Managing SP Configurations
An SP configuration is a complete description of all the domains and their resource allocations within a single system. You can save and store SP configurations on the service processor (SP) for later use.
Saving an SP configuration on the SP makes it persist across system power cycles. You can save several SP configurations and specify which SP configuration to boot on the next power-on attempt.
When you power up a system, the SP boots the selected SP configuration. The system runs the same set of domains and uses the same virtualization and partitioning resource allocations that are specified in the SP configuration. The default SP configuration is the one that is most recently saved. You can also explicitly request a different SP configuration by using the ldm set-spconfig command or the appropriate ILOM command.
 | Caution - Always save your stable configuration to the SP and save it as XML. Saving the SP configuration in these ways enable you to recover your system configuration after a power failure and save it for later use. See Saving Domain Configurations. |
A local copy of the SP configuration and the Logical Domains constraint database is saved on the control domain whenever you save an SP configuration to the SP. This local copy is called a bootset. The bootset is used to load the corresponding Logical Domains constraints database when the system undergoes a power cycle.
On servers starting with the SPARC T5, SPARC M5, and SPARC S7 series server and the Fujitsu M10 server, the bootsets on the control domain are the master copies of the configurations. On startup, the Logical Domains Manager automatically synchronizes all SP configurations with the SP, which ensures that the configurations on the SP are always identical to the bootsets that are stored on the control domain.
Note - Because the bootsets contain critical system data, ensure that the control domain's file system uses technology such as disk mirroring or RAID to reduce the impact of disk failures.
A physical domain is the scope of resources that are managed by a single Oracle VM Server for SPARC instance. A physical domain might be a complete physical system as is the case of supported SPARC T-series servers and SPARC S-series servers. Or, it might be either the entire system or a subset of the system as is the case of supported SPARC M-series servers.