The following server BIOS settings may be required to use Oracle VM Server:

When using a PXE boot kickstart file to perform an Oracle VM Server installation, make sure you specify the network interface to be used for the management interface first. If you have more than one network interfaces specified in a kickstart file, the first interface is used as the management interface. The management interface is the only live interface after a PXE install of Oracle VM Server. You should manually configure any other network interfaces on the Oracle VM Server to start on boot in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-* files. Set the ONBOOT=NO parameter to ONBOOT=YES.

There are cases where it may become necessary to increase the Dom0 memory size to meet the demand of running applications. For example, presenting one iSCSI LUN takes approximately 3.5MB of system memory. Consequently, a system that uses many LUNs quickly requires a larger amount of memory in accordance with the storage configuration.

Workaround: Change the amount of memory allocated to Dom0. See Changing the Dom0 Memory Size for information on how to change the Dom0 memory allocation.

When upgrading Oracle VM Servers using the Yum update method, the kernel firmware is upgraded, and a new kernel is installed, leaving the old kernel still installed and available. When upgrading Oracle VM Servers using the CDROM method, the kernel firmware is upgraded, and the kernel is also upgraded, so the old kernel is no longer installed nor available.

Installing Oracle VM Server on a system such as the Dell 380, with a Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet Controller fails with an error similar to the following example:

Traceback (most recent call first):
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/network.py", line 685, in write
if dev.get('BOOTPROTO').lower() in ['dhcp', 'ibft']:
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/yuminstall.py", line 1394, in doPreInstall
anaconda.id.network.write(anaconda.rootPath)
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/backend.py", line 184, in doPreInstall
anaconda.backend.doPreInstall(anaconda)
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/dispatch.py", line 207, in moveStep 

The installer cannot detect the network adapter, so fails to complete the installation.

If you are installing Oracle VM Server on a Sun Fire X4800, you must provide extra parameters when booting from the installation media (CDROM or ISO file), or when using a kickstart installation. These parameters allow the megaraid_sas driver to load correctly.

If booting from the installation media, press F2 when the initial boot screen is displayed and provide the following additional parameters as part of the boot command:

mboot.c32 xen.gz extra_guest_irqs=64,2048 nr_irqs=2048 --- vmlinuz --- initrd.img

If using a kickstart installation, add the additional kernel parameters to the PXE configuration file.

If you want to make these changes permanent, edit the /boot/grub/grub.conf file in your Oracle VM Server after the installation has completed.

If the NIC that connects to the storage on the master Oracle VM Server is down, the master Oracle VM Server is restarted, but Oracle VM Manager does not rediscover the Oracle VM Server. This is an intermittent issue and may not always occur.

Starting or restarting Oracle VM Servers fails if the Oracle VM Servers in a server pool are on different subnets.

Workaround: Use IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) to start or restart Oracle VM Servers in a server pool that are on different subnets.

If Oracle VM Manager is redeployed to a new computer, you should rediscover any file servers. If you do not rediscover the file servers, and the server pool file system is on the file server, you cannot remove Oracle VM Servers from the server pool.

If you have server pools in your environment and you clear the Oracle VM Manager database, you cannot rediscover and rebuild your previous Oracle VM environment. The following error is in the job:

OVMRU_000021E Cannot perform operation on pool: Unknown pool found for discovered Pool FS. 
The pool does not have a Virtual IP Address.

Workaround: Follow these steps to rediscover the server pools:

The OCFS2 heartbeating function can be disturbed by I/O-intensive operations on the same physical storage. For example: importing a template or cloning a VM in a storage repository on the same NFS server where the server pool file system resides may cause a time-out in the heartbeat communication, which in turn leads to server fencing and reboot.

Workaround: To avoid unwanted rebooting, it is recommended that you choose a server pool file system location with sufficient and stable I/O bandwidth. Place server pool file systems on a separate NFS server or use a small LUN, if possible.

If OCFS2 file systems are still mounted on an Oracle VM Server you want to remove from a cluster, the remove operation may fail. This is due to the fact that the OCFS2 mount is an active pool file system or storage repository.

Workaround: If a storage repository is still presented, unpresent it from the Oracle VM Server before attempting to remove the server from the cluster. If a pool file system is causing the remove operation to fail, other processes might be working on the pool file system during the unmount. Try removing the server at a later time.

An Oracle VM Server is in heartbeat configured mode if the server pool file system is not mounted. Either the file system failed to mount or the mount was lost because of hardware issues such as unavailability of the LUN of NFS server containing the file system to be mounted.

Workaround: Mount the file system at the Oracle VM Server command line, or, as a last resort, reboot the Oracle VM Server and allow it to join the cluster automatically at boot time.

During rediscovery of an Oracle VM Server, the following error may occur:

om.oracle.ovm.mgr.api.exception.FailedOperationException: OVMAPI_4010E
Attempt to send command: discover_cluster to server: ip_address failed.
OVMAPI_4004E Server Failed Command: discover_cluster , Status:
org.apache.xmlrpc.XmlRpcException: exceptions.Exception:discover_cluster
already in progress

This may occur if you rediscover the master Oracle VM Server, then rediscover another Oracle VM Server without the master role. This occurs on an NFS-based server pool file system.

Workaround: Refresh the Oracle VM Server.

To use netconsole you must specify a non-bridged ethx device, in the /etc/sysconfig/netconsole file on an Oracle VM Server, for example:

# The ethernet device to send console messages out of (only set this if it
# can't be automatically determined)
# DEV=
DEV=eth2

On some Intel-based systems, the following error may occur after installing Oracle VM Server when the computer is started:

[    0.674742] ACPI Error: Field [CPB3] at 96 exceeds Buffer [NULL] size 64 (bits) 
  (20090903/dsopcode-596)
[    0.675167] ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
[\_SB_._OSC] (Node ffff88002e4fba50), AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT

This has been observed on systems with the following BIOS information, but may also occur in other BIOS versions:

Vendor: Intel Corp. Version: S5500.86B.01.00.0036-191.061320091126 Release Date: 06/13/2009 BIOS Revision: 17.18 Firmware Revision: 0.0

HP ProLiant BL685c G6 HP BIOS A17 12/09/2009 Backup Version 12/01/2008 Bootblock 10/02/2008

This error can safely be ignored.

Cisco Blade servers cannot be configured to boot with random UUIDs. Each Oracle VM Server must have a fixed UUID to allow the Oracle VM Server to move between Blades. To configure a fixed UUID, see:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/gui/config/guide/1.3.1/UCSM_GUI_Configuration_Guide_1_3_1_chapter26.html#task_6026472137893749620

The 10Gbit Ethernet drivers mlx4_en and qlcnic may need additional settings to maximize performance. Disable LRO (Large Receive Offload) to relieve guest performance issues. Edit the /etc/rc.local file of the Oracle VM Server and add the following text to the end of the file for the identified network interfaces:

ethtool -K interface lro off

Reboot the Oracle VM Server after modifying the /etc/rc.local file.