For optimized performance, you can install paravirtualized drivers on hardware virtualized machines. Paravirtual drivers are optimized and improve the performance of the operating system in a virtual machine. These drivers enable high performance throughput of I/O operations in guest operating systems on top of the Oracle VM Server hosts.
Creating hardware virtualized machines may require that you install paravirtual drivers for your hardware on the guest operating system.
To install the paravirtual drivers for Windows operating systems, see the Oracle VM Windows Paravirtual Drivers Installation Guide .
To install paravirtual drivers on an Oracle Linux guest operating system:
Download the paravirtualized kernel on the virtual machine, for example for an Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5 64-bit guest, download:
http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/EnterpriseLinux/EL5/5/base/x86_64/kernel-xen-2.6.18-194.el5.x86_64.rpm
Install the paravirtualized kernel on the virtual machine:
# rpm -ivh kernel-xen-version
.type
.rpm Preparing... ########################################### [100%] 1:kernel-xen ########################################### [100%]
Back up the old initrd file, and make the new one with xennet, xenblk driver:
# mv initrd-oldversion
.el5xen.img initrd-oldversion
.el5xen.img.old # mkinitrd initrd-newversion
.el5xen.imgnewversion
.el5xen --with=xenblk --with=xennet --preload=xenblk --preload=xennet
Edit the /boot/grub/grub.conf file to be:
default=0 timeout=5 splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz hiddenmenu title Enterprise Linux Enterprise Linux Server (version
.el5xen) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-version
.el5xen ro root=LABEL=/ initrd /initrd-version
.el5xen.img
Modify the /etc/modprobe.conf file to include:
alias scsi_hostadapter xenblk alias eth0 xennet
Shut down the virtual machine. See Section 7.9.5, “Shutting Down a Virtual Machine” for information on shutting down a virtual machine.
Edit the virtual machine and change the Domain Type to Xen PVM. See Section 7.9.9, “Editing a Virtual Machine” for information on editing a virtual machine.
Start the virtual machine. See Section 7.9.1, “Starting a Virtual Machine” for information on starting a virtual machine.