Glossary

An Oracle VM Server dedicated to performing administrative functions on storage servers such as creating a new LUN or extending a file system. The server must be capable of logging into a storage array or file server as an admin user. The administrative functions available to the server are defined by the storage connect plugin.

Specify that specific virtual machines should always run on the same host.

Specify that specific virtual machines should never run on the same host.

An infrastructure template containing a configuration of multiple virtual machines with their virtual disks, and the inter-connectivity between them. Assemblies can be created as a set of .ovf (Open Virtualization Format) and .img (disk image) files, or may all be contained in a single .ova (Open Virtualization Format Archive) file.

The action or result of making an exact copy of an object. The object may be a virtual machine, virtual machine template, ISO file, or virtual disk. Cloning is analogous to copying and maintains the integrity of the original object, while creating a new object based on the original. A clone customizer may be used to define cloning options to specify details of where the object components may reside when cloned, such as in a different storage repository.

A privileged domain that creates and manages other logical domains and services.

An abbreviation for domain zero. The management domain with privileged access to the hardware and device drivers. Dom0 is the first domain started at boot time. Dom0 has more privileges than domU. It can access the hardware directly and can manage the device drivers for other domains. It can also start new domains.

A configurable set of resources, including memory, virtual CPUs, network devices and disk devices, in which virtual machines run. A domain is granted virtual resources and can be started, stopped and rebooted independently.

See Also dom0, domU.

An unprivileged domain with no direct access to the hardware or device drivers. Each domU is started by dom0.

A guest operating system that runs within a domain in Oracle VM Server. A guest may be paravirtualized or hardware virtualized. Multiple guests can run on the same Oracle VM Server.

A virtual machine with an unmodified guest operating system. It is not recompiled for the virtual environment. There may be substantial performance penalties running as a hardware virtualized guest. Enables Microsoft Windows™™ operating system to be run, as well as legacy operating systems. Hardware virtualization is only available on Intel® VT or AMD SVM CPUs.

The physical computer on which Oracle VM Server is installed.

A hypervisor, also called a monitor or Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), is a layer which abstracts the virtual hardware from the real hardware. As such it is the only privileged entity in the system which has full access to real hardware resources. It controls only the most basic resources of the system, including CPU and memory usage, privilege checks, and hardware interrupts.

A virtual machine comprised of a discrete logical grouping of resources, which has its own operating system and identity within a single computer system. Also called a domain.

See Also domain.

A component of Oracle VM Agent. An application that acts as the contact point to Oracle VM Manager, and to other Oracle VM Agents. Provides virtual machine host load-balancing, and local persistence for Oracle VM Server.

There is only one master Oracle VM Server in a server pool. A physical server can perform as the master Oracle VM Server, Utility Server and Virtual Machine Server simultaneously.

The act of moving a virtual machine from one Oracle VM Server to another, or to the Unassigned Virtual Machines folder. Migration can be performed on either a running or a stopped virtual machine.

The act of moving an object from one location to another. This may be moving a stopped virtual machine from one Oracle VM Server to another, moving a virtual machine template from one storage repository to another, or moving an ISO file or virtual disk to another storage location.

A clone of the type "non-sparse copy" is a disk image file of a physical disk, taking up the space equivalent to the full specified disk size, including empty blocks.

See Also sparse copy.

An application installed with Oracle VM Server. It communicates with Oracle VM Manager for management of virtual machines. Oracle VM Manager manages the virtual machines running on Oracle VM Server by communicating with Oracle VM Agent. It contains three components: master Oracle VM Server, Utility Server, and Virtual Machine Server.

Provides the user interface, which is an Application Development Framework (ADF) web application, to manage Oracle VM Server pools. Manages virtual machine life cycle, including creating virtual machines from templates or from installation media, deleting, powering off, uploading, deployment and live migration of virtual machines. Manages resources including ISO files, templates and shared virtual disks.

A self-contained virtualization environment designed to provide a lightweight, secure, server-based platform for running virtual machines. Oracle VM Server is based upon an updated version of the Xen hypervisor technology. Includes Oracle VM Agent to enable communication with Oracle VM Manager.

A virtual machine with a kernel that is recompiled to be made aware of the virtual environment. Runs at near native speed, with memory, disk and network access optimized for maximum performance.

Also referred to as qemu-dm, which is the process name. The virtualization process which allows full virtualization of a PC system within another PC system.

An Oracle VM Server dedicated to handling filesystem refreshes on behalf of a server pool. A refresh server temporarily mounts file systems on an NFS file server during the refresh operation. The server must be granted full data access in order to perform the refresh. For each NFS file server, at least one Oracle VM Server from each server pool accessing the file server must be assigned as a refresh server.

Logically an autonomous region that contains one or more physical Oracle VM Servers. Presents a unified view of the storage where the virtual machines reside, and groups the users of these virtual machines into a single community called a group, in which each user is a server pool member.

Logical domain that provides devices, such as virtual switches, virtual console connectors, and virtual disk servers, to other logical domains.

A clone of the type "sparse copy" is a disk image file of a physical disk, taking up only the amount of space actually in use; not the full specified disk size.

See Also non-sparse copy.

A thin clone is a clone of a virtual disk that takes up only the amount of disk space actually in use; not the full specified disk size.

Thin cloning of virtual disks on OCFS2-based repositories is supported. Thin provisioning of physical disks on generic storage is not supported.

A component of Oracle VM Agent. An application that handles I/O intensive operations for virtual machines, server pools and servers, for example, copying, moving and renaming files.

There can be more than one Utility Server in a server pool. A physical server can perform as the master Oracle VM Server, Utility Server and Virtual Machine Server simultaneously.

A virtual network interface for bridging network interfaces between domUs and dom0. When a domU is started it is assigned a number. This number is used to bridge the network interface from ethn to vifn.0.

A file or set of files, usually on the host file system although it may also be a remote file system, that appears as a physical disk drive to the guest operating system.

A guest operating system and the associated application software that runs within Oracle VM Server. May be paravirtualized or hardware virtualized machines. Multiple virtual machines can run on the same Oracle VM Server.

A component of Oracle VM Agent. An application which runs Oracle VM Server virtual machines. It can start and stop virtual machines, and collect performance data for the host and guest operating systems. Enables communication between the master Oracle VM Server, Utility Server and Virtual Machine Servers.

There can be more than one Virtual Machine Server in a server pool. A physical server can perform as the master Oracle VM Server, Utility Server and Virtual Machine Server simultaneously.

A template of a virtual machine. Contains basic configuration information such as the number of CPUs, memory size, hard disk size, and network interface card (NIC). Create virtual machines based on a virtual machine template using Oracle VM Manager.

The Xen hypervisor is a small, lightweight, software virtual machine monitor, for x86-compatible computers. The Xen hypervisor securely executes multiple virtual machines on one physical system. Each virtual machine has its own guest operating system with almost native performance. The Xen hypervisor was originally created by researchers at Cambridge University, and derived from work done on the Linux kernel.