Qemu without KVM

[Peter712]

The background:
my current media server (AMD 1.05ghz, 512M ram.) and never hits 50% of CPU/RAM with the media server running so I don't think it will have any problems once on the new server. but I am running Qemu so that I can run/learn linux. currently running one full time and 2-3 others on an off. problem is windows isn't made to run VM's and hits 90% cpu when Qemu is running 2 VM's that are idle.

The plan:
my new home "server" is a 2 x AMD 2.2GHz Opteron(tm) Processor 248 with 4GB of ram, with a fresh install of proxmox 1.4/4340
I want to move my current windows media server or install a new one with dedicated hard drives and NIC so that I can have native speeds and file systems for the 1.25TB+ of media that I currently have on a 1.5TB drive and don't want to copy it into a container


The Problem:
Attention: This CPU does not support KVM virtual machines (no Intel VT / AMD-V support).

what I think could be the solution:
KVM is an extension of Qemu. what if I could just use Qemu without the KVM extension and just fully emulate it. can this be done?
what will it take to do this? Yes I know that it won't be able to update and that if anything goes wrong I'm on my own. but can it be done?

I am still kinda new to linux. but am willing to try anything!!!!

all thoughts welcome!!!!!!!

Please help me!!!!!!!

 

[dietmar]

AFAIK that processor has AMD-V, so maybe you just need to enable it in the BIOS?

 

[Peter712]

Although I would love to agree with you but the AMD Opteron 248 chips dont have the AMD-V on them... what I have is a
Opteron 200-series "Troy"

• All models support: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, Enhanced 3DNow!, NX bit, AMD64
• All models support up to Registered PC3200 DDR SDRAM
• All models support up to two-processor configurations

the first AMD-V that came out was the
Opteron 1200-series "Santa Ana" (F2 & F3, 90 nm)

• All models support: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, Enhanced 3DNow!, NX bit, AMD64, AMD-V
• All models support up to Unbuffered PC2-6400 DDR2 SDRAM
• All models only support single-processor configurations

info from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Opteron_microprocessors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD-V#AMD_virtualization_.28AMD-V.29

believe me if I had known that I needed/wanted Intel VT / AMD-V to make this work I would have looked for something that had it. but this is what I have now so I needed to figure out what to do now.

so I hope that my question still is a valid one. I don't mind working hard on this project and I feel that this could be a nice segway for older 64bit systems that don't have AMD-V but I haven't been able to figure out how Qemu and KVM work or understand how they work with the kernel.

 

[dietmar]

You can use the command line tools to create a VM (see 'man qm'). I guess that works even if you have no AMD-V.

 

[Peter712]

Ok so if I create one via the command line... will I be able to manage it in proxmox?

 

[martin]

Ok so if I create one via the command line... will I be able to manage it in proxmox?

Should work, yes. But you need to test yourself (we do not use such kind of setup).