# PPC64LE Hardware availability

The situation to find compatible ppc64le hardware to build RHCOS is becoming more and more complex.
P8 generation is going to work with RHEL9 (we might still be able to build RHCOS 9 on P8 just not run it)
P9 generation, only a subset of server still support KVM (based on the which firmware they have)
P10 generation, KVM is no longer supported.

Currently, we are using P8 servers provided by PSI (cverna is trying to find out how long we can use these servers). The multi-arch group in OCP is not able to provide us with a server that supports KVM.
Based on the above I would like to understand better what is the impact of not using KVM to build and test RHCOS on power.

- Do we only need KVM for building?
- would it be possible to run the tests in IBM cloud for example?
- What would be needed for us to support this?

- What are our options to not need KVM for powerpc?

- Can we build RHCOS based on RHEL 9 content on P8?

## IBM cloud
It only provides PowerVS wich is based on PowerVM, PowerVM doesn't support KVM

## IBM Yellow zone

- Is not an option since it doesn't provide VPN. We can't build out of Red Hat firewall

## Red Hat RHV
We got a test server from Amitkumar Ghatwal Redhat Partner Engineer(PE) to test RHV virtualization

**Issues**: The nested virtualization can't be enabled since it is an unstable/not officialy support feature:
https://redhat.service-now.com/help?id=rh_ticket&table=sc_req_item&sys_id=5defe219dbf0d190c31ec7a60596191c

We didn't test how RHV will work with different OS versions. Can we have a RHEL8 VM and create RHEL9, RHEL8, RHEL7 kvm guests?

**Ticket Requesting a new RHV vm with the nested virt already enabled**

- https://redhat.service-now.com/help?id=rh_ticket&table=sc_req_item&sys_id=1e3e05691bb0d1d0477e43fccd4bcb6d

## Buy new hardware
Seems we can't buy POWER9. The is only possible to purchase new hardware,POWER10
- Who is going to maintain it?

## Reuse old P8 hardware
- Will it support RHCOS builds for RHEL9?
- We don't own the hardware it is PSI hardware

## CentOS infra
CentOs infra got 30 P9s, we can't use CentOs, they don't have capacity to support production products there.

## Fedora infra
Is not an option since it doesn't provide VPN. We can't build out of Red Hat firewall