SLES 12 SP4 released

SLES 12 SP4 is out! See the announcement and their release note with Z-specific changes.
It ships the following code levels:

• Linux kernel 4.12 (SP3: 4.4),
• QEMU v2.11 (SP3: v2.9), and
• libvirt v4.0 (SP3: v3.3).

See previous blog entries on QEMU v2.10 and v2.11 for details on new features that become available by the QEMU package update.
See previous blog entries on Linux kernel 4.8 and 4.11 for details on new features becoming available through the kernel update, e.g. nested virtualization support.
An additional feature in this release is the availability of STHYI information in LPAR environments. Requires qclib v1.3 or later. See this blog post for general information on qclib.

Furthermore, note that these changes provide a full CPU model, which provides protection against live guest migration compatibility troubles. E.g. migrating a guest exploiting the latest features to a KVM instance running on an earlier IBM Z machine lacking said feature would be detected an prevented.
Note: With this feature, live guest migration back to a KVM instance that does not yet support CPU models (e.g. SLES 12 SP3) will not work anymore.