Oracle OVM Platform Support Documentation

Business Requirement

Due to a business critical licensing issue regarding the hosting of ESX Virtual Machines that
have an Oracle instance, it was deemed necessary to build a new Oracle Hypervisor layer.
Oracle carry a very strict set of governance around how Servers should be Licensed in a
virtual environment, taking into account how Hypervisor technology can migrate and move
Servers to multiple hosts in a cluster. Therefore to alleviate the licensing issue, a project was
setup to migrate any Basildon or Acton hosted server that is running an instance of Oracle,
be migrated to its own isolated Oracle Hypervisor layer.

Basildon OVM Management Console

The Basildon Oracle OVM platform can be access via the following URL…….

Basildon  https://10.5.21.107:7002/ovm/console/

Acton  https://10.145.21.107:7002/ovm/console

The Management Console makes use of VNC technology so the following procedure must be
actioned before any attempt at logon.

 Identify any existing deployment of VNC installed on your desktop or laptop.

 Rename the Folder “RealVNC to OLDRealVNC”

This will ensure that the Oracle Application’s Hypervisor will make use of the in-built VNC
software and not any local installation of the application.
In order to logon to the Oracle VM Manager, an account must first be created by the Unix
team.

Once authenticated with a successful logon, your screen should like this;

The user is then presented with a number of Tabs at the top of the screen. Health, Servers
and VMs, Repositories, Networking, Storage, Tools and Resources and Jobs.

Health
The health tab shows a quick snapshot of the OVM estate, the Server pool for the location.
It is split by Status Overview and Statistics. Any currently running VM that has exceeded a set
of pre-defined thresholds will show as Red in the Server pool window, see below.

Continued…..
Servers and VMs

The Servers and VMs tab shows the Server Pools for the location you are logged into, for
example, Basildon. Expand Server Pools, then Basildon OVM. See below

Here you will see two Host machines currently in Basildon which have been deployed as
clustered resources. The machine names are as follows;

BASXTSPRDOVMW01.mgmt.changing.com & BASXTSPRDOVMW02.mgmt.xchanging.com

Both are HP Proliant DL380e Generation 8 machines running on a Linux operating system.

By clicking on the first host BASXTSPRDOVMW01 will show the current inventory of VMs
running on that host machine, see below

By clicking on or highlighting any of the running VMs will bring up another set of options
which were previously greyed-out. See below;

The first option which looks like a “pencil” is Edit Settings. This brings up a new screen to edit
the currently highlighted virtual machine. Again it is split into a number of tabs.

Configuration, Networks, Disks, Boot Order & Tags.

Configuration

Configuration shows the current configuration for that Server as shown above.

Only certain tasks can be carried out with the Server powered up!
The Networks tab shows the current vNIC configuration by MAC address, see below

Any changes here will not be represented to the VM until it has been re-started or powered
off.
Disks

The Disk tab shows the current vDisk configuration as shown below;

Boot Order

The Boot Order tab provides the Boot Options and Boot Order of the virtual machine. You
can change the Boot order of the VM by selecting the Boot Option on the left of the screen
and using the arrow keys to move the preferred option across into Boot Order. From here
the up/down arrow keys can be used to select desired Boot order. See below…

The next icon is the Red X

This will delete the VM – CAUTION! This can only be used against a VM that is switched
off!

Play or start button

This will play or start-up a VM that is currently powered off

The STOP button

This will stop the currently running VM and SHUT IT DOWN – use with caution!
The launch console button

The launch console button will open the following screen;

Click ok….the following screen will appear

This is basically a console screen to the VM currently highlighted.

This console has six tabs associated; Disconnect, Options, Clipboard, Record, Send Ctrl-Alt-
Del and Refresh.

The remaining buttons above will be used less frequently apart from which is the
Restart button should the server not respond under normal conditions.

The above is also relevant to the Acton Oracle Estate which can be reached at the following
URL;

https://10.145.21.107:7002/ovm/console
Deploying a new VM in to the Oracle OVM Platform

Logon to the appropriate Oracle OVM Platform (Basildon or Acton) using the required URL.

 Navigate to the Appropriate Server Pool under the Servers & VMs Tab

 A set of buttons will be displayed

 Click on the “Create Virtual Machine button”

 The create Virtual Machine screen is displayed as follows

 From here you can create new or clone from an existing VM Template.
 Click Next
 The Following screen is displayed

 Fill out the VM specification as per the Low Level Design, Windows, Linux etc, click
next
 This will bring up the Networks Screen

 Click on “Add Vnic. This will add a virtual NIC to the newly created VM. Change the
Network VLAN Tag in accordance with the Low Level Design. Add additional VNIC
devices as necessary.
 Click Next…
 This will bring up the Arrange Disks Screen

 Select Virtual Disk, then click on the + button

 Give the Virtual Disk a Name and specify a Size in GB, give it a description and select
Sparse allocation. (This is the equivalent of Thin Provisioning)

 Click OK
 Then Select a second Disk as “CD/DVD” this will enable you to mount a CD or DVD
ISO file with the Operating System you want to deploy later in the process.
 If you have any further Disks to add, D:E: Drive etc, do it now.
 Click Next
 This is the Boot Options Screen

 Highlight CDROM as the first option, then Disk as the second option as shown below
using the arrow key provided.

 Click Next
 Click FINISH
 The newly created VM will be shown in the Inventory screen as shown below

 In this case, the machine is called Jontest. The VM will show up in a Stopped state.
 Highlight the newly created VM and select Edit Settings.
 Goto the Disks Tab.
 Click on the magnifying glass button to select the appropriate .iso file

 Select ok
 Select ok again
 Highlight the VM again and then select the Launch Console button.

 Select ok
 The console will open using Java 7 Technology
 Now hit the start button
 Your Windows install will now start based on the .iso file you mounted earlier.

 END……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………