QEMU behavior regarding 'Hypervisor Default' and controller type

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 Service Pack 5

Situation

When working with an existing KVM virtual machine configuration, editing the definition for a storage controller and choosing 'Hypervisor Default' from the drop-down options box, the controller setting is changed to 'lsilogic'.

Resolution

This is working as intended.

Cause

There is some confusion when a storage controller is set to type lsilogic, as lsilogic is never actually a choosable option in any of the storage controller drop-down options.

Additional Information

An RFC has been raised with SUSE product management, requesting that the mentioned behavior is changed, to instead set the storage controller to 'VirtIO', when choosing 'Hypervisor Default' from the drop-down options list.

Broadcom (the company that absorbed LSI) stopped making drivers available for the lsilogic SCSI controller included in QEMU many years ago. As regards Microsoft Windows, Windows 2008 was the last version that drivers were specifically made available for.

Later versions of Windows also do not support the legacy lsilogic SCSI controller (they support the LSI SAS controller).

Although some Linux OS may still provide a version of these legacy drivers, it is doubtful that they will function as expected in a virtual environment.

Disclaimer

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