To configure the Oracle VM Agent with a secondary service domain, your SPARC server must meet the minimum requirements listed in this section, in addition to the standard installation requirements described in Preinstallation Tasks and Requirements in the Oracle VM Installation and Upgrade Guide.
You need a SPARC Server that has at least two PCIe buses, so that it can be configured with two LDoms root domains. One root domain is configured as the primary domain, and the second root domain is configured as the secondary domain. For more information about LDoms root domains, refer to I/O Domain Overview in the Oracle VM Server for SPARC Administration Guide available at:
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E38405_01/html/E38406/index.html
Both domains must be configured with at least one PCIe bus. The PCIe buses that you assign to each domain must be unique. You cannot assign the same PCIe bus to two different domains.
By default, after a fresh installation, all PCIe buses are assigned to the primary domain. When adding a new service domain, some of these PCIe buses must be released from the primary domain and then assigned to the secondary domain.
For example, a SPARC T5-2 server with two SPARC T5 processors has 4 PCIe buses. This server can be configured with a primary domain and a secondary domain. You can assign two PCIe buses to the primary domain, and two PCIe buses to the secondary domain.
The network ports used by the primary domain must all be connected to the PCIe buses that are assigned to the primary domain.
Similarly the network ports used by the secondary domain must all be connected to the PCIe buses that are assigned to the secondary domain.
In addition, the primary and secondary domains must have the same number of network ports. Each network port in the primary domain must have a corresponding network port in the secondary domain, and they must be connected to the same physical network.
For example, a SPARC T5-2 server with two SPARC T5 processors has 4 PCIe buses (pci_0, pci_1, pci_2, and pci_3). The server also has 4 onboard network ports. Two network ports are connected to pci_0, and the other two are connected to pci_3. You can assign 2 PCIe buses (pci_0 and pci_1) to the primary domain, and 2 PCIe buses (pci_2 and pci_3) to the secondary domain. That way, both domains have two ports configured. You must ensure that each port is connected to the same physical network as one of the ports in the corresponding domain.
Physical disks or LUNs used by the primary domain must all be accessible through one or several host bus adapters (HBAs) connected to the PCIe buses that are assigned to the primary domain. The primary domain needs at least one disk for booting and hosting the operating system. The primary domain usually has access to all, or a subset of, local SAS disks present on the server through an onboard SAS HBA connected to one of the PCIe buses of the server.
Similarly, physical disks or LUNs used by the secondary domain must all be accessible through one or several HBAs connected to the PCIe buses assigned to the secondary domain. The secondary domain needs at least one disk for booting and hosting the operating system. Depending on the server used, the secondary domain might not have access to any local SAS disks present on the server, or it might have access to a subset of the local SAS disks. If the secondary domain does not have access to any of the local SAS disks then it must have an HBA card on one of its PCIe buses and access a LUN from an external storage array that it can use for booting.
If the boot disk of the secondary domain is on a storage array shared between multiple servers or multiple domains, make sure that this disk is only accessible by the secondary domain. Otherwise the disk might be used by mistake by another server or domain, and you can corrupt the boot disk of the secondary domain. Depending on the storage array and the storage area network, this can usually be achieved using zoning or LUN masking.
In addition, if a Fibre Channel (FC) storage area network (SAN) is used, then the primary and the secondary domains must have access to the same FC disks. So one or more FC HBAs must be connected to the FC SAN and to the PCIe buses that are assigned to the primary domain. And, one or more FC HBAs must be connected to the FC SAN and to the PCIe buses that are assigned to the secondary domain.
The primary and the secondary domain do not need to have access to same SAS or iSCSI disks. Only the SAS or iSCSI disks accessible from the primary domain are visible to Oracle VM Manager. Oracle VM Manager does not have visibility of any SAS or iSCSI disks accessible only from the secondary domain. If a virtual machine is configured with SAS or iSCSI disks, then the corresponding virtual disks in the virtual machine have a single access path, through the primary domain. If a virtual machine is configured with FC disks, then the corresponding virtual disks in the virtual machine have two access paths: one through the primary domain; and one through the secondary domain.
For example, a SPARC T5-2 server with two SPARC T5 processors has 4 PCIe buses (pci_0, pci_1, pci_2, pci_3). The server also has 2 onboard SAS HBAs to access the 6 internal SAS disks. One SAS HBA is connected to PCIe bus pci_0 and accesses 4 internal disks. The other SAS HBA is connected to PCIe bus pci_4 and accesses the 2 other internal SAS disks. You can assign 2 PCIe buses (pci_0 and pci_1) to the primary domain, and 2 PCIe buses (pci_2 and pci_3) to the secondary domain. That way, both domains have access to internal SAS disks that can be used for booting. The primary domain has access to four SAS disks, and the secondary domain has access to two SAS disks.
If you want to connect the server to an FC SAN, then you can add an FC HBA to the primary domain (for example on PCIe bus pci_1) and an FC HBA to the secondary domain (for example, on PCIe bus pci_2). Then you should connect both FC HBAs to the same SAN.