Oracle VM Server

Some basics of Oracle VM Server:

Oracle VM Server includes an updated version of the underlying Xen™ hypervisor
technology, and the Oracle VM Agent. It also includes a Linux kernel with support for
a broad array of devices, file systems, and software RAID volume management. The
Linux kernel is run as dom0 to manage one or more domU virtual machines, each of
which could be Linux or Microsoft Windows.

Hypervisor:
Oracle VM Server is designed so that the hypervisor (also callled the Virtual Machine
Monitor, or VMM) is the only fully privileged entity in the system, and has an
extremely small footprint. It controls only the most basic resources of the system,
including CPU and memory usage, privilege checks, and hardware interrupts.

Domain:
A domain is a configurable set of resources, including memory, virtual CPUs, network
devices and disk devices, in which virtual machines run. A domain is granted virtual resources and can be started, stopped and restarted independently. Domains other than the management domain (dom0) are referred to as domU. These domains are unprivileged domains with no direct access to the hardware or device drivers. Each domU is started by Oracle VM Server in dom0.

Guest:
A guest is a virtualized operating system running within a domain. A guest operating system
may be paravirtualized or hardware virtualized. Multiple guests can run on the same
Oracle VM Server. A guest is a virtualized operating system running within a domain.

Paravirtualized or hardware virtualized
Oracle VM Server guest operating systems may run in one of two modes,
paravirtualized or hardware virtualized. In paravirtualized mode, the kernel of the
guest operating system is recompiled to be made aware of the virtual environment.
This allows the paravirtualized guest to run at near native speed, since most memory,
disk and network accesses are optimized for maximum performance.

If support for hardware virtualization is available (either Intel VT or AMD-V), the
guest operating system may run completely unmodified. This hardware virtualized
guest is carefully monitored and trapped by Oracle VM Server when any instruction is
executed which would violate the isolation with other guests or dom0.

Oracle VM Manager


The host machine on which Oracle VM Manager is installed is known as an
Oracle VM Manager host. It provides the interface where most of the virtual machine
management tasks are performed. Its main function is to forward operational commands
from users to other, possibly remote, servers and display their results.


Oracle VM Manager using the standard port of 8888 on a

host named example.com, use:
http://example.com:8888/OVS

To connect to Oracle VM Manager using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) port of 4443 on

a host named example.com, use:
https://example.com:4443/OVS

Oracle VM Agent
Oracle VM Manager communicates with Oracle VM Agent to create and manage
guests on an Oracle VM Server. Oracle VM Agent is installed and configured during
the installation of Oracle VM Server. You do not need to install Oracle VM Agent
separately. Oracle VM Agent is installed into:
/opt/ovs-agent-2.3