Server Virtualization Trends
Oracle Linux Operating Environment
Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager
• Is a server virtualization
management platform that can be
easily deployed to configure,
monitor, and manage an Oracle
Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine
(KVM) environment.
• It is built from the open source oVirt
project.
• The heart of this management
solution is the ovirt-engine, which is
used to discover KVM hosts and
configure storage and networking for
the virtualized data center.
Oracle Linux KVM
• It is the Oracle Linux server
virtualization solution with KVM
starting with Oracle Linux
Release 7 with the Unbreakable
Enterprise Kernel (UEK) Release
5.
• Oracle Linux KVM includes
support for Intel VT-x and VT-d
hardware extensions along with
the Secure Encrypted
Virtualization (SEV) for AMD-V
enabled processors.
 Features
• High performance and scalability:
– Supports servers with up to 2048 logical CPUs and
64 TB of memory
• Broad guest operating system support:
– Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS,
SLES, Ubuntu, and Microsoft Windows
• Oracle Linux KVM with Ksplice:
– Ksplice supports Oracle Linux KVM with patching
for the kernel, hypervisor, and user-space packages.
 Reliability and High Availability
• VM High Availability:
– Reliably and automatically restart failed VMs on other servers in the server pool after
unexpected outages.
• Secure live VM migration:
– Reduce service outages associated with planned maintenance or scale up resources quickly by
migrating running VMs to other servers without interruption.
• Storage live migration:
– Perform storage live migrations for virtual disks of running virtual machines.
• Rapid VM provisioning:
– Oracle Linux Templates for Oracle Linux KVM provide an innovative approach to deploying a
fully configured software stack by offering pre-installed and pre-configured software images.
Oracle Linux Templates reduce installation, configuration, and ongoing maintenance costs,
helping organizations achieve faster time to market and lower cost of operations.
• Backup and restore with snapshots:
– Snapshots can be used to create a consistent view of a running VM at a point in time. Multiple
snapshots can be stored and used for restoration purposes.
Oracle Linux KVM vs. VMware vSphere
 Oracle Linux KVM Host Architecture
Single Cluster
A cluster consists of one or more logical grouping of Oracle Linux KVM Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)hosts
on which a collection of virtual machines can run. The KVM hosts in a cluster must share the same storage domains
and have the same type of CPU (either Intel or AMD).

Virtual Desktop and Server Manager (VDSM)

Oracle Linux KVM Host Architecture
Multiple Clusters
 Oracle Linux KVM and Oracle Linux
Virtualization Manager

Manage different versions of Oracle Linux KVM installation on bare metal as well as an assortment of Guest
Operating Systems from OLVM
 Hardware Certification List
Oracle Linux and Virtualization
The Hardware Compatibility Program helps ensure server hardware solutions are qualified with
Oracle Linux and Oracle Linux KVM.
 Oracle Partitioning Policy
Server/Hardware Partitioning
• “Partitioning” occurs when the CPUs on a server are
separated into individual sections where each section acts
as a separate system. Sometimes this is called
“segmenting.”
• There are several hardware and software virtualization
technologies available that deliver partitioning
capabilities, with varying degree of resource allocation
flexibility.
• Partitioning technologies is deemed to be Soft or Hard
when using Oracle Linux KVM on non Oracle Engineered
Systems.
 Soft Partitioning
• Soft partitioning segments the operating system using OS resource
managers.
• The operating system limits the number of CPUs where an Oracle database
is running by creating areas where CPU resources are allocated to
applications within the same operating system.
• This is a flexible way of managing data processing resources since the CPU
capacity can be changed fairly easily, as additional resource is needed.
• Examples of such partitioning type include:
– Solaris 9 Resource Containers
– AIX Workload Manager
– HP Process Resource Manager
– Affinity Management
– Oracle VM
– VMware
 Hard Partitioning
• Hard partitioning physically segments a server, by taking a single large server and separating it into distinct
smaller systems.
• Each separated system acts as a physically independent, self-contained server, typically with its own CPUs,
operating system, separate boot area, memory, input/output subsystem and network resources.
• Oracle-approved hard partitioning technologies are permitted as a means to limit the number of software
licenses required for any given server or a cluster of servers.
• Approved hard partitioning technologies include:
– Physical Domains (also known as PDomains, Dynamic Domains, or Dynamic System Domains)
– Solaris Zones (also known as Solaris Containers, capped Zones/Containers only)
– IBM’s LPAR (adds DLPAR with AIX 5.2)
– IBM’s Micro-Partitions (capped partitions only)
– vPar (capped partitions only)
– nPar, Integrity Virtual Machine (capped partitions only)
– Secure Resource Partitions (capped partitions only)
– Fujitsu’s PPAR
• All approved hard partitioning technologies must have a capped or a maximum number of cores/processors for
the given partition.
• Oracle Linux KVM or Oracle VM Server may be used as hard partitioning technology only as described in the
following documents: Oracle Linux KVM, only if specific cores are allocated per the following document:
– https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/linux/ol-kvm-hard-partitioning.pdf