Re: [Qemu-discuss] Question regarding configuring PVSCSI with QEMU / KVM

[mike]

On Tue, Dec 9, 2014, at 05:36 AM, Singhal, Upanshu wrote:

Hello,

I am working on an experiment where I want to create a KVM based Virtual machine with VMWARE "vmxnet3" and "pvscsi" devices.

I am currently using Fedora 20 with "3.17.4-200.fc20.x86_64" with QEMU 1.6 version. I can see that vmxnet3 and pvscsi drivers are available on the host system and can also see there reference in "qemu-kvm" help.

I am able to create a vmxnet3 device but not able to create a "pvscsi" type device. I tried several methods e.g. modifying the vm xml file using virsh, but whenever I give controller model as "vmpvscsi" or "pvscsi", kvm refuses to accept this as a valid model.

As per qemu / kvm documentation, these drivers are supported but I am not able to find as how to configure pvscsi.

Can someone will be able to help me on this as how to configure or point to me some relevant documentation?

 

i don't know of any documentation for this but i just tried experimenting and was able to get it to work from the command line. the following command created a VM with a pvscsi controller and disk attached to it.

 

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -smp 2 -m 2048 -device pvscsi,id=scsi0 -drive file=test.qcow2,id=hd0,if=none -device scsi-disk,drive=hd0,bus=scsi0.0 -cdrom /home/mike/Downloads/debian-testing-amd64-netinst.iso

 

the id of scsi0 for the pvscsi controller and hd0 for the virtual disk are arbitrary but need to match up with the bus and drive options to the scsi-disk device. i booted a debian installer iso to verify that the system could see the pvscsi controller and disk. it appeared to work since the installer could see the disk and the kernel had the vmw_pvscsi kernel module loaded. specifying if=pvscsi in the -drive options will not work.

 

i'm not sure how that set of command line options would translate to libvirt xml though. there is a reference in the libvirt documentation for the domain xml format to the vmpvscsi controller type. my guess is that if you have a xml definition for a guest and want to use pvscsi that you'll need to change the type attribute on the appropriate controller element to vmpvscsi.

 

hope that helps.

 

mike