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1.5 Basics of Oracle VM Server for SPARC


1.5 Basics of Oracle VM Server for SPARC
This section provides an overview of the Oracle VM Server for SPARC software.

Oracle VM Server for SPARC is the software used to configure the logical domain environment. It is installed and used in the Oracle Solaris environment.

A logical domain is configured with the hardware resources, such as CPUs, memory, and I/O devices, flexibly distributed to it from the physical partition built by the XSCF firmware. The resources are assigned as a virtual hardware environment. The configured logical domain can run business applications, each of which is in an independent Oracle Solaris environment. Building more than one virtual hardware environment in one or more SPARC M12 or SPARC M10 units implements better server utilization and can lower costs when compared with server integration.

The typical logical domains are the control domain, which creates and controls other logical domains, and the guest domains, used for applications for business. In each SPARC M12/M10 system, one control domain is created per physical partition to manage other logical domains configured in the physical partition. Oracle VM Server for SPARC runs on the control domain and is used to configure and manage guest domains.
The control domain also serves to notify the XSCF firmware of logical domain information through the built-in Hypervisor firmware. Setting information from the XSCF is also transmitted to the control domain via the Hypervisor firmware.

The CPU, memory, I/O device, and other hardware resources of even the configured logical domains already applied to tasks can be reconfigured, depending on the logical domain operation status. Oracle VM Server for SPARC implements hardware resource reconfiguration too. Adding hardware resources for a task that temporarily increases the load can maintain high availability of the hardware resources and prevent tasks from overflowing.

For details about configuring and reconfiguring logical domains by using Oracle VM Server for SPARC in the SPARC M12/M10 systems, see the Fujitsu SPARC M12 and Fujitsu M10/SPARC M10 Domain Configuration Guide. For details of Oracle VM Server for SPARC, see the Oracle VM Server for SPARC Administration Guide of the version used.