Support Tiers

From QEMU

Note this article is a draft / work in progress / scratch-pad.

It is not official project policy at this time.

Definitions

QEMU features are classified into a number of support tiers, which serve as guidance to users on the long term intentions wrt quality and supportability.


Tier 1 🌞
These are the top class features, suitable for use in a virtualization scenario and expected to be fully functional at all times.
MUST have a nominated maintainer
MUST be compiled by automated CI systems prior to merge
MUST be tested by automated CI systems prior to merge
MUST be written to be robust against malicious guests
Tier 2 β›…
These are generally good features, but have some caveats preventing them achieving the top tier. They may only be suitable for use in an emulation scenario and may not be functional except at time of release.
MUST have a nominated maintainer
MUST be compiled by automated CI systems prior to merge
SHOULD be tested manually by maintainer prior to major releases
Tier 3 ⚑
These features are generally not recommended to be used. They may be insecure and can be non-functional at any time, even in releases. They are liable to be removed entirely at any time.

Host architectures

Arch Status Comments
armv7 Tier 1 🌞 Tested with Linux
aarch64 Tier 1 🌞 Tested with Linux
i686 Tier 1 🌞 Tested with Linux
mips Tier 2 β›… -
mips64 Tier 2 β›… -
ppc Tier 2 β›… -
ppc64be Tier 1 🌞 Tested with Linux
ppc64be Tier 2 β›…
riscv32 Tier 2 β›… -
riscv64 Tier 2 β›… -
s390 Tier 3 ⚑ -
s390x Tier 1 🌞 Tested with Linux
x86_64 Tier 1 🌞 Tested with Linux, OS-X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD

Guest CPU emulation

Guest CPU virtualization

Virtualizer Arch Tier Comments
KVM arm7 Tier 1 🌞
KVM aarch64 Tier 1 🌞
KVM i686 Tier 1 🌞
KVM mips Tier 2 β›…
KVM mips64 Tier 2 β›…
KVM ppc Tier 2 β›…
KVM ppc64 Tier 1 🌞
KVM s390x Tier 1 🌞
KVM x86_64 Tier 1 🌞
Hax x86_64 Tier 2 β›…
HyperV x86_64 Tier 2 β›…
WHPX x86_64 Tier 2 β›…
HVF x86_64 Tier 2 β›…

Storage

Networking