In Oracle VM, the term storage array is used to indicate block-based storage made available to the environment from another physical server or possibly as local storage. Describing the technology used to expose raw disk space in the form of iSCSI targets and LUNs or the configuration of a SAN (storage attached network), is beyond the scope of this guide. The procedure below explains how you can bring the exposed block-based storage into Oracle VM and configure the storage array and physical disks either for the installation of a storage repository or direct attachment as physical disk to a VM (virtual machine).
Oracle VM has a default Unmanaged Fibre Channel Storage Array. Since only a single generic fibre channel storage array can exist, no additional arrays of this type can be created. Consequently, the instructions below apply to storage arrays using the following types of Storage Connect plug-ins:
generic iSCSI
vendor-specific iSCSI
vendor-specific fibre channel
The end-to-end procedure is broken down into three phases, discussed in the following sections.