Prerequisites and assumptions

Your IBM Z® hardware and KVM host must support AP queues for KVM guests.

Hardware requirements

  • IBM Z hardware with one or more cryptographic adapters.

KVM host requirements

  • The KVM host must be a Linux instance in LPAR mode, in an LPAR that has access to one or more AP queues.
  • The Linux instance must support the vfio-ap device driver. This device driver was integrated into the upstream kernel with Linux 4.20.
  • s390-tools upstream version 2.7 or later.
  • QEMU upstream version 3.1 or later.
  • libvirt upstream version 4.9 or later.
Distributions include the required modules and packages as of the following versions:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP1
  • Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS

KVM guest requirements

The KVM guest can be any distribution that is supported on IBM Z hardware.