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Chapter 4 Understanding Repositories

Table of Contents

A storage repository is used to store virtual machine resources, so that these resources can be made available to Oracle VM Servers in a server pool, without having to copy the resources to each Oracle VM Server. The Oracle VM Servers in a server pool gain access to these virtual machine resources by having the storage repository presented to them. If your storage is file-based storage, you can present a storage repository to multiple server pools. Alternatively, if your storage is physical disk-based, you can only present the storage repository to a single server pool.

A storage repository is essentially logical disk space made available through a file system on top of physical storage hardware. If the storage repository is created on a file server, for example an NFS share, then a file system is already present; if the repository is created on a LUN, an OCFS2 file system is first created. To gain better insight into the storage infrastructure underlying the repositories, refer to Chapter 3, Understanding Storage, and pay special attention to the information in Section 3.10, “Are there Guidelines for Configuring Storage?”.

This chapter provides information on the structure of storage repositories, describes how to create and manage them, and describes how you manage virtual machine resources contained within them.

You use the Repositories tab in Oracle VM Manager to create and configure storage repositories, and to present one or more storage repositories to Oracle VM Servers in a server pool. During the creation and configuration of the storage repository the Oracle VM Agent on the Oracle VM Server acts as the worker component performing the instructions given through Oracle VM Manager. This chapter discusses the flow of the operations you perform after the discovery of your physical storage hardware, LUNs, file systems and so on, in order to make a storage repository available to the Oracle VM Servers in your server pool. When the storage repository is accessible, you can start adding storage resources and building virtual machines with those resources.

Depending on the configuration of Oracle VM Servers in your environment, some restrictions may apply to the creation of storage repositories due to the nature of the storage. Keep in mind the following guidelines when working with storage repositories:

When using server pools without clustering functionality, two storage options are available: file servers (NFS) and local physical disks in a local storage array. Remember that local storage comes with some restrictions and may not be desirable in some environments, as described in Section 3.2.1, “Local Storage”.
Local storage, or unused disks in your Oracle VM Servers, are discovered as LUNs in a local storage array. If you want to use a single-server setup with local storage, be sure to deactivate clustering in your server pool. This eliminates the need for a server pool file system, which cannot be on a local disk.
Only a server pool with multiple servers, active clustering and attached storage (NFS, iSCSI, fibre channel) can offer high availability, load balancing and similar advanced functionality.

Note

Storage repositories are presented to individual Oracle VM Servers, and not necessarily to all Oracle VM Servers within a server pool. This means that it is possible that a repository may not be available for use on a particular server. You should keep this in mind when you deploy a virtual machine on a specific Oracle VM Server. To see which Oracle VM Servers have access to a storage repository, select the repository in the navigation pane and verify the access status in the management pane with the Perspective set to Info.

Warning

Never manually copy Oracle VM resources such as virtual machine configuration files from one repository to another, as this can cause duplication of UUIDs within the Oracle VM environment and can cause Oracle VM to malfunction. Always use the tools provided by Oracle VM Manager or the Oracle VM Manager Command Line Interface to move resources. For instance, to move a virtual machine configuration from one storage repository to another use the Move Virtual Machine wizard described in Section 7.7, “How Can a Virtual Machine be Moved or Migrated?”.

4.1 What are the Repository Prerequisites?

Before you create a storage repository, make sure that these requirements are met:

(NFS) File server repository: At least one (NFS) file server must be discovered. The file server must be accessible to all Oracle VM Servers that are to use it. The file server directory must be writeable.
(LUN) Storage array repository: The storage array must be accessible to all of the Oracle VM Servers that are to use it. The array server directory must be writeable. A server pool must exist with clustering enabled, and at least one Oracle VM Server must be present in the server pool. By design, a storage repository on a LUN is linked to a clustered server pool because of the nature of the OCFS2 file system it uses.

A repository on a local server storage also belongs in this category, since local disks are always discovered as LUNs. For more information about local storage, see Section 3.2.1, “Local Storage”.

Note

Only file server storage repositories can be shared by multiple server pools.

4.2 How is a Repository Organized?

Each storage repository has a predefined structure, which is visible in Oracle VM Manager, and maps to the directory structure of the underlying physical storage. The directory structure is listed in Table 4.1, “File System Directories for a Storage Repository”.

The directories listed in Table 4.1, “File System Directories for a Storage Repository” are subdirectories of a storage repository file system. On disk, storage repository directories are located under the following path:

/OVS/Repositories/repository_id/...

The following table describes the storage repository directories on the file system:

Table 4.1 File System Directories for a Storage Repository

Directory Name	Description
Assemblies	Contains files for virtual appliances, including OVA packages and unpacked OVF and VMDK files. See Section 4.7, “How are Virtual Appliances Managed?” for information on working with virtual appliances. Note In previous releases of Oracle VM Manager, virtual appliances were referred to as assemblies. The term virtual appliance replaces the term assembly throughout the Oracle VM Manager user interface and command line interface. However this change does not apply to some artifacts, such as the Assemblies directory on the file system.
ISOs	Contains ISO files that can be mounted as virtual CD/DVD drives on virtual machines. See Section 4.9, “How are ISO Files (CD/DVD Images) Managed?” for information on working with ISO files.
Templates	Contains virtual machine templates. See Section 4.8, “How are Virtual Machine Templates Managed?” for information on working with virtual machine templates.
VirtualDisks	Contains virtual disks, which can be either dedicated to a virtual machine or shared by multiple virtual machines. See Section 4.10, “How are Virtual Disks Managed?” for information on working with virtual disk.
VirtualMachines	Contains virtual machine configuration files. See Section 4.11, “How are Virtual Machine Configuration Files Managed?” for information on viewing virtual machine configuration files.

4.3 How is Object Metadata Stored in a Repository?

Files stored within a repository are usually named using the UUIDs of the corresponding objects stored within Oracle VM Manager. Oracle VM Manager also stores and tracks other metadata about these files, such as the simple names defined for ISOs, virtual appliances and virtual machines. To make sure that object metadata is persistent within the repository, a hidden Berkeley DB database file containing this information is maintained on the repository filesystem. This makes it possible to retain this information when the repository is transferred to a different instance of Oracle VM Manager, or to rediscover this information when Oracle VM Manager is manually restored without a database backup.

Information within the metadata database is automatically updated and maintained during operations performed by Oracle VM Manager via the Oracle VM Agent running on an Oracle VM Server where the repository is presented. The metadata stored within the repository has precedence over the information contained within Oracle VM Manager. In the case where the information stored in the repository database and the information stored within Oracle VM Manager become out of sync, Oracle VM Manager updates the data records that it has for each object based on the information within the repository database. This synchronization process is triggered by performing a repository refresh or by restarting Oracle VM Manager.

4.4 How is a Repository Created?

After you complete the storage preparation phase described in Discover File Server and Discover SAN Server in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide, Oracle VM Manager is fully aware of the underlying physical storage providers available for use as a storage repository. To create a storage repository, see Create New Repository in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

Important

A storage repository should be at least 10 GB in size. In addition to this minimum size requirement, you should include enough storage space for virtual machines, templates, ISO files and other virtual machine resources.

When the storage repository is created, Oracle VM Manager takes ownership of it, and the Oracle VM Servers you selected during the creating process have access to the repository in order to store virtual machines, ISO files, templates and so on. To modify which Oracle VM Servers have access to the storage repository, see Section 4.5, “How do Oracle VM Servers Access a Repository?”.

Note

Oracle VM Manager reports on various statistics for the underlying file system used for a repository. These include the size of the file system, the amount of available space and the percentage of the file system that is currently used. The statistics shown for these values are updated based on the information returned after the most recent file system refresh, or on information gathered via the periodic file system statistics function built into Oracle VM Manager. This is discussed in more detail in in Section 3.11, “What does a Refresh Operation do?”.

4.5 How do Oracle VM Servers Access a Repository?

As part of the storage repository creation you can select the Oracle VM Servers to which the repository must be made available. However, you can modify this selection afterwards and present the repository to new servers or unpresent it from servers previously selected.

Presenting the storage repository to an Oracle VM Server is the equivalent of mounting a file system. Essentially, when you present the repository to the Oracle VM Servers in your server pool, the repository file system is mounted by the root user on each Oracle VM Server. This is an essential factor in the HA configuration of the Oracle VM setup.

To present or unpresent Oracle VM Servers to a storage repository, see Present or Unpresent Repository in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

Note

NFS-based storage repositories can be shared by multiple server pools controlled by the same Oracle VM Manager. OCFS2-based storage repositories always belong to a single clustered server pool. Therefore only members of that server pool appear in either pane.

4.6 What Virtual Machine Resources are in a Repository?

Virtual machine resources can be categorized as follows:

Virtual appliances: A package that contains one or more preconfigured virtual machines and includes the virtual disks and inter-connectivity between the virtual machines.
Virtual machine templates: A package that contains a virtual machine configuration file and at least one bootable virtual disk. Virtual machine templates are reusable and allow you to to create multiple virtual machines.
ISO files: DVD/CD image files used to create virtual machines from scratch using the installation media.
Virtual disks: Virtual disks used by virtual machines to perform boot operations, to run the operating system, and to extend the storage capability of virtual machines.
Virtual machine files: Configuration files of your virtual machines.

Virtual Appliances and Templates

In an Oracle VM context, the term "template" is often used loosely and can refer to either a virtual appliance or a virtual machine template.

The primary distinction between a virtual appliance and a virtual machine template is the file format. Virtual appliances use the .ova format and, in some cases, the .ovf format. Templates use the .tgz format.

Virtual appliances can contain multiple virtual machines in a single package while templates contain only a single virtual machine. If you browse the package contents, you can see that an .ova file contains one or more OVF descriptor files and virtual disks whereas a .tgz file contains a virtual machine configuration (vm.cfg) files and one or more virtual disks.

You can use virtual appliances and templates to create multiple, pre-configured virtual machines. However, you can deploy virtual machine templates in .tgz format only in an Oracle VM environment. You can create, import, and export virtual appliances in .ovf or .ova format between an Oracle VM environment and another virtualization platform.

Note

In previous releases of Oracle VM, virtual appliances were referred to as assemblies. The method for creating virtual machines from an assembly was to import the assembly and then create a template from the assembly. You could then create virtual machines from the template. As of this release, the ability to import and create virtual machines directly from virtual appliances simplifies this process.

4.7 How are Virtual Appliances Managed?

Virtual appliances contain of a set of preconfigured virtual machines, or a single preconfigured virtual machine, that you can use to create new virtual machines. Typically, a virtual appliance contains the following:

An operating system.
Pre installed and pre configured applications.

Virtual appliances can be created as a set of .ovf (Open Virtualization Format) and .img (disk image) files, or can be packaged as a single .ova (Open Virtualization Format Archive) file. Disk image files can be different formats such as VMDK, VHD, VDI in addition to raw disk images. After the virtual appliances are imported, the disk images are converted into raw disk images used by Oracle VM templates and virtual machines.

The first step in using a virtual appliance is to import it into a repository. You can then use the virtual appliance to rapidly deploy preconfigured virtual machines on to Oracle VM Server. You can then start deploying virtual machines from the virtual appliance.

For ease of use, you should use a single .ova file when working with virtual appliances in Oracle VM. You can also use the .ovf format with the associated disk image files, but you must import all the disk files individually as virtual disks, then import the .ovf file as a virtual appliance.

A virtual appliance can contain a virtual machine from another virtualization software vendor, such as VMware. This enables you to import virtual machines from other virtualization software providers. However, you must make sure that the virtual machine that you want to import is correctly saved or created using the OVF standards and all files are saved in a virtual appliance file using the OVF archive file format.

Note

OVF files in the version 0.9 format, as used by VMware ESX 3.5, are not supported. If the virtual appliance that you wish to import uses an unsupported format, you can try to use VMware's Converter or OVF Tool to convert to a newer version or you can use qemu-img to convert the vmdk files to raw disk files and recreate the virtual machine manually.

To display the virtual machines that use a particular virtual appliance, select the virtual appliance in the management pane and expand the table row. Note that you might need to refresh the virtual appliance to view the content of the virtual appliance. Refresh operations on the repository do not automatically refresh the content of the virtual appliance.

You can obtain or create a virtual appliance by:

Downloading an Oracle VM virtual appliance in .ova or .ovf format from the Oracle Technology Network, and importing it into Oracle VM Manager.
Exporting an existing virtual machine as a virtual appliance in Oracle VM Manager. See Section 4.7.2, “Exporting Virtual Machines to Virtual Appliances” for more information.

4.7.1 Importing Virtual Appliances

Before you can use a virtual appliance, you must import it into Oracle VM Manager and make it available to your server pool(s). Virtual appliances are stored in the server pool's storage repository by importing them from a web server into Oracle VM Manager. Oracle VM Manager then unpacks the virtual appliances on disk so that you can work with them.

Oracle VM Manager supports the import of OVF 1.1 and OVF 2.0 formatted files.

To import a virtual appliance, see Import Virtual Appliance in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

4.7.2 Exporting Virtual Machines to Virtual Appliances

You can export one virtual machine or multiple virtual machines to a virtual appliance. Exporting a virtual machine to a virtual appliance creates an OVA file in the storage repository. The OVA file contains the virtual disk file(s) in VMDK format, an OVF file that holds the virtual machine(s) configuration, and other files such as a manifest and certificate.

Note

If you export multiple virtual machines as a virtual appliance, and the virtual machines share virtual disks, Oracle VM Manager copies the virtual disks during the export process but does not maintain the shared attribute between virtual disks. As a result, if you subsequently deploy virtual machines from the virtual appliance, you must then configure the virtual machines to share virtual disks.
Oracle VM does not support exporting ISO files to virtual appliances. If you want to export a virtual machine that has an attached ISO file, you can export the virtual machine as a virtual appliance and then separately export the ISO file from the repository.

After you export a virtual machine to a virtual appliance, you can then distribute the virtual appliance for import into another virtualization platform.

Oracle VM Manager is capable of exporting appliances in OVF 1.1 format only, using the stream-optimized Virtual Disk (VMDK) format specification. These files are compatible with Oracle VirtualBox.

To export a virtual machine to a virtual appliance, see Export a Virtual Machine in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

Note

You cannot export a virtual machine template as a virtual appliance directly within Oracle VM Manager. If you wish to convert a template to a virtual appliance, you must first import it into Oracle VM Manager as a virtual machine and then export it as a virtual appliance.

4.7.3 Creating Virtual Machines from Virtual Appliances

Virtual appliances contain one or more virtual machines that you can quickly deploy into Oracle VM Manager.

Note

If you export multiple virtual machines as a virtual appliance, and the virtual machines share virtual disks, Oracle VM Manager copies the virtual disks during the export process but does not maintain the shared attribute between virtual disks. As a result, if you subsequently deploy virtual machines from the virtual appliance, you must then configure the virtual machines to share virtual disks.

To create a virtual machine from a virtual appliance, see Virtual Appliances Item in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

4.8 How are Virtual Machine Templates Managed?

Oracle VM templates are self-contained and pre-configured virtual machines with key Oracle technologies. Each Oracle VM template is packaged using Oracle best practices, which reduces installation and configuration costs, reduces risk and dramatically shortens deployment time lines.

Oracle VM templates of many key Oracle products are available for download, including Oracle Linux, Oracle Solaris, Oracle Database, Fusion Middleware, and many more.

Oracle VM template licensing includes a free download and free trial use with the option to purchase a product license. Oracle VM templates do not have time limits or feature limitations, that is, Oracle VM templates are full featured and do not have expiration dates. Oracle VM templates can be quickly transitioned from evaluation into production by purchasing Oracle technology licenses.

You can download Oracle VM templates from the Oracle Technology Network:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/vm/templates-101937.html

Please read the documentation provided with any downloaded template, as it informs you of the relevant configuration steps that you must perform, as well as the default username and password for the template.

Important

When using an Oracle VM template, be sure to change the usernames and passwords from the defaults when you clone your virtual machines. Consistently using default usernames and passwords is a security risk.

The creation of a virtual machine from template is based on cloning: the template is imported as an archive, unpacked and stored as a virtual machine configuration file with images of its disks, which are cloned to create a new instance in the form of a virtual machine. In the same way, an existing virtual machine can be cloned to create a new virtual machine, and to a new template as well.

A virtual machine template is a fully pre-installed, pre-configured virtual machine that can be repeatedly used to create new virtual machines. A typical virtual machine template contains:

An operating system.
A file which contains the basic configuration information, such as the number of virtual CPUs, the amount of memory, the size of disk, and so on.
Pre installed applications.

You can obtain or create a virtual machine template by:

Downloading an Oracle VM template from the Oracle Technology Network, and importing it into Oracle VM Manager.
Cloning an existing virtual machine as a template in Oracle VM Manager. For information on cloning virtual machine templates, see VM Templates Item in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

4.8.1 Using a Virtual Machine Template

A virtual machine template can be used to create virtual machines, and to create new templates based on the original. To create a virtual machine from a template, see Clone a Virtual Machine or Template in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

4.8.2 Importing a Virtual Machine Template

A virtual machine template contains various components such as the virtual machine configuration information, virtual disks that contain the operating system and any application software. These components are packaged together as an Oracle VM template file.

Before you can use a virtual machine template, you must import it into Oracle VM Manager and make it available to your server pool(s). Virtual machine templates are stored in the server pool's storage repository by importing them from a web server into Oracle VM Manager.

In a storage repository, templates are typically imported as an archive (.tgz, .tar or other). The archive contains a virtual machine configuration file (.cfg) file, and at least one virtual disk image (.img file).

On disk, a template archive is unpacked after import. The .cfg file of the virtual machine is always referenced from the Templates folder, but the virtual disk image files (.img) are placed in the VirtualDisks folder. This makes the creation of virtual machines from template a lot faster, which also applies to cloning of virtual machines.

For instructions on importing a virtual machine template, see Import Template in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

4.8.3 Virtual Machine Template Clone Customizers

Cloning a virtual machine or template means making a copy of it, so that you can create multiple virtual machines or templates from the original. You can create a clone customizer to set up the clone parameters, such as networking, and the virtual disk, and ISO resources. A clone customizer is also used when moving a virtual machine or template from one storage repository to another. To create, edit or delete clone customizers, see Manage Clone Customizers in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

4.9 How are ISO Files (CD/DVD Images) Managed?

Virtual machines have no access to the physical DVD or CD-ROM drive. You can assign virtual drives to virtual machines by offering ISO files containing the image of a DVD or CDROM. These image files can be found in the ISOs folder in a storage repository.

To be able to use an ISO file with your virtual machine you must first import the file into an appropriate storage repository, namely one that can be accessed by the server pool where the virtual machine is to be created. You import ISO files from a web server into Oracle VM Manager. If your storage repository uses file-based storage, you can make the repository available to multiple server pools, therefore making an ISO file available to multiple server pools. If you are using array-based storage, you can only make a repository available to a single server pool. Virtual machines can only access ISO files on repositories that have been assigned to the server pool to which they belong.

To import an ISO file, see Import ISO in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide. To create a virtual machine using an ISO file, see Create Virtual Machine in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

4.10 How are Virtual Disks Managed?

Virtual machines need at least one disk from which to boot and run the operating system. Virtual disks can be part of a template or virtual appliance. Virtual disks can be created when you create the virtual machine or created independently inside the storage repository. Virtual disks can be shared across virtual machines, or dedicated to one virtual machine. All virtual disks available in the storage repository appear in Virtual Disks in the navigation tree when you select a storage repository, regardless of how they are created.

To create a virtual disk, see Create Virtual Disk in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide. To import an virtual disk, see Import Virtual Disk in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide. When you create a virtual machine from scratch, you are given the opportunity to either create a new virtual disk, or use an existing one. For more information about creating a virtual machine from scratch, see Create Virtual Machine in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

When a virtual disk is created, using either the Oracle VM Manager Web Interface or the Oracle VM Manager Command Line Interface, the sectors on the virtual disk are automatically aligned to 4096 bytes or 4 KiB. This ensures the best possible compatibility with external tools such as those provided with Oracle VirtualBox and other third party vendors. If you attempt to create a virtual disk using the Oracle VM Web Services API and the disk is not aligned, an error is returned notifying you that you must size your disk appropriately. If a virtual disk is not either 512-byte aligned or 4-KiB aligned, some tools are unable to read or process the virtual disk and may return errors while attempting to do so. In this case, you must resize the virtual disk to be appropriately aligned. You can find out more on resizing virtual disks in Edit Virtual Disk in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

Note

Oracle supports the provisioning of a virtual machine with Oracle Cluster File System version 2 (OCFS2) on a virtual disk image, regardless of the underlying shared file system. That is to say, Oracle supports OCFS2 on virtual machines in an Oracle VM environment even if the underlying repository is NFS based. However, the subnet that is used for the private interconnect inside the virtual machine must not conflict with the subnet used on dom0.

While virtual disks may prove easy to manage and migrate, there is a performance cost associated, since file systems are nested within each other. It is possible to create a virtual machine that does not use a virtual disk, but uses virtual storage from a raw physical disk in the form of a LUN accessed directly by the virtual machine. Therefore, for virtual machine disks Oracle VM provides two options:

Virtual disks: Disk image files on a file system, usually reside in a storage repository.
Raw physical disks: LUNs accessed directly by the virtual machine.

The design decision of virtual versus physical storage access depends on your server virtualization use cases as well as the existing storage hardware at your disposal. Virtual storage enables quick and easy on-the-fly configuration, but introduces a higher level of abstraction, since multiple file systems are nested within each other. Therefore, when using virtual storage it is important to balance ease of use against the lower performance compared to physical storage. Physical storage access implies that virtual machine disk storage is mapped directly onto the LUNs configured in the physical storage hardware, which is exactly like the way physical servers access their storage. The advantage here is that existing procedures and storage management practices can be maintained.

Virtual disks can be detected as different device types within a virtual machine. Older templates and virtual machines tend to detect these disks as hdx devices, while newer virtual machines and templates detect virtual disks as xvdx devices. Oracle VM does not support virtual machines that use mixed device types for virtual disks. If you are working with an older template or virtual machine, it is recommended that you remove all current disk mappings and then recreate them so that they use the new xvdx device types. Alternately, if your virtual machine does not support xvdx device types at all, you should edit the vm.cfg file for the virtual machine by hand to make sure that any storage devices, such as a virtual cdrom device, are changed from xvdx devices to hdx devices. For instance, you might change the following entry in the vm.cfg file:

disk = [
file:/OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300000eaa1a4a8e297e7c/VirtualDisks\ 
        /0004fb0000120000ce3f55b28a87d068.img,xvda,w,
file:/OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300000eaa1a4a8e297e7c/ISOs\
       /0004fb000015000040ba0ea64887c0d0.iso,xvdb:cdrom,r]

to:

disk = [
file:/OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300000eaa1a4a8e297e7c/VirtualDisks\
        /0004fb0000120000ce3f55b28a87d068.img,hda,w,
file:/OVS/Repositories/0004fb00000300000eaa1a4a8e297e7c/ISOs\
       /0004fb000015000040ba0ea64887c0d0.iso,hdb:cdrom,r]

Disk space allocation for virtual disks is either sparse or non-sparse. Non-sparse allocation means that all the configured space is allocated from the beginning, whereas sparse allocation means that the virtual disk initially takes up little space on the underlying storage, but grows as it is used and more content is added. When sparse virtual disk space allocation is used, the available space in a repository can be over-subscribed. Sparse allocation is useful to increase virtual machine density. However, errors occur if the space allocated to a storage repository becomes exhausted, so the administrator must carefully monitor disk space and make sure that the storage repository maintains sufficient disk space to accommodate the provisioned virtual disks. The same principle applies to a SAN where thin provisioning is used.

Virtual disks can be added or removed from a virtual machine at any point, however if a virtual machine is suspended, you cannot add or remove any virtual disks until the virtual machine is either running or stopped. For more information on updating the virtual disks assigned to a virtual machine, refer to Edit Virtual Machine in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

4.11 How are Virtual Machine Configuration Files Managed?

The VM Files folder in a storage repository navigation tree lists all the virtual machine configuration files in the storage repository. In the Create Virtual Machine wizard you specify which storage repository to use to store the configuration file of your virtual machine. Consider the VM Files folder to be the home location of all the virtual machines that have been created in the selected storage repository. You cannot perform any actions on the virtual machine configuration files. If you want to rename, move or delete any of these files, you should perform those operations on the virtual machine, not just the virtual machine configuration file.

For more information on moving virtual machine configuration files between repositories, please refer to Migrate or Move Virtual Machines in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.

4.12 Can the Repository be Backed Up?

An Oracle VM Server can be configured to enable third party applications to perform a back up of the contents of a storage repository. To enable this, an Oracle VM Server is configured to provide an NFS share that a third party back up tool can use to access the contents of the repository. The Oracle VM Server must be in a clustered server pool and have the OCFS2-based storage repository presented to it.

When you have created a repository export, use the Repository Path (displayed in the management pane table) and the Oracle VM Server hostname or IP address to connect to the NFS mount point from the third party back up software.

To enable third party backup tools to access the contents of a storage repository, see Repository Exports Perspective in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.