Bug 670359

Summary:	Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard For HP Proliant Servers will not install as guest under RHEL6/KVM
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6	Reporter:	Brad Hubbard <bhubbard>
Component:	libvirt	Assignee:	Eric Blake <eblake>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	Virtualization Bugs <virt-bugs>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	6.3	CC:	berrange, dallan, eblake, jwest, riel, xen-maint
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2011-06-17 18:24:51 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:

Description Brad Hubbard 2011-01-18 00:49:28 UTC

Description of problem: Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard For HP Proliant Servers (a HP custom OEM release media for Windows Server 2008) will not install as a guest OS under KVM on RHEL6 and possibly other versions as the installation probes the BIOS for information about the hardware and will fail if it does not consider the installation target compliant.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible: Always


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install RHEL6 and KVM
2. Create a guest and attempt to install "Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard For HP Proliant Servers"
3.
  
Actual results: The installation terminates with the error message "This system is not a supported platform"


Expected results: A successful install


Additional info: According to the HP website "OEM versions of Windows Server sold by HP will install on virtual machines providing the host BIOS information can be passed from the physical server to the virtual machine." and they have pointed me at the following links as examples of how VMware and Microsoft Hypervisor can be made to work.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c00970200&lang=en&cc=us&taskId=101&prodSeriesId=428936&prodTypeId=15351

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c01452454

Whilst qemu-kvm has some options available that may address this (-smbios options) it is not immediately obvious how these are best used.

Comment 2 Rik van Riel 2011-01-18 01:46:35 UTC

Implementing this feature could mean migrating such virtual machines to non-HP hardware (or even to newer or older HP hardware) could randomly break for users.

IMHO we need to think seriously whether or not it is a good idea to implement this feature request.

Comment 5 Daniel Veillard 2011-01-18 07:52:07 UTC

Note that libvirt present in RHEL-6.1 is gaining the equivalent
facility to VMWare "SMBIOS.reflectHost=TRUE " where the QEmu-KVM
emulation exposes the SMBIOS identification strings from the host.
So if the Host do run on that specific kind of hardware this may
be okay.
It's just a matter of adding <smbios mode="host"/>
to the domain XML before starting it. c.f.

  https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2010-November/msg00123.html

Daniel

Comment 6 Daniel Berrangé 2011-01-18 11:45:03 UTC

And if you want to be migration safe, you can set  <smbios mode="sysinfo"/>, and then provide data in the <sysinfo> block such that it will claim to be an HP machine, regardless of what vendor's hardware the guest is actually running on.