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POWER (PAPR) Protected Execution Facility (PEF)
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Protected Execution Facility (PEF), also known as Secure Guest support
is a feature found on IBM POWER9 and POWER10 processors.
If a suitable firmware including an Ultravisor is installed, it adds
an extra memory protection mode to the CPU. The ultravisor manages a
pool of secure memory which cannot be accessed by the hypervisor.
When this feature is enabled in QEMU, a guest can use ultracalls to
enter "secure mode". This transfers most of its memory to secure
memory, where it cannot be eavesdropped by a compromised hypervisor.
Launching
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To launch a guest which will be permitted to enter PEF secure mode:
# ${QEMU} \
-object pef-guest,id=pef0 \
-machine confidential-guest-support=pef0 \
...
Live Migration
----------------
Live migration is not yet implemented for PEF guests. For
consistency, we currently prevent migration if the PEF feature is
enabled, whether or not the guest has actually entered secure mode.