Installing Oracle VM Server 3.3.1

Installing Oracle VM Server Steps By Steps

All Oracle VM software can be downloaded from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud:

https://edelivery.oracle.com/oraclevm

You must be a registered user, logged in and have accepted the terms and conditions to download software from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud.

Software downloads are available as Media Packs, each of which represents a different release of the software. It is recommended that you select the most recent Media Pack to obtain patch updates to the software that you intend to install. Each Media Pack contains a collection of ISOs and Zip archives that are available for download. You can select the components that you require for your deployment and download each of these using your web browser.

Depending on your installation strategy, ISOs and Zip archives may need to be copied to the relevant host or hosts involved in a deployment, or should be placed in shared storage accessible to the systems involved.

Pre-installation Tasks and Requirements

Before you start the Oracle VM Server installation, make sure your computer meets the minimum hardware and software requirements and that your network is configured appropriately.

Hardware Requirements

This release of Oracle VM Server supports x86_64 host hardware only. Oracle VM Server requires a 64-bit processor with at least an i686-class processor on the host computer. This includes all Intel Pentium Pro or newer, and all AMD Athlon/Duron processors and newer. At least a Pentium 4 or Athlon CPU is recommended.

For hardware virtualized (unmodified) guest operating systems (for example, Microsoft Windows), a CPU with hardware virtualization support is required. This includes some Intel Pentium D, Core, Core2 and Xeon models, and some AMD Athlon and Opteron models. This feature may also need to be enabled in the BIOS. Please refer to your processor documentation for information on whether your processor supports hardware virtualization and how to enable it in the BIOS.

A dual core CPU or multiple CPUs are recommended to run multiple guests.

The minimum memory requirement is 1 GB RAM, although it is recommended you have a computer with at least 2 GB RAM. Guest memory requirements vary for each guest operating system. You should perform your own memory sizing for guest operating systems.

It is also worth noting that if you intend to connect to SAN-based physical disks, memory consumption increases on the server for each LUN or target by around 1 MB per LUN or target. If hundreds of LUNs are to be attached to the server, you must scale memory requirements appropriately.

Software Requirements

There are no prerequisite software requirements. Oracle VM Server includes a small Linux-based management operating system. All previous operating systems and data on the disk selected for installation are lost during the installation of Oracle VM Server.

Migration from any operating system, or previous alternate virtualization environment, is not supported in this release.

 Network Requirements

Oracle VM Server requires at least one stable and static IP address that does not change over server reboots. If you use DHCP within your environment, you should configure your DHCP server to assign static DHCP addresses to the systems on which you will be installing Oracle VM Server. This ensures that your host always receives the same IP address. The behavior of the Oracle VM Server host is undefined if used in an environment where your IP address may change due to DHCP lease expiry.

If your DHCP server is configured to provide a default gateway, this could impact on the behavior of Oracle VM Server as the gateway provided over DHCP would override any statically defined gateway set on Oracle VM Server. Therefore, Oracle recommends that you ensure that your DHCP server is not configured to provide a default gateway unless you are certain that the default route is the one that you want your Oracle VM Server instances to make use of.

Many actions performed within Oracle VM Manager require that server hostnames are properly resolved. It is highly recommended that a DNS server is configured on your network and that the hostnames for each Oracle VM Server can be resolved by all of the systems within your Oracle VM environment. If this is not feasible, you may need to add host entries to /etc/hosts on each Oracle VM Server after you have finished your installation. Since it is easy for these entries to become outdated, resulting in difficulty when troubleshooting, this approach should be avoided.

Technically, it is possible to run Oracle VM Server with a single network interface per physical server. During the installation of each Oracle VM Server the management interface is configured, and during discovery by Oracle VM Manager the server management interfaces are included in the default management network. Since the management network is capable of providing all network functions in Oracle VM, including storage and virtual machine traffic, there is no functional need for additional networks. Even if you wish to separate different types of network traffic, a single interface is enough: the management network can be run on a VLAN and additional network connections can be made via VLAN interfaces configured on top of the single physical network interface.

The main reasons to opt for multiple physical network interfaces are:

• Security. You may wish to keep internal and inter-server traffic separated from networks with a route to the internet. Or you may need to guarantee that network traffic from different virtual environments, or different types of network traffic, are physically separated.
• Redundancy. You do not want your environment to stop working if one network interface fails. A good way to avoid this is to aggregate two interfaces in a bond interface. A bond port, as it is called in Oracle VM, can work in active-backup mode, but also increases performance when used as an aggregation of two active links with twice the bandwidth and load balancing.
• Performance. If you have multiple physical network interfaces, link aggregation is a good way to add bandwidth for a given network function. In addition, or as an alternative, you can create multiple physical networks and use them for dedicated functions; for example a separate storage network or a network for virtual machine traffic only.

Note

Oracle VM Ethernet network functionality can be applied to standard 10/100/1000Mbit Ethernet interfaces as well as 10Gbit Ethernet interfaces.

Oracle VM Server Memory Settings

Installation allocates memory to dom0 using the following algorithm:

(512 + 0.0205 * Physical memory (MB)) round to 8

Oracle does not recommend changing this default value.

To install Oracle VM Server from a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM:

1. Make sure that the server BIOS is set to boot from the DVD-ROM or CD-ROM device.
2. Insert the Oracle VM Server DVD or CD, that you have burned, into your ROM drive.
3. Boot the server with the Oracle VM Server DVD or CD.
4. The Oracle VM Server screen is displayed. Press Enter to begin the installation. If you do not press a key for one minute, the installer automatically starts. The installer is only available in text mode.
5. The CD Found screen is displayed. If you want to make sure the DVD or CD has been created correctly you can have the installer test it for errors. To test the DVD or CD, select OK and press Enter. The DVD or CD is tested and any errors are reported.
   Warning

   Testing the installation media requires a server reboot to continue the installation. If you do not have physical access to the server itself, it is not recommended that you perform this test.
   
   

To skip media testing and continue with the install, select Skip and press Enter.

The Language Selection screen is displayed. Select the language that should be used for the operating system (for example English).

Select OK and press Enter

1. The Keyboard Selection screen is displayed. Select the keyboard layout type (for example, us for U.S. English) from the list of available options. The keyboard you select becomes the default keyboard for the operating system.
   Select OK and press Enter.

1. The Oracle VM Server 3.x End User License Agreement screen is displayed. Read the License Agreement text and click Accept to accept the terms of the agreement and continue the installation.

The Partitioning Type screen is displayed. Select whether you want to:

• Use the entire drive for the installation target
• Replace the existing Linux system (if any)
• Use the free space on selected drives to create a new default partition layout

Select which drive(s) you want to use for the installation.

Select OK and press Enter

The Oracle VM Management Interface screen is displayed. Select the network interface to use for management of the computer.
Choose one of these options:
Select OK to connect the interface to a regular network.
Select Add to VLAN to connect the interface to a VLAN-type network.

Press Enter
.

1. For non-VLAN installation, proceed to the next step.
   If you selected Add to VLAN, the Oracle VM Management VLAN screen is displayed. If your Oracle VM Management network is on a VLAN, enter the applicable VLAN tag. Note that 0 is reserved and that 1 corresponds with "untagged".
   Select OK and press Enter.
2.  The Network Interface Configuration screen is displayed. If your computer uses a static IP address, enter the IP address and prefix (netmask) for your computer.
   If your computer uses DHCP to assign its IP address, select Dynamic IP configuration (DHCP).
   Select OK and press Enter.
3. The Miscellaneous Network Settings screen is displayed. Enter the Gateway, Primary DNS and optional Secondary DNS in the respective fields.
   Select OK and press Enter.

 The Hostname Configuration screen is displayed. If your machine has its own hostname, select manually and enter the hostname or IP address. You should use a fully qualified hostname, for example, myserver.example.com.

The Time Zone Selection screen is displayed. If your operating system uses Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), select System clock uses UTC.

Select your time zone by selecting the city closest to your computer's physical location.

Select OK and press Enter

1. The Oracle VM Agent password screen is displayed. Enter a password to be used for the Oracle VM Agent in the Password field. This password is used by Oracle VM Manager to take ownership of the Oracle VM Server. This is the password you use when discovering Oracle VM Servers in Oracle VM Manager.
   Re-enter the password in the Password (confirm) field.
   The password characters are not echoed to the screen.
   Select OK and press Enter. If the two passwords do not match, the installer prompts you to enter them again.

1. The Root Password screen is displayed. Enter a password for the root user in the Password field. The root password must be at least six characters long.
   Re-enter the password in the Password (confirm) field.
   The password characters are not echoed to the screen.
   Select OK and press Enter. If the two passwords do not match, the installer prompts you to enter them again.

1. The Writing storage configuration to disk screen is displayed to confirm that you want to write the partitioning information to disk, proceeding past this step will erase any data contained on the partition that you opted for in the previous step.
   Select Write changes to disk and press Enter.
2. The Installation to begin screen is displayed. Select OK and press Enter. The installer installs and configures Oracle VM Server. You can follow the progress of the package installation on-screen.
3. When all files are installed and configuration is complete, the Complete screen is displayed. Remove the Oracle VM DVD or CD.
   Select Reboot and press Enter. The computer reboots.

The Oracle VM Server installation is complete. The Oracle VM Agent is started automatically and restarts each time the computer is rebooted.