Bug 1040714

Summary: [Doc] Domain OS can't boot up from specified disk when existing more than 8 multifunction "virtio-blk-pci" disks in that domain.
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Reporter: Tahlia Richardson <trichard>
Component: doc-Virtualization_Deployment_and_Administration_GuideAssignee: Charlie <cboyle>
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 7.0CC: ajia, dyuan, flang, hhuang, honzhang, jiahu, juzhang, knoel, kraxel, lersek, lnovich, mzhan, pbonzini, rlandman, trichard, virt-bugs, virt-docs, virt-maint, xuhan, yruseva
Target Milestone: rcKeywords: Documentation, Triaged
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: x86_64   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Known Issue
Doc Text:
The SeaBIOS application runs in real mode for compatibility with BIOS interfaces. This limits the amount of memory available. As a consequpci holeence, SeaBIOS is only able to handle a limited number of disks. Currently, the supported number of disks is: virtio-scsi — 64 virtio-blk — 4 ahci/sata — 24 (4 controllers with all 6 ports connected) usb-storage — 4 As a workaround for this problem, when attaching a large number of disks to your virtual machine, make sure that your system disk has a small pci slot number, so SeaBIOS sees it first when scanning the pci bus. It is also recommended to use the virtio-scsi device instead of virtio-blk as the per-disk memory overhead is smaller.
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: 1034072 Environment:
Last Closed: 2015-03-06 03:27:07 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Bug Depends On: 1034072    
Bug Blocks:    

Comment 4 Gerd Hoffmann 2014-03-31 10:36:05 UTC
Updated doc text field.

Extra note: the real solution for this problem is to use UEFI instead, so we are no longer constrained by BIOS interfaces defined decades ago.

We don't support UEFI (yet), so I think we should wait with write that into the docs until UEFI is supported or at least in tech-preview.  Laszlo, agree?

Comment 5 Laszlo Ersek 2014-03-31 10:50:07 UTC
(In reply to Gerd Hoffmann from comment #4)
> Updated doc text field.
> 
> Extra note: the real solution for this problem is to use UEFI instead, so we
> are no longer constrained by BIOS interfaces defined decades ago.

Seems reasonable.

> We don't support UEFI (yet), so I think we should wait with write that into
> the docs until UEFI is supported or at least in tech-preview.  Laszlo, agree?

Yes, I agree. We shouldn't promise in 7.0 that we'll promise in 7.1 that we'll support OVMF for real starting with 7.2.

I also fixed a misplaced comma in the Doc Text.

Comment 13 Gerd Hoffmann 2015-02-23 14:23:24 UTC
looks good to me.

Comment 14 Dayle Parker 2015-03-06 03:20:18 UTC
Thanks for reviewing, Gerd.

Comment 15 Dayle Parker 2015-03-06 03:27:07 UTC
This change is now available in the released RHEL7.1 documentation at https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/.

Closing as CURRENTRELEASE.