Ttyjfyk

Would there be any issue using Xen (hypervisors OS level: 11.4) with a guest that would have SLES 12.3?

Are there any table that describes which Xen OS version is compatible with which SLES version?

Thinking of it because it uses para-virtualization, maybe the hypervisors kernel need to support the given kernel version for the guests?

Version on the hypervisor:

uname -a:

3.0.101-108.52-xen #1 SMP Tue May 29 19:42:53 UTC 2018 (80e6815) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

xm info|grep xen_|head -4:

xen_major : 4
xen_minor : 4
xen_extra : .4_32-61.29.2
xen_caps : xen-3.0-x86_64 xen-3.0-x86_32p hvm-3.0-x86_32 hvm-3.0-x86_32p hvm-3.0-x86_64 

Here is a definitive table of Xen Features as described by the Xen Project Wiki, last modified on 5 November 2018, at 15:34. As you can see Xen 4.4 was released in March 2014, with support until September 2015, and Security updates until March 2017. So note that some features may be depreciated at this point.

Scrolling down you can see that Xen 4.4 can support x86 compatible architecture guests as Paravirtualised, HVM guests, and PV-on-HVM guests.

These guests are limited to 512 vCPU's and 512 GB RAM for PV Guest's, 128 vCPU's and 1TB RAM for HVM Guest's. All but DMOP (Device Model Operation Hypercall) is supported for Device Models and Virtual Firmware for HVM guests as well as all PV bootloaders that Xen offers.

So to answer your question, if SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.3 supports those features and can be installed within those limitations then yes you can install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.3 on your Xen hypervisor.

I have found only 1 table listing compatible Guests relating to Xen hypervisors. This is a link to a Citrix XenServer 7.6 table of supported Guest Operating Systems. Citrix XenServer uses Xen 4.7. However, there does not seem to be significant differences between that Xen version and yours according to the Xen Wiki.

So this table should be fairly accurate for your needs. I take it as a table of tested and working Guest OS's complied by Citrix for XenServer. Half way down the table you will see entries concerning SUSE Linux Enterprise Server versions that are supported.

Here is an excerpt of the table ( I have only included the SUSE 12.3 entries):

Operating System | Virtualization mode | Minimum RAM | Maximum RAM | Minimum Disk Space

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP3 (64-bit) | HVM | 1 GB | 1.5 TB | 8 GB

So you can see that XenServer should support SLES 12.3 as a Hardware Virtual Machine, needing at least 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of disk space.

You can try to just install whatever Guest OS on your Hypervisor and see if there are workarounds if you encounter any issues. If a Linux Host can virtualize a Windows Guest or BSD Guest how does differences in kernel versions of the Linux Host and Guest matter? Food for thought.

Best of Luck!