Redbook on KVM on Z

A new Redbook titled "Virtualization Cookbook for IBM Z Volume 5 KVM" is available now. Among others, it covers tasks such as installation, host configuration and guest deployments for Linux distributions by Red Hat, SUSE and Ubuntu.

RHEL 7 Structure A (KVM host support) Support Lifecycle Extended

Red Hat has updated the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle, extending the full support lifecycle for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Structure A on IBM Z to May 31, 2021. See here for details, and here for an entry on the Red Hat Blog, referring to Structure A as "alt packages".
The Structure A release provides updated kernel, QEMU and libvirt packages to run KVM on IBM Z.

Ubuntu 20.04 released

Ubuntu Server 20.04 is out!
It ships

• Linux kernel 5.4,
• QEMU v4.2, and
• libvirt v6.0,

providing Secure Execution as announced here.
For a detailed list of KVM on Z changes, see the release notes here.

Secure Execution for IBM z15 arriving with New Models

IBM announced the latest additions to its IBM z15 series:

• IBM z15 Model T02
• IBM LinuxONE III Model LT2

A substantial part of the announcement is a new feature called Secure Execution. For a brief overview, see here. Secure Execution will become available in the following Linux distributions as announced by the respective distribution partners:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• SUSE Enterprise Linux
• Canonical's Ubuntu

We will publish more details on Secure Execution later. The impatient with an interest in lower level technical details might want to check out the presentations here and here.

KVM at SHARE Fort Worth 2020

Yes, we will be at SHARE in Fort Worth, TX, February 23-28!
Meet us at the following session in the Linux and VM/Virtualization track:

• KVM on IBM Z News (Session #26219): Latest news on our development work with the open source community

SLES 12 SP5 released

SLES 12 SP5 is out! See this section in the release notes for a detailed look at IBM Z-specific changes in support of KVM.
Otherwise, the update ships the following code levels:

• Linux kernel 4.12 (SP4: 4.12, unchanged),
• QEMU v3.1 (SP4: v2.11), and
• libvirt v5.1 (SP4: v4.0).

See previous blog entries on QEMU v2.12 and v3.0, and libvirt v4.7 and v4.10 for further details on new features that become available by the respective package updates.
Also take note of this article, which adds further details on IBM z15 support.

Documentation: New Performance Papers

Two new performance papers on KVM network performance were published:

• Best Practices and Tuning Recommendations
• Exploitation of IP Routing

See also the Performance Hot topics page in IBM Knowledge Center.