capabilities of the TCP/IP stack.
It provides a Network Performance comparison between various network configurations and illustrates how HiperSockets can achieve greater performance for many workload types, across a wide range of data-flow patterns, compared with using an OSA 10GbE card."

This white paper is available as .pdf and .html.

New White Paper available: KVM Network Performance

A new white paper has been published: KVM Network Performance - Best Practices and Tuning Recommendations. It is available here, and explores different system configurations (running KVM guests), different networking configuration choices, as well as tuning recommendations for the KVM host and KVM guest environments to achieve greater network performance on the IBM z Systems platforms.

New Books available

Two new books are available as follows:

• The new book KVM Virtual Server Management Tools is available here, covering the open source package virt-manager (see screenshot above) along with its supporting tools virt-install and virt-clone in a generic manner. I.e. it applies to both, KVM on z in general as well as the KVM for IBM z Systems product.
• The Device Drivers, Features, and Commands for Linux as a KVM Guest book is now also available in a version specific to Ubuntu 16.04 here.

For a publications overview see here.

KVM on z Documentation References

The amount of documentation provided in the IBM Knowledge Center can at times be overwhelming. Therefore, this entry will provide some general guidance.
See here for a continuously updated version of this entry.

The documentation for KVM on z (see overall entry point here) is grouped under these categories:

• KVM base technology: Documentation in this category relates to the latest upstream version of the respective components (mainly the kvm Linux kernel module, QEMU and libvirt).
  Note: If you are already familiar with KVM, or want to jump right in, check the KVM Virtual Server Quick Start guide: This is a cheat sheet-like 4 page document designed to get you started as quickly as possible.
• KVM for IBM z Systems: All documents in this category relate to the IBM product of the same name.

For white papers, Redbooks, live virtual classes, and more, check out the materials related to virtualization on z Systems available here.

In addition, here is a document listing the recommended limits when running KVM on z Systems. It is aimed at the KVM for IBM z product, but also provides a good starting point when running other flavors of KVM on z.

Finally, documentation and pointers on ICM (IBM Cloud Manager, IBM's OpenStack-based product) can be found here.