5.1.4 Oracle VM Resources

Two fundamental parts of the Oracle VM infrastructure – networking and storage – are configured outside of the Oracle VM.

Networking

When specifying the configuration details for your Oracle Exadata Rack using Oracle Exadata Deployment Assistant (OEDA), you provide input on how the required network IP addresses for Oracle VM environments should be created. The generated OEDA setup files are transferred to the Oracle Exadata Rack and used to create the network addresses.

Storage

Oracle VM always requires a location to store environment resources that are essential to the creation and management of virtual machines. These resources include ISO files (virtual DVD images), VM configuration files and VM virtual disks. The location of such a group of resources is called a storage repository.

On Oracle Exadata, storage for the Oracle VMs is configured as OCFS2 (Oracle Cluster File System) storage.

On X5-2 and later 2-socket Oracle Exadata Database Machine systems only, you can purchase a disk expansion kit to increase storage capacity. You can use the additional disk space to support more Oracle VM guests (up to a maximum of 8) by expanding /EXAVMIMAGES or to increase the size of the /u01 partition in each domU.

Maximum Supported VMs on Exadata

For any existing Exadata Database Server, the maximum number of supported VMs is eight. For software prerequisites, refer to My Oracle Support notes 888828.1 and 1270094.1.

• Storage Configuration for Management Domain
  The management domain (dom0) contains the image repository and Oracle VM configuration files.
• Storage Configuration for User Domain
  The user domain (domU) is a virtualized database node.