Chapter 2. Requirements and restrictions
This chapter covers the hardware and software requirements for the para-virtualized Windows drivers.
The para-virtualized Windows drivers can be deployed on x86 (32-bit) and AMD64 or Intel 64 (64-bit) systems running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 or later. The Itanium platform is presently unsupported for the para-virtualized drivers.
Hosts running AMD64 or Intel 64 (64-bit) Red Hat Enterprise Linux can run 64-bit or 32-bit fully-virtualized Windows guests. Mixing 32-bit and 64-bit guest operating systems is supported.
Hosts running x86 (32-bit) Red Hat Enterprise Linux can only run 32-bit guest operating systems.
You require all of the items in this list for the para-virtualized Windows drivers:
one or more of the para-virtualized Windows drivers packages. The package installation process is described in Section 3.2, “Installing the para-virtualized drivers”. You only require the packages for the guest architectures you run.
xenpv-win-32bit – The driver package for 32-bit Windows versions.
xenpv-win-32bit-debug – The debugging driver package for 32-bit Windows versions.
xenpv-win-64bit – The driver package for 64-bit Windows versions.
xenpv-win-64bit-debug – The debugging driver for 64-bit Windows versions.
a system running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, or later, for the host.
at least 10MB of free space on each Windows guest.
administrator-level access to the Windows virtual machine.
root or sudo access to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux host.
Support for para-virtualized drivers is available to virtualized guests running the following Microsoft Windows operating system versions.
Windows Server 2003, Service Pack 2 – 32-bit
Windows Server 2003, Service Pack 2 – 64-bit
Windows Server 2003 R2, Service Pack 2 – 32-bit
Windows Server 2003 R2, Service Pack 2 – 64-bit
Windows XP, Service Pack 2 – 32-bit
Windows XP, Service Pack 3 – 32-bit
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Service Pack 1 – 64-bit
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Service Pack 2 – 64-bit
All mentions of the term "64-bit" in this document refer to AMD64 and Intel 64 systems. Itanium systems are not supported at present by these drivers.
The system drive cannot run the para-virtualized block device drivers.
The system drive, identified by the %SYSTEMDRIVE% environment variable in Windows, is the device which contains boot information and system files for the Windows operating system. This device, usually labeled C: drive, contains the Windows directory and cannot use the para-virtualized drivers. The drivers can use a separate partition, logical volume or other physical block device to store applications and non-Windows data. This limitation is due to the limitations of the qemu package.
An example configuration utilizing the para-virtualized drivers.
C: drive which contains Windows system files and uses the default, fully-virtualized device drivers.
D: drive which contains applications and utilizes the para-virtualized drivers.