Assigning Physical Resources to Domains

The Logical Domains Manager automatically selects the physical resources to be assigned to a domain. The Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.2 software also enables you explicitly choose the physical resources to assign to or remove from a domain. This capability is only available when the control domain runs the Oracle Solaris 11 OS.

Resources that you explicitly assign are called named resources. Resources that are automatically assigned are called anonymous resources.

You can explicitly assign physical resources to the control domain and to guest domains. Because the control domain remains active, the control domain might optionally be in a delayed reconfiguration before you make physical resource assignments. Or, a delayed reconfiguration is automatically triggered when you make physical assignments. See Managing Physical Resources on the Control Domain. For information about physical resource restrictions, see Restrictions for Managing Physical Resources on Domains.

You can explicitly assign the following physical resources to the control domain and to guest domains:

• Physical CPUs. Assign the physical core IDs to the domain by setting the cid property.

  The cid property should only be used by an administrator who is knowledgeable about the topology of the system to be configured. This advanced configuration feature enforces specific allocation rules and might affect the overall performance of the system.

  You can set this property by running any of the following commands:

  # ldm add-core cid=core-ID[,core-ID[,...]] ldom
  # ldm set-core cid=core-ID[,core-ID[,...]] ldom
  # ldm rm-core [-f] cid=core-ID[,core-ID[,...]] ldom

  If you specify a core ID as the value of the cid property, core-ID is explicitly assigned to or removed from the domain.

• Physical memory. Assign a set of contiguous physical memory regions to a domain by setting the mblock property. Each physical memory region is specified as a physical memory start address and a size.

  The mblock property should only be used by an administrator who is knowledgeable about the topology of the system to be configured. This advanced configuration feature enforces specific allocation rules and might affect the overall performance of the system.

  You can set this property by running any of the following commands:

  # ldm add-mem mblock=PA-start:size[,PA-start:size[,...]] ldom
  # ldm set-mem mblock=PA-start:size[,PA-start:size[,...]] ldom
  # ldm rm-mem mblock=PA-start:size[,PA-start:size[,...]] ldom

  To assign a memory block to or remove it from a domain, set the mblock property. A valid value includes a physical memory starting address (PA-start) and a memory block size (size), separated by a colon (:).

You can use the ldm list-constraints command to view the resource constraints for domains. The physical-bindings constraint specifies which resource types have been physically assigned to a domain. When a domain is created, the physical-bindings constraint is unset until a physical resource is assigned to that domain. By setting the mblock property, the physical-bindings constraint is set to memory. Likewise, by setting the cid property, the physical-bindings constraint is set to core. If both the cid and mblock properties are set, the physical-bindings constraint is set to core,memory.

To change the physical-bindings constraint for a resource type on the control domain, you must first remove all resources of that type by setting the number of resources to zero, as follows:

• Set the number of resources to 0 by using the ldm set-core 0 or ldm set-mem 0 command.

• Remove all of the specified physical-bindings constraints for a particular resource type.

  To remove all named cores and memory blocks, run the ldm set-core cid= and ldm set-mem mblock= commands, respectively. To remove all anonymous cores and memory blocks, run the ldm set-core 0 and ldm set-mem 0 commands, respectively.

  Because the control domain must have CPUs and memory allocated, specifying cid= or mblock= on the control domain returns an error.

• Delete each resource from the domain individually.

Managing Physical Resources on the Control Domain

Because the control domain is always active, it might be in delayed reconfiguration mode before you make physical resource assignments. When you explicitly assign physical resources, the control domain is automatically placed in delayed reconfiguration mode and the physical-bindings constraint is set.

If physical-bindings=core, running the ldm set-core cid=core-ID primary command or the ldm set-vcpu CPU-count primary command causes the physical-bindings constraint to be cleared on the next reboot. If the physical-bindings constraint is not set to core, run the ldm set-core cid=core-ID primary command to set physical-bindings=core on the next reboot.

If physical-bindings=memory, running the ldm set-mem size primary command causes the physical-bindings constraint to be cleared on the next reboot. If the physical-bindings constraint is not set to memory, run the ldm set-mem mblock=PA-start:size primary command to set the physical-bindings constraint on the next reboot.

Restrictions for Managing Physical Resources on Domains

The following restrictions apply to the assignment of physical resources:

• You cannot make physical and non-physical memory bindings, or physical and non-physical core bindings, in the same domain.

• You can have non-physical memory and physical core bindings, or non-physical core and physical memory bindings, in the same domain.

• When you add a physical resource to a domain, the corresponding resource type becomes constrained as a physical binding.

• Attempts to add individual CPUs to or remove them from a domain where physical-bindings=core will fail.

• For unbound resources, the allocation and checking of the resources can only occur when you run the ldm bind command.

• When removing physical memory from a domain, you must remove the exact physical memory block that was previously added.

• Physical memory ranges must not overlap.

• You cannot use the ldm add-core or ldm set-core command to assign a physical resource to a domain.

• If you use the ldm add-mem or ldm set-mem command to assign multiple physical memory blocks, the addresses and sizes are checked immediately.

• A domain that has partial cores assigned to it can use the whole-core semantics if the remaining CPUs of those cores are free and available.