What's New in Oracle VM Server?

This Preface introduces the new features and enhancements of Oracle VM Server. This information is useful to users who have used previous releases of Oracle VM Server. The releases discussed are:

• New Features in Release 2.2.2

• New Features in Release 2.2.1

• New Features in Release 2.2.0

• New Features in Release 2.1.5

• New Features in Release 2.1.2

• New Features in Release 2.1.1

New Features in Release 2.2.2

The new features and enhancements in Oracle VM Server Release 2.2.2 include:

• The VMPInfo system information and cluster troubleshooting utility is provided with this release. VMPInfo is a tool to gather detailed information from a single machine, group of servers or an integrated cluster and package that information in a concise report archive. Archives from multiple nodes can then be merged into a cluster oriented report that flags problems and expedites the process of verifying best practices and operational correctness for new and existing Oracle VM and Oracle Linux deployments. The VMPInfo package is not installed by default and can be found on the Oracle VM Server CD (or ISO file) as:

  /Server/vmpinfo-2.2-3.noarch.rpm

  To install the VMPInfo package, copy the RPM to the Oracle VM Server(s) and run the following command to install it:

  # rpm -i vmpinfo-2.2-3.noarch.rpm
  

  Running vmpinfo -k performs a health check on the Oracle VM Server and displays the results on the console.

  Running vmpinfo without parameters generates a comprehensive scan and places the report archive in /tmp/vmpinfo. These archive can then be sent to a remote analyst, transferred to a local workstation for review, or both.

  For more details on using the VMPInfo package, display the inbuilt help by running vmpinfo -m.

  Additional information on VMPInfo is also available in the following My Oracle Support Notes:

  • 1263293.1 Post-installation check list for new Oracle VM Server

  • 1290587.1 Performing Site Reviews and Cluster Troubleshooting with VMPInfo

• A new storage repository option to provide NFS mount options when creating a storage repository. The syntax to use is:

  /opt/ovs-agent-2.3/utils/repos.py -n nfs-server:/mount-point -o NFS-options

  For more information on this new parameter, see Section 9.2.2, "Adding a Storage Repository".

• Updated the OCFS2 cluster file system to OCFS2 Release 1.4.8.

• Updated libdhcp to 1.20.10.

• Updated device drivers for:

  • qla2xxx 8.03.07.00.2.2.1

  • netxen 4.0.75

  • qlcnic 5.0.15.2

  • qla4xxx 5.02.04.02.02.22-d0

  • lpfc 8.2.0.48.2p

  • rdac 09.03.0C02.0331

  • 3w-9xxx driver up to date

• Added the Mellanox 10GbE Release 1.5.1.3 network driver.

• Added Intel network drivers for:

  • igbvf

  • ixgbevf

• Added a 64-bit version of kdump to enable dumping of vmcore on Oracle VM Servers with large memory.

• Added ext4 support for pygrub. This enables a paravirtualized guest with an ext4 boot partition to start up.

• Increased the value of txqueuelen for netback vif devices to increase network performance.

New Features in Release 2.2.1

The new features and enhancements in Oracle VM Server Release 2.2.1 include:

• Improved the serviceability and reliability of managing the server pool with large number of nodes (up to 32 nodes per pool):

  • Serializing the requests.

  • Increasing the default time-out value.

  • Improving the performance for concurrent requests.

• Enhanced pre-check function for agent to ensure successful setup of the server pool and OCFS2 cluster integrity:

  • Before adding a physical server to the server pool, Oracle VM agent checks the Oracle VM Server version, Oracle VM Agent version, CPU compatibility, storage repositories, NFS, OCFS2 configuration, and so on. It is to ensure successful setup of the server pool and OCFS2 cluster integrity.

• New Oracle VM Agent cleanup utility to perform tasks such as:

  • Stop OCFS2 cluster service (o2cb) heartbeat.

  • Offline OCFS2 cluster service (o2cb).

  • Remove o2cb configuration file.

  • Un-mount ovs-agent storage repositories.

  • Clean up ovs-agent local database.

  Simply run the command from the command line:

  # /opt/ovs-agent-2.3/utils/cleanup.py
  

• High Availability (HA) Enhancement:

  • In the current HA setup, if the virtual machine is stopped by any method other than Oracle VM Manager (or Enterprise Manager), the virtual machine is always restarted.

  • The HA enhancement is provided for the Oracle Linux 4 and 5 PV guests. The Oracle VM Agent does not restart the virtual machines if they are gracefully shutdown from within the guests or from dom0. For other HVM guests, there is no HA behavior change.

  • To have this HA enhancement, make sure that you have Oracle VM Agent ovs-agent-2.3-38 and the updated Xen 3.4.0-0.1.10 or later.

New Features in Release 2.2.0

The new features and enhancements in Oracle VM Server Release 2.2.0 include:

• Upgrade of the hypervisor to Xen 3.4. Xen 3.4 provides more efficient power management capabilities, broader hardware support, and better performance, scalability and security for both hardware and paravirtualized guests.

• Upgrade of OCFS2 to Release 1.4. Documentation for OCFS2 is available at:

  http://oss.oracle.com/projects/ocfs2/documentation/v1.4/

• Support for the Intel® Microarchitecture CPU (code named Nehalem), such as Intel Xeon 5500 series processors.

• An improved storage repository and cluster configuration script to reduce external storage set up complexity. The new script is /opt/ovs-agent-2.3/utils/repos.py. This new script replaces the previous scripts, ovs-makerepo and ovs-offlinerepo in the /usr/lib/ovs/ directory, and the /etc/init.d/ovsrepositories script. See Section 8.2, "Preparing a Storage Repository" and Chapter 9, "Managing Storage Repositories".

New Features in Release 2.1.5

There are no new features in Oracle VM Server Release 2.1.5. A number of software and documentation errata have been fixed.

New Features in Release 2.1.2

The new features and enhancements in Oracle VM Server Release 2.1.2 include:

• High Availability of server pools and guests. See Chapter 7, "High Availability", and the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

• Converting a Linux host to a guest image, and converting a VMware image to an Oracle VM image. See Chapter 10, "Converting Hosts and Non-Oracle VM Virtual Machines".

• Quality of Service configuration options for guest virtual network interfaces and virtual disks. See Quality of Service (QoS) in Appendix C, "Guest Configuration", and the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

• Updated device drivers for:

  • Intel 8255x 10/100 Mbps (e100)

  • Intel 82540EM Gigabit (e1000)

  • Broadcom NetXtreme II (bnx2)

  • Broadcom Everest 10GB (bnx2x)

  • Broadcom NetXtreme and Netlink (tg3)

  • Chelsio T3 Third Generation 10Gb (cxgb3)

  • Qlogic Fibre Channel HBA (qla2xxx)

  • QLogic QLE8000

  • Emulex Fibre Channel HBA (lpfc)

  • Brocade Fibre Channel HBA (bfa)

  • LSI Logic Fusion-MPT SCSI (mptlinux)

  • LSI Logic MegaRAID SCSI (megaraid)

  • Redundant Disk Array Controller (rdac)

  See e100 And e1000 Network Device Emulators in Appendix C, "Guest Configuration" for information on using the e100 and e1000 controllers.

• Hypervisor debugger: Includes an optional kernel-level debugger for the Oracle VM Server hypervisor, allowing debugging of an entire host including all running guests. See the documentation installed with Oracle VM Server in the /usr/share/doc/xen/README.kdb file for more information.

  Guest debugger: Includes an optional guest debugger which allows individual guests to be debugged using the standard gdb network protocol. Supports both paravirtualized and hardware virtualized guests. See the documentation installed with Oracle VM Server in the /usr/share/doc/xen/README.gdbsx file for more information.

• Enhanced file I/O.

New Features in Release 2.1.1

There are no new features in Oracle VM Server Release 2.1.1.