Application-driven virtualization with Oracle VM– Oracle VM is a server virtualization and management solution that makes enterprise applications easier to deploy, and manage, and support, especially by going through Oracle VM template or virtual appliances. So we can easily implement infrastructure as a service, and also platform as a service, and software as a service by using these templates and virtual appliance in the virtualized servers.
And also, Oracle VM supports advanced features for application environment like a high availability. It’s possible to group a set of Oracle VM servers where Oracle VM for x86 software is installed. So the group of Oracle VM servers is called a server pool.
When you create a clustered server pool, then it’s possible to provide a high availability solution to Oracle VM. And also, as a part of a plan to maintenance, we can also migrate VM from one Oracle VM server to another Oracle VM server.
And also, it’s possible to create a VM cluster as well. So by doing so you can support a better scalability. So if you expect more transactions, more users, more workload, then you can simply add more VM in the VM cluster. So we can achieve a better scalability easily with the Oracle VM solution.
Oracle VM Manager with the Oracle VM Server for x86– Oracle VM Manager is a Management Application. By going through Oracle VM Manager, we can manage virtualized servers, which called Oracle VM servers. So to be able to manage servers where Oracle VM server for x86 is installed, you will have to go through Oracle VM manager.
So you can create a group of Oracle VM servers, which we call the server pool. And also, by going through Oracle VM Manager, you can import template. And you can also create virtual machine in a specific Oracle VM server.
You can also perform live migration. You can also apply different policies. So you can use your Oracle VM Manager to manage your virtualized environment with the Oracle VM server for x86.
And also, you can integrate in Oracle VM with Enterprise Manager. So you can create infrastructure as a service cloud, which include Xen, and also server pool, and also servers. So you can actually create infrastructure a service in the virtualized environment by integrating with the Enterprise Manager.
In a single pool, you can have the mixed– model. So you may have an X3-2 server in the server pool. And you may have a X5-2. The latest version is X8-2, OK? And also, you can subdivide as well by grouping the servers with the same model, which is called the compatibility group, as well.
And Oracle VM is suitable for all data center workload and helps customers deploy enterprise software in a rapid, and repeatable, and error-free manner with immediate availability of dozens of Oracle VM templates for Oracle applications, and middleware, and databases. And also, you can download the Oracle VM virtual appliance as well to install– to deploy a group of the virtual machines to have dependencies as well.
And although all Oracle products are developed and tested in a virtualized environment using Oracle VM and also engineered to work together, Oracle VM is an excellent virtualization platform for software from any vendor. You can also create your own Oracle VM template for custom or third-party applications.
OK. Let’s take a look at Oracle VM main components. The first component is Oracle VM Manager. It’s the Oracle VM Management, the application. Is available through a GUI interface. And also, it’s available through a command-line interface. As a part of a practice activity, we will practice both GUI and also a command-line interface.
Basically, Oracle VM Manager– it manages Oracle VM servers, which are the virtualized servers with Oracle VM for x86. It uses the server management network to communicate with the Oracle VM servers. And then we can manage our resources in the repository. And when you create a clustered server pool, then we can save [INAUDIBLE] resource, and VM template resource, and virtual appliance resource, and also VM file resource. So we can save several resources in the repository.
Through Oracle VM Manager, we can copy a resource from one repository to another repository. We can import the resource into the repository. And we can also create a virtual machine in the Oracle VM service as well. And also, for certain tasks, Oracle VM Manager assigns requested work to Oracle VM servers to complete admin tasks as well. So requests coming from Oracle VM Manager, [INAUDIBLE] Oracle VM servers complete requested operation. So that’s possible.
And the second component is Oracle VM server is a virtualization platform to run virtual machines. This course, it’s based on Oracle VM Server X8-2 model. And you can create a virtual machine. Basically, you can create a virtual machine with a different method. You can create a virtual machine from scratch, or you import template or virtual appliance through Oracle VM Manager into the repository. And then we can create a virtual machine from VM template or virtual appliance.
And Oracle VM Server is based on the modified version of a Xen hypervisor. And it consumes resources managed by Oracle VM Manager. One thing we have to know– Oracle VM Manager is not same as the Enterprise Manager Cloud Control, OK? So we can leverage Enterprise Manager Cloud Control to build infrastructure as a service in the virtualization environment, but not for the specific server management or VM or resource management like the Oracle VM Manager. So that’s one thing we have to know.
OK. Server virtualization– server virtualization abstracts physical hardware. The Private Cloud Appliance pools hardware resources. For example, in this case, if this were Oracle PCA, each server in the slide, and this will be a compute node. And then we install Oracle VM for x86 to a virtualized server.
So this is at the physical level. And then we can actually manage our pooled resources through the Oracle VM Manager. And then we can create the virtual machine by assigning the resources available in the pool of resources available. So we can allocate memory. We can also allocate CPU, and storage, and network, and so on.
The Private Cloud Appliance provides the resources and management for supporting multiple independent systems. OK. So let’s take a look at template and virtual appliances. Template is a virtual machine that comes with VM configuration file and also a set of virtual disks. By importing this template, you can easily deploy a virtual machine. And so you can actually create a template that includes only OS. And then you can import it to deploy the virtual machine.
Or you can create a template to include a platform like a template to include a middleware, or a template to include a database. So you can import it to deploy VM for the platform. And also, you can create a template which includes the application environment, including applications installed in the VM. And then we create it as a template. So we can actually use it to create the application environment through the virtualized solution.
If you have to create multiple VMs that are associated, then you can actually create assembly as well. So we can install and we can create multiple VMs by going through assembly. Assembly is the older term. A new term is a virtual appliance. So if you have to deploy a same application environment, same database environment, and same infrastructure over and over, you can leverage a template. And then you can modify the configuration saved in the template.
So for example, your template, it is to create a virtual machine with a specific resource setting– so two CPUs and 1 gigabyte of memory. But when you deploy, well, you can modify configuration, telling it that, OK, I will take all the resources in the template, but changing the resource configuration to allocate more resources or less resources. So that’s what you can do.
And also, you can use the Enterprise Manager to leverage a template and also assembly as well. As part of Lesson 2, we saw that when you create infrastructure a service by using self-service portal, we can actually specify in a template and also assembly or virtual appliance as a source of a VM to create a virtual machine through infrastructure as a service cloud, OK? That’s what we learned. So we can publish a template and assembly through Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control as a part of our infrastructure a service cloud.
Now let’s take a look at architecture. So you have Oracle VM Manager. And Oracle VM Manager is an Oracle WebLogic Server application running on Oracle Linux. Oracle WebLogic Server is an application server for building and deploying enterprise Java application.
And Oracle VM Manager is installed on the Private Cloud Appliance management node. This is the reason why you connect to the Oracle PCA management node to start and to view Oracle VM Manager. Especially in Oracle PCA, there are two management nodes that is configured with active or passive configuration. In the active management node, there is the Oracle VIP, so we can access to Oracle management node to access the Oracle VM Manager.
And also, we have Oracle VM Manager database. It’s a MySQL database. Its main purpose is to store management information. In Oracle PCA environment, Oracle VM Manager database, it is preconfigured so you don’t have to create Oracle VM Manager separately. And also, Oracle VM Manager software is already installed so you don’t have to install manually. It’s already preinstalled and preconfigured.
And Oracle VM Server for x86 software is installed in Oracle VM Server for server virtualization. And Oracle VM Server for x86, it uses a Xen-based hypervisor. And it owns the host-level resources in the hardware– so CPU, memory, and network, and disk.
In the Oracle PCA context, Oracle VM Server is a compute node. And in the compute node, Oracle VM for x86 software is installed to virtualize our compute node. And then in the virtualized Oracle of the computer node in the Oracle PCA, the first domain is created. That is dom0. That’s in the management domain or a privileged domain.
And also, in the domain 0, Oracle VM Agent is installed. So Oracle VM Agent is up and running to work with Oracle VM Manager. And also, domU is the domain where the virtual machines are running. So all of the requests in I/O request and also the resource access are requested from domU. It’s going through a dom0. So dom0, it controls the access to the resource.
And the hypervisor, it owns the resource. And domU, this is the location where virtual machines are running. So this is in our basic architecture information, Oracle VM Manager for the management of virtualized servers and Oracle VM Manager to store configuration information. And Oracle VM Server is your virtualized server where Oracle VM for x86 is installed.
And Oracle VM Server for x86 uses Xen-based hypervisor. It owns the hardware resources. And also, in order to control access to the hardware resource, we use dom0. And also, in the dom0 Oracle VM Agent, the agent is up and running to support communication between Oracle VM Manager and Oracle VM Server. And then we have domU where virtual machines are running. So that’s a quick summary.
OK. So let’s take a look at network functions Oracle VM for x86. In the Oracle VM environment, you can use five network functions. The first thing is Server Management Network. And that’s a role of network. The Oracle VM Manager, it uses Server Management Network to manage Oracle VM servers. And also, it can manage the virtualized resources as well by using a server management network.
And also, we have a live migration. It is to support the migration of a VM. In the virtualized server, you can have one or more virtual machines that are running. And during the plan to maintenance, you may want to or you may have to move a virtual machine from one Oracle VM server to another VM server, probably because of load balancing, or probably because of maintenance.
So to support migration of a VM, we can use another network, which is a live virtual or live migration network. And also, to support the external or public connection to a virtual machine network– so we can use a virtual machine. We can use a virtual machine network as well.
In addition, we have two more. So one is a storage network as well. So it provides access to the storage. So whatever we make in [INAUDIBLE], we can use a storage network. And also, cluster heartbeat network. And cluster heartbeat network is the case where you have a cluster, the server pool, all the members of a server pool must communicate. So in that case, we used heartbeat network as well.
So there are a total of five the roles of the network with Oracle VM– so server management, live migration, and virtual network, and storage network, and also cluster heartbeat network. So these are the five networks available. In Oracle PCA, same network functions available. In the later lesson, I will show you how to map Oracle VM network functions in Oracle PCA environment.
OK. So now we’re going to get into storage function. The Oracle VM solution supports local storage and also the external storage as well. I will show you one diagram to give you a storage architecture with Oracle VM. And then I will give you more information about Oracle PCA environment.
Oracle VM, it uses repository to manage the resources. We can create NFS-based repository, which can store virtual machine configuration file and also virtual disks, OK? So we can create an NFS-based repository. So that’s a possible supported storage for virtualized environment.
And also, we can create five channel and iSCSI LUN-based based repository. When you create repository on LUN, then OCFS2 file system is created to create repository. So we have the virtual machine configuration file. And also, we have a virtual disk as well. And also, we can directly access to physical disk. And then we can take this space as well, OK?
So when you create a virtual machine, you can provide a virtual disk as a virtual machine storage resource, either from virtual disk in NFS or a virtual disk out of OCFS2 repository. However, these virtual disks are created out of another file system. So there may be some performance impact. So if you want to create a virtual machine, especially to support better performance, then you can also assign LUN to a virtual machine directly.
So your application running out of a virtual machine can take advantage of a file system directly on the physical disk. So in the virtualized environment with Oracle VM, you can take an advantage of an NFS repository or an OCFS2 repository. And also, you can take advantage of a physical disk directly.
Oracle VM storage in supporting the storage, what about the storage in Oracle PCA? In Oracle PCA, there is internal ZFS storage appliance in the latest model, ZFS 7-2 model.
And ZFS in a storage appliance– it is configured as internal storage. And also, we have a default repository, So we can leverage in our ZFS the storage appliance to create repository and also to leverage our existing repository. But you can also attach external storage, and you can provision LUN directly to the virtualized environment. So by doing so, we can create virtual machine that can access to LUN directly instead of going through a virtual disk in a specific repository.
So you can actually take advantage of LUN from external storage. Or you can create external repository as well. So external NFS-based storage or repository, or the iSCSI-based repository. So that’s what you can do. When you create iSCSI-based repository, the Oracle creates OCFS2 on top of LUN. And then the OCFS2 external repository will be created.
So here, we have a local storage. So we can create local storage in the Oracle PCA environment. We can take advantage of a ZFS storage appliances space for the virtualized environment. And we can also attach external storage to create additional repositories and also to provision and to provide LUNs directly to Oracle VM for better performance as well.
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