graphic: 0.629 semantic: 0.548 device: 0.521 other: 0.517 debug: 0.486 boot: 0.457 PID: 0.406 performance: 0.404 KVM: 0.340 vnc: 0.317 permissions: 0.310 network: 0.306 socket: 0.239 files: 0.191 microcode version stays 0x1 even if -cpu host is used The microcode version of my host cpu has the following version: grep microcode /proc/cpuinfo | head -1 microcode : 0x3d while trying to run ESXi in an nested VM, the boot bailed out with error message that at least microcode version 0x19 is needed. It seems they have introduced such a check on certain CPU types. The VM in question is using the "host-passthrough" option in libvirt and the qemu command line reads as this: 21172 ? Sl 0:09 /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm -name guest=hpe-env-client1,debug-threads=on -S -object secret,id=masterKey0,format=raw,file=/var/lib/libvirt/qemu/domain-33-hpe-env-client1/master-key.aes -machine pc-i440fx-rhel7.6.0,accel=kvm,usb=off,dump-guest-core=off -cpu host Running a regular Linux VM with `host-passthrough` shows that the microcode version is still reported as 0x1. Within the VM: [root@hpe-env-client1 ~]# cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 63 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 v3 @ 2.40GHz stepping : 2 microcode : 0x1 cpu MHz : 2397.222 My impression is qemu should copy the hosts microcode version in this case? Running Qemu von RHEl8 beta here. [root@3parserver ~]# /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm --version QEMU emulator version 2.12.0 (qemu-kvm-2.12.0-41.el8+2104+3e32e6f8) The QEMU project is currently considering to move its bug tracking to another system. For this we need to know which bugs are still valid and which could be closed already. Thus we are setting older bugs to "Incomplete" now. If you still think this bug report here is valid, then please switch the state back to "New" within the next 60 days, otherwise this report will be marked as "Expired". Or mark it as "Fix Released" if the problem has been solved with a newer version of QEMU already. Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience. This is fixed in 5.2.