I would like to set up a virtualized windows guest with vga passthrough via KVM, on an opensuse host. I have seen guides for this on Archlinux, Fedora, and even Debian, but I cannot find anything for openSUSE. This forum alludes to vga passthrough using Xen, but from the xen website, my gpu is not listed as supported (Nvidia 560 ti). However, KVM has user-confirmed support for this nvidia card.
I have used virtualbox numerous times in the past, but I have never used KVM. This vga passthrough technique is the motivating reason for me to try to set up KVM. With that in mind, does anyone know of a guide which could help me set this up?
Nowadays, KVM core features are part of the distributed kernel, and openSUSE is generally pretty current with the latest stable versions of practically everything else including User tools… So, although not mentioned anywhere, I would say that if you find documentation about this feature in Archlinux, there is a pretty good chance it’s also supported in openSUSE.
Although openSUSE KVM documentation may not be extremely complete, I consider the any current SUSE KVM documentation to be completely relevant and applicable to anything running in openSUSE. If the feature you’re researching isn’t bleeding edge, you can probably look for the specific commands described in another distro (like Arch) in the following section in the SUSE documentation… Note there are sections for both supported and unsupported commands (you may want to sift through the latter section first) https://www.suse.com/documentation/sles11/singlehtml/book_kvm/book_kvm.html#app.kvm.qemu-commands
As is usual… Install KVM including libvirt first and see whether you can set up what you want using vm manager. If you can’t, then try setting up using the command line.
Okay, I finally have time to try KVM out. But I’m curious about one thing. I already have a windows 7 partition on this computer, so would it be possible for KVM to use this partition to create a windows vm? It’s a long shot, but I’m hoping I can create its image from a full windows install rather than from a windows iso. If possible, I expect it would at best create a vm image based on the windows partition. In an ideal world, I would love for the image to be the partition itself. So if I install AutoCAD on the windows partition, when I am in openSUSE and boot the KVM image, it would also have AutoCAD installed (as it is using my partition for the guest).
You can use any of a variety of apps called P2V (Physical to Virtual) to convert your physical machines to Guests in one step. The “old, tried and true” alternative is to do a backup and restore to a Guest which would also include some swapping out some device drivers. A “forklift” restore like this used to be more of a problem many years ago, but most relatively recent OS of any type should be able to migrate without too much issue (might require a few reboots).