[OmniOS-discuss] newbie virtualisation question

[Alex Wilson]

On 12/10/2012 05:35 AM, Michael Mounteney wrote:
> On Sun, 09 Dec 2012 20:58:04 +1000
> Alex Wilson <alex at cooperi.net> wrote:
>
>> The E5405 is a Harpertown Xeon (based on Penryn), which only has VT-x
>> and not the necessary EPT capabilities to be able to use illumos KVM.
>
> Oh.  Thanks Alex.
>
> I had similar problems with an X4200 which runs an AMD 2220 CPU, so is that similarly afflicted ?
>

AMD CPUs are not currently supported at all by Illumos KVM, however the 
same patches that enable pre-EPT support also enable support for them. 
The code for newer AMD CPUs (with the equivalent of EPT) is reasonably 
stable, but older AMD CPUs such as the Opteron 2220 (which is K8-based) 
crash in a similar way to pre-EPT Intel CPUs (it's basically the same 
code that runs in both cases).

For anyone who's interested in trying it out, it's Joshua M. Clulow's 
code at https://github.com/jclulow/illumos-kvm -- I have a more recent 
rebase of it on top of Joyent's KVM branch (which should still work with 
OmniOS just fine) at https://github.com/arekinath/illumos-kvm

Please note the warning about setting fire to your cat, it very well 
could! :)

-Alex