Oracle VM Server for SPARC Overview

Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly Sun Logical Domains) is the SPARC hypervisor virtualization solution for simultaneously running multiple OS instances on a single SPARC T-Series server. Using the Oracle VM Server for SPARC software, you can create up to 128 virtual servers, called logical domains, on a single machine. This kind of configuration enables you to take advantage of the massive thread scale offered by SPARC T-Series servers and the Oracle Solaris OS. You can also use OS-level virtualization features, such as zones or resource management, with Oracle VM Server for SPARC.

Each logical domain has its own operating system and identity within a single machine, and is comprised of a discrete logical grouping of resources, such as:

• Kernel, patches, and tuning parameters

• User accounts and administrators

• Disks

• Network interfaces, MAC addresses, and IP addresses

You can create, destroy, reconfigure, stop, start, reboot, and live migrate each domain independently of one another without requiring a power cycle of the server.

You can run a variety of application software in different domains and keep them independent for performance and security purposes. Each domain is only permitted to monitor and interact with those server resources that are made available to it by the hypervisor. The Logical Domains Manager enables you to create virtual machines and assign hardware resources to them. The Logical Domains Manager runs in the control domain. The hypervisor partitions the server and provides subsets of server resources to each independent virtual machine. This partitioning and provisioning is the fundamental mechanism for creating logical domains.

The hypervisor software also provides logical domain channels (LDCs) that enable logical domains to communicate with each other. Oracle VM Server for SPARC uses LDCs to off-load I/O handling for guest virtual machines to Oracle Solaris service domains to provide virtual network and disk device services. These service domains leverage the Oracle Solaris features for performance and availability to provide virtual I/O, and make it possible to use a small, efficient hypervisor kernel compared to monolithic designs. You can configure more than one service domain to eliminate single points of failure and to provide high availability. For information about the domain roles, see Roles for Domains in Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.2 Administration Guide.

The service processor (SP), also known as the system controller (SC), monitors and runs the physical machine, but it does not manage the logical domains. The Logical Domains Manager manages the logical domains.

For more information about Oracle VM Server for SPARC, see the Oracle VM Server for SPARC documentation.