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.