QEMU does not support Westmere (Intel Xeon) CPU model Setting the CPU model to Westmere (Intel Xeon server CPU) is not possible. libvirt uses 'core2duo' as fallback: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=708927 $ qemu -cpu ? x86 [n270] x86 [athlon] x86 [pentium3] x86 [pentium2] x86 [pentium] x86 [486] x86 [coreduo] x86 [kvm32] x86 [qemu32] x86 [kvm64] x86 [core2duo] x86 [phenom] x86 [qemu64] $ qemu --version QEMU emulator version 1.0 (Debian 1.0+dfsg-3), Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard