HypervisorSupportMatrix/Requirements
Proposed Hypervisor Feature Requirements
The list below is not comprehensive, but is intended to provide a baseline set of features that hypervisors must implement. Not all of the items listed below may be required; more advanced features are listed to support discussion of where we draw the line.
| Feature | Required | Why |
| Launch | Yes | We don't import running guests, which makes this critical |
| Reboot | Yes | It's a pretty core operation that should be supportable everywhere (soft + hard?) |
| Shutdown/Start | Yes | Seems important too - graceful shutdown vs power plug pull? (graceful!) |
| Terminate | Yes | 'Cause |
| Cold Migrate | Yes | Admins need to move instances around a bit as things die |
| Resize | ?Yes | When billed by the minute, ability to shrink/grow is important |
| Rescue | Yes | Seems like important user-facing ability |
| Pause/Unpause | No | Some hypervisors don't support this |
| Suspend/Resume | No | Some hypervisors don't support this |
| Inject networking | No | Doesn't make sense everywhere (?) |
| Inject files | No | Trying to move away from this anyway |
| Serial Console | No | Doesn't make sense everywhere |
| VNC Console | No | Doesn't make sense everywhere |
| SPICE Console | No | Limited to single-hypervisor support |
| RDP Console | No | Limited to single-hypervisor support |
| Attach/Detach Volume | ?Yes | Volumes are the default persistence mechanism |
| Live Migration | No | Not all hypervisors will support this |
| Snapshot | ?Yes | Basic function for bootstrapping environments (but ironic doesn't support this) |
| iSCSI backing | No | |
| FibreChannel Backing | No | |
| Set admin password | No | Overlaps with rescue, not supported everywhere |
| Boot from glance image | Yes | This is basic expected behavior |
| Boot from volume | ?Yes | If volumes work, this should work too |
| Works with nova-network | No | The (distant) future is neutron |
| Works with neutron | Yes | Neutron is openstack's networking platform, so must be supported |
| Supports configdrive | Yes | This is our preferred future file-based configuration mechanism |
| Supports Metadata Service | ?No | This seems dependent on the network stack |
| Evacuate | No | |
| Volume Swap | No | Not supported everywhere |
| Attach/Detach NIC | No | Not supported everywhere |
