Is it possible to run VM with ppc64le architecture on a host machine with x86_64 architecture?

Question

I want to test some use-cases which need to run on 'ppc64le' architecture but I don't have a host machine with ppc64le architecture.

My host system is of x86_64 architecture. Is it possible to run VM with 'ppc64le' architecture on my host machine with x86_64 architecture?

Answer 1

Absolutely! The only caveat is that since you're not running natively, the virtual machine needs to emulate the target (ppc64le) instruction set. This can be much slower than running native instructions.

The way to do this will depend on which tools you're using to manage your virtual machine instances. For example, virt-manager allows you to select the architecture type when you're creating a new virtual machine. If you set this to ppc64el, you'll get a ppc64el machine. Other options (like disk and network devices) can be set just like native VMs.

If you're not using any specific VM management tools, the following invocation of qemu will get a ppc64el machine going easily:

qemu-system-ppc64le \
    -M pseries                            # use the pseries machine model \
    -m 4G                                 # with 4G of RAM \
    -hda ubuntu-18.04-server-ppc64el.iso  # Ubuntu installer as a virtual disk

Depending on your usage, you may want to use the following options too:

• -nographic -serial pty to use a text console instead of an emulated graphics device. qemu will print the console pty on startup - something like /dev/pts/X. Run screen /dev/pts/X to access it.

• -M powernv -bios skiboot.lid to use the non-virtualised ppc64el machine model, which is closer to current OpenPOWER hardware. The skiboot.lid firmware may be included in your distro's install of qemu.

• -drive, -device and -netdev to configure virtual disks and networking. These work in the same manner at x86 VMs on qemu.