Oracle VM Server for x86 Live Migration with EMC VPLEX and ...

Oracle VM Server for x86 Live Migration with EMC VPLEX and Symmetrix VMAX Applied Technology

Abstract

This white paper describes how Oracle VM Live Migration, in conjunction with EMC® VPLEX™, provides the ability to online migrate Oracle VM virtual machines running active database workloads across distance without downtime. September 2010

Copyright © 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDED ―AS IS.‖ EMC CORPORATION MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION, AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Part Number h8056


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Table of Contents Executive summary ............................................................................................ 4 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 4 Audience ...................................................................................................................................... 4

Virtualization strategy with Oracle VM and EMC Symmetrix and VPLEX ...... 4 Products and features overview ........................................................................ 5 VPLEX .......................................................................................................................................... 5 VPLEX architecture .................................................................................................................. 6 VPLEX family............................................................................................................................ 7 VPLEX and array-based replications ....................................................................................... 8 Oracle VM Server for x86 ............................................................................................................ 9 Oracle VM Server ..................................................................................................................... 9 Oracle VM virtual machines ..................................................................................................... 9 Oracle VM Manager ............................................................................................................... 10 Oracle VM Live Migration ....................................................................................................... 10 Symmetrix VMAX ....................................................................................................................... 10 Symmetrix VMAX TimeFinder product family ........................................................................ 11 Auto-provisioning Groups ....................................................................................................... 12 EMC PowerPath for Oracle VM ................................................................................................. 12

Implementing VPLEX Metro with Oracle VM Live Migration ......................... 13 Oracle VM deployments in a VPLEX Metro environment .......................................................... 13 Lab configuration ....................................................................................................................... 13 Physical environment ............................................................................................................. 13 Hardware and software resources ......................................................................................... 14 Set up Symmetrix VMAX storage .............................................................................................. 15 Set up VPLEX Metro .................................................................................................................. 15 VPLEX connectivity ................................................................................................................ 15 VPLEX Metro administration .................................................................................................. 16 Set up Oracle VM ....................................................................................................................... 18 Set up Oracle VM Server ....................................................................................................... 18 Set up an Oracle VM guest .................................................................................................... 21 Set up Oracle VM Manager .................................................................................................... 22 Oracle VM Live Migration in a VPLEX Metro setting ................................................................. 24 Perform Oracle VM Live Migration ............................................................................................. 24 Start live migration .................................................................................................................. 24 Verify the migration on the destination ................................................................................... 25

Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 26 References ........................................................................................................ 26


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Executive summary EMC® VPLEX™ is an enterprise-class storage federation technology that aggregates and manages pools of Fibre Channel attached storage arrays that can reside within a single data center or two data centers that are geographically separated within metro distances up to 100 km apart. EMC VPLEX also provides nondisruptive, heterogeneous data movement and volume management functionality. The EMC Symmetrix VMAX™ series provides an extensive offering of industry-leading features and functionality for the next era of high-availability virtual data centers and virtualization of mission-critical applications. With advanced levels of data protection and replication, the Symmetrix ® VMAX system is at the forefront of enterprise storage area network (SAN) technology. Additionally, the Symmetrix VMAX array has the speed, capacity, and efficiency to transparently optimize service levels without compromising its ability to deliver performance on demand. These capabilities are of the greatest value for large virtualized server deployments and virtual data centers. Oracle VM is server virtualization software that offers scalable, highly efficient, and low-cost server virtualization. Oracle VM makes the deployment, management, and support of enterprise applications easy and quick. It offers an extensive set of features such as web services APIs, live migration of virtual machines, a management graphic user interface, fast deployment by using ready-made VM Templates, and more. Like other server virtualization technologies, Oracle VM brings the power of cloud computing to the data center, reducing IT costs while also increasing infrastructure efficacy. Thus EMC VPLEX system is a natural fit for this next generation of environments virtualized with Oracle VM technology. The capabilities of EMC VPLEX to federate storage systems and present globally unique devices not bound by physical data centers boundaries work hand in hand with the inherent capabilities of Oracle VM to provide cloud-based service. Oracle VM with EMC VPLEX and Symmetrix VMAX storage is an ideal choice for deploying a highly reliable virtualization solution. IT organizations are looking for ways to stretch their virtualization environments across data centers to provide higher uptime and enable new levels of resource management. Before EMC VPLEX, this required specialized SANs and complicated configurations. Now, organizations are able to achieve new levels of flexibility in their storage infrastructure.

Introduction This white paper introduces readers to the EMC VPLEX family, its Metro cluster architecture, and features and functionality that are relevant for storage virtualization. The paper then discusses provisioning VPLEX storage for the Oracle VM platform, the use of EMC PowerPath ® for Oracle VM, and the use case of Oracle VM Live Migration in an EMC VPLEX Metro configuration. Finally, the paper provides best practices for using Symmetrix TimeFinder® to create and restore database clones when using VPLEX and Oracle VM.

Audience This white paper is intended for Oracle VM administrators, storage administrators, and IT architects responsible for architecting, creating, managing, and using the virtualized IT environments that utilize Oracle VM, EMC VPLEX technologies and EMC Symmetrix VMAX storage. The white paper assumes readers are familiar with Oracle VM and Oracle database technology, and EMC VPLEX and the Symmetrix storage array.

Virtualization strategy with Oracle VM and EMC Symmetrix and VPLEX Many businesses increasingly realize the advantages inherent in virtualization. Speed of deployment, centralized management, dynamic resource allocation, and faster response to changes are just a few of the cost-saving and improved business operations that are the result of adopting a virtualization strategy.


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Together EMC and Oracle provide a complete set of products that cover virtualization aspects at the different tiers that businesses operate in. Starting with the storage subsystem, the Symmetrix storage array scales to support any business needs with large persistent front-end cache, scalable multi-engine configuration, and features to support high availability and a variety of storage tiers such as high-density SATA drives, traditional rotating FC drives, and Enterprise Flash Drives (EFD). With Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) technology, user data placement can dynamically and automatically change storage tiers in response to workload needs and defined user policies – with no application disruption and user intervention. In essence, this allows the virtualization of the disk technology and RAID protection without interruption to user operations on the host. For example, as new data is accessed more frequently, FAST can place it on the EFD tier and as utilization changes it could automatically downtier it based on what the user policy allows. In that way many competing and changing workloads can share a single storage array with ease of management and improve overall TCO based on actual workload and business needs. With Virtual Provisioning™ Symmetrix virtualizes the layout of data into thin pools to allow native striping, optimized utilization, and ease and speed of LUN provisioning. The VPLEX product family provides the ability to present hosts with LUNs where the actual storage can come from any supported heterogeneous storage array (EMC or non-EMC). In a VPLEX Local deployment VPLEX virtualizes a local storage subsystem behind it, but when it is clustered in a Metro topology, VPLEX provides storage virtualization over synchronous distance with true AccessAnywhere™ to its storage devices via its large cache and unique cache coherence technology. VPLEX AccessAnywhere technology together with server virtualization technology such as Oracle VM allows businesses to perform online workload migrations with ease, since the application data stored in VPLEX volumes is already available at both sites. Also, since the stretched VPLEX volumes are truly read-writeable at both sites, server virtualization solutions such as Oracle VM can easily migrate virtual machines between the sites, regardless if their images are sharing OCFS2 mountpoints, allowing increased workload management flexibility and ease. Oracle VM provides server virtualization where virtual machines can easily be deployed and managed. The use of virtual machines not only speeds deployment (for example, by using prebuilt, patched, and tested VM Templates) but also provides an easy way of managing large infrastructure of applications, or server farms. Sharing physical server resources for multiple VMs increases resource utilization and improves TCO. With Oracle VM Live Migration these VMs can be moved between physical servers for reasons such as workload isolation, hardware upgrades, resource management, and improved availability. When Oracle VM Live Migration is joined with VPLEX Metro deployment, virtual machines can be moved not only inside the data center between physical servers, but also in between data centers. This deployment allows better business flexibility without sacrificing business uptime, and the virtualization advantages achieved at all the different layers as described above. Oracle Database and applications running on Oracle VM can be active in either side of the VPLEX Metro cluster, and dynamically be moved from one side to the other using Oracle VM Live Migration. This way physical server and storage hardware at both sites are utilized, and data center operations such as maintenance or disaster planning can be tested and managed without interruption to the business.

Products and features overview VPLEX The EMC VPLEX family removes physical barriers within, across, and between data centers. VPLEX Local provides simplified management and nondisruptive data mobility across heterogeneous arrays. VPLEX Metro provides data access and mobility between two VPLEX clusters within synchronous distances. With a unique scale-up architecture, VPLEX’s advanced data caching and distributed cache coherency provide workload resiliency, automatic sharing, and balancing and failover of storage domains, and enables both local and remote data access with predictable service levels


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VPLEX architecture EMC VPLEX encapsulates traditional physical storage array devices and applies three layers of logical abstraction to the storage volumes as seen in Figure 1: Extents, devices, and virtual volumes. Extents are the mechanism VPLEX uses to divide storage volumes. Extents may be all or part of the underlying storage volume. EMC VPLEX aggregates extents and applies RAID protection in the device layer. Devices are constructed using one or more extents and can be combined into more complex RAID schemes and device structures as desired. At the top layer of the VPLEX storage structures are virtual volumes. Virtual volumes are created from devices and inherit the size of the underlying device. Virtual volumes are the elements VPLEX exposes to hosts using its FE ports. Access to virtual volumes is controlled using storage views, which are comparable to Auto-provisioning Groups on EMC Symmetrix or to storage groups on EMC CLARiiON®. They act as logical containers determining host initiator access to VPLEX FE ports and virtual volumes

Figure 1. EMC VPLEX logical storage structures As shown in Figure 2, VPLEX is a solution for federating both EMC and non-EMC storage. VPLEX resides between the servers and heterogeneous storage assets and introduces a new architecture with unique characteristics: Scale-out clustering hardware that lets customers start small and grow big with predictable service levels Advanced data caching utilizing large-scale SDRAM cache to improve performance and reduce I/O latency and array contention Distributed cache coherence for automatic sharing, balancing, and failover of I/O across the cluster A consistent view of one or more LUNs across VPLEX clusters separated either by a few feet within a data center or across synchronous distances, enabling new models of high availability and workload relocation


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Figure 2. EMC VPLEX Local to federate heterogeneous storage

VPLEX family The EMC VPLEX family consists of two offerings: VPLEX Local: This solution is appropriate for customers that would like federation of homogeneous or heterogeneous storage systems within a data center and for managing data mobility between physical data storage entities. VPLEX Metro: The solution is for customers that require concurrent access and data mobility across two locations separated by synchronous distances. The VPLEX Metro offering also includes the unique capability where a remote VPLEX Metro site can present LUNs without the need for physical storage for those LUNs at the remote site. The EMC VPLEX family is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. EMC VPLEX family offering with architectural limits EMC VPLEX Local and VPLEX Metro: Managing data mobility and access EMC VPLEX Local and VPLEX Metro are the first two products to utilize this new technology. A solution that resides between the servers and heterogeneous storage arrays, each is comprised of high-availability VPLEX Engines that encompass two separate VPLEX directors, each featuring high-performance multicore Intel Xeon processors, 32 GB intelligent cache pools, and 8 Gb/s Fibre Channel host and array connections. EMC VPLEX Local EMC VPLEX Local features include: Nondisruptive, transparent data mobility within, across, and between EMC and non-EMC storage platforms within a single site/data center.


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Simplifies recurring information movement and improves storage utilization. Features a single cluster with up to four VPLEX Engines (eight directors) with support for up to 8,000 virtualized storage volumes. EMC VPLEX Metro EMC VPLEX Metro features include: Nondisruptive, transparent data mobility between EMC and non-EMC platforms. Ability to link two separate VPLEX clusters within a data center or up to 100 km apart and to federate some or all of the storage volumes across both clusters, effectively presenting these ―stretched‖ volumes at each site as if they were local, shared volumes. Able to synchronously relocate and synchronize data I/O, between two sites up to 100 km apart (5 ms round-trip response time maximum). Ability for any data volume to be configured for simultaneous access by applications in two locations, enabling relocation, sharing, and balancing infrastructure resources. Support for Oracle VM 2.2.0 and later release versions with Oracle Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Linux, and Windows guest hosts and EMC PowerPath with the ability to move workloads between servers locally with Live Migration and between locations using VPLEX Metro. Features two clusters with up to four VPLEX Engines each and support for up to 16,000 virtualized data volumes. The VPLEX cluster nodes of EMC VPLEX Metro handle network failure by automatically suspending all I/Os to a device (―detached‖) on one of the two sites based on a set of predefined rules. The I/O operations at the other site to the same device continue normally. Furthermore, since the rules are applied on a deviceby-device basis it is possible to have active devices on both sites in case of a network partition. Imposition of the rules to minimize the impact of network interruptions does have an impact in case of a site failure. In this case, based on the rules defining the site that detaches in case of a breakdown in communications, the VPLEX cluster at the surviving site automatically suspends the I/O to some of the devices at the surviving site. To address this, the VPLEX software provides the capability to manually resume I/Os to the detached devices. However, a more detailed discussion of the procedure to perform these operations is beyond the scope of this white paper. EMC VPLEX Architecture and Deployment: Enabling the Journey to the Private Cloud TechBook should be consulted for further information on VPLEX Metro.

Figure 4. EMC VPLEX Metro

VPLEX and array-based replications Preserving the investments made in array-based storage replication is of critical importance in today’s IT environment. EMC designs with this goal in mind and the VPLEX product family is no exception. By following the VPLEX best practices outlined here, array-based replication tools can continue delivering Oracle VM Server for x86 Live Migration with EMC VPLEX and Symmetrix VMAX Applied Technology

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expected functionality and value within your IT infrastructure. As you will see, one of the ways VPLEX preserves array replication technologies is by mapping storage volumes in their entirety (one-to-one mapping) through VPLEX. When done in this fashion, the underlying storage devices are left untouched by VPLEX and the back-end array LUN replication technology continues to function normally.

Oracle VM Server for x86 Oracle VM is a next-generation server virtualization and management solution available for free download and use that makes enterprise applications — both Oracle and non-Oracle applications — easier to deploy, manage, and support. There are no licensing costs for Oracle VM; the only cost is the cost of supporting the technology. As shown in Figure 5, Oracle VM consists of one or more Oracle VM Servers for x86 that are grouped into a server pool and managed by Oracle VM Manager. Oracle VM Server allows hardware resources — CPUs, memory, networks and storage — to become flexible resource pools from which virtual machines are built. Oracle VM Manager provides an easy-to-use graphical interface to create and manage virtual infrastructure. Oracle VM is backed by the Oracle worldwide technical support organization and is fully certified for all Oracle applications. Virtual machines (VMs) share physical servers but behave like independent physical servers. Each virtual machine created with Oracle VM has its own virtual CPUs, network interfaces, storage, and operating system. Oracle VM Manager lets you create, clone, share, configure, boot, and migrate VMs.

Figure 5. Oracle VM

Oracle VM Server Oracle VM Server consists of a hypervisor and a management domain (dom0). It is designed so that the hypervisor is the only fully privileged entity in the system and has an extremely small footprint. The hypervisor controls only the most basic resources of the system, including CPU and memory usage, privilege checks, and hardware interrupts. Oracle VM Server’s management domain (dom0) is a complete Linux kernel with support for a broad array of devices, file systems, and software RAID and volume management. In Oracle VM Server, the dom0 is tasked with providing access to much of the system hardware, creating, destroying and controlling guest operating systems, and presenting those guests with a set of common virtual hardware.

Oracle VM virtual machines Oracle VM Server guest operating systems may run in one of two modes, paravirtualized or hardware virtualized. In paravirtualized mode, the kernel of the guest operating system is recompiled to be made Oracle VM Server for x86 Live Migration with EMC VPLEX and Symmetrix VMAX Applied Technology

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aware of the virtual environment. This allows the paravirtualized guest to run at near native speed, since most memory, disk, and network accesses are optimized for maximum performance. Oracle VM virtual machines support1 Windows, Solaris 10 (x86_64), or Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) and RHEL. Virtual machines share the Oracle VM Server physical resources and can be managed using Oracle VM Manager.

Oracle VM Manager Oracle VM Manager provides a central place to create and control virtual infrastructure. The Oracle VM Manager connects with one or more Oracle VM Servers to create, configure, and manage virtual resources. Virtual machines can be created and deployed using shares of physical resources such as CPU, memory, network, and disk. Oracle VM Manager’s capabilities streamline tasks that are otherwise highly manual and time-intensive to significantly reduce data center complexity. For example, users can consolidate many physical servers using virtual machines, quickly create new virtual machines to deploy operating systems and applications using Oracle VM Templates, and reduce the cost and complexity of VM failover. Oracle VM Templates are preconfigured images that include operating system and applications. Many Oracle applications are available as Oracle VM Templates from oracle.com. Oracle VM Manager can be controlled by a web-based client, command line, or third-party utilities using the API.

Oracle VM Live Migration Oracle VM’s secure live migration relocates running virtual machines from one physical server to another without impact to virtual machine availability. The process consists of three parts: 1) Network storage allows a virtual machine’s disks to be accessible by multiple Oracle VM Servers. 2) The virtual machine’s memory and execution state is transferred over the network securely using SSL. Once the memory copy is complete, the VM is paused on the origination server and resumed on the destination server. 3) When the VM is resumed on the destination server, its complete state is identical to the original server, including network MAC, IP address, and all attributes. Oracle VM can live migrate a VM between Oracle VM Servers in a server pool. Using VPLEX, server pools for the first time can span across data centers.

Symmetrix VMAX Symmetrix VMAX is built on the strategy of simple, intelligent, modular storage, and incorporates a new Virtual Matrix® interconnect that connects and shares resources across all nodes, allowing the storage array to seamlessly grow from an entry-level configuration into the world’s largest storage system. It provides the highest levels of performance and availability featuring new hardware capabilities as seen in Figure 6.

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See Oracle documentation for an exact list of supported operating systems and releases.


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2 – 16 director boards Up to 2.1 PB usable capacity Up to 128 FC FE ports Up to 64 FICON FE ports Up to 64 GigE / iSCSI FE ports Up to 1 TB global memory (512 GB usable) 48 – 2,400 disk drives Enterprise Flash Drives 200/400 GB FC drives 146/300/450/600 GB 15k rpm (or 400 GB 10k rpm)

SATA II drives 2 TB 7.2k rpm Figure 6. The Symmetrix VMAX platform Symmetrix VMAX provides the ultimate scale-out platform. It includes the ability to incrementally scale front-end and back-end performance by adding processing modules (nodes) and storage bays. Each processing module provides additional front-end, memory, and back-end connectivity. Symmetrix VMAX also increases the maximum hyper size to 240 GB (64 GB on Symmetrix DMX™). This allows ease of storage planning and device allocation, especially when using Virtual Provisioning™ where the thin storage pool is already striped and large hypers can be easily used.

Symmetrix VMAX TimeFinder product family The EMC TimeFinder family of local replication technology allows for creating multiple, nondisruptive, read/writeable storage-based replicas of database and application data. It satisfies a broad range of customers’ data replication needs with speed, scalability, efficient storage utilization, and minimal to no impact on the applications – regardless of the database size. TimeFinder provides a solution for backup, restart, and recovery of production databases and applications, even when they span Symmetrix arrays. TimeFinder is well integrated with other EMC products such as SRDF and allows the creation of replicas on a remote target without interrupting the synchronous or asynchronous replication. If a restore from a remote replica is needed, TimeFinder and SRDF will restore data incrementally and in parallel, to achieve a maximum level of availability and protection. The TimeFinder product family supports the creation of dependent write-consistent replicas using EMC consistency technology, and replicas that are valid for Oracle backup/recovery operations, as described later in the use cases. TimeFinder/Clone TimeFinder/Clone provides the ability to create, refresh, or restore multiple full volume copies of the source volumes where after the first full synchronization, only incremental changes are passed between source and target devices. TimeFinder/Snap TimeFinder/Snap software allows users to create, refresh, or restore multiple read/writeable, space-saving copies of data. TimeFinder/Snap allows data to be copied from each source device to as many as 128 target devices where the source devices can be either a STD device or a BCV. The target devices are Symmetrix virtual devices (VDEV) that consume negligible physical storage through the use of pointers to track changed data.


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Symmetrix VMAX TimeFinder and EMC VPLEX Symmetrix TimeFinder can be used in conjunction with VPLEX to create and restore Oracle database copies based on VPLEX virtual volumes. The detailed steps are not included in this paper. Please contact EMC for additional details.

Auto-provisioning Groups Introduced in April 2009 with VMAX and Solutions Enabler version 7.0 Auto-provisioning Groups provides an easier, faster way to provision storage, reducing labor and risk of error in Symmetrix VMAX arrays running Enginuity™ 5874. Auto-provisioning Groups was developed to make storage allocation simpler and more efficient, especially in clustered and virtualized server environments. Mapping and masking devices in previous versions of Solutions Enabler and Symmetrix DMX arrays required a separate command for each initiator and port combination through which devices would be accessed. In Solutions Enabler 7.0, the symaccess command allows the user to create an arbitrary group of devices (storage group), a group of director ports (port group), and a group of host initiators (initiator group), and associate them in a masking view. In simple configurations a masking view, along with an associated storage, port, and initiator group, can also be created for a single initiator on a single port with any number of devices using one command. Auto-provisioning Groups includes four main parts: Initiator groups – These groups contain Fibre Channel World Wide Names (WWN) or the iSCSI IQN names of iSCSI initiators. Each initiator group can contain up to 32 different initiators. For configurations that require more than 32 initiators, initiator groups can be cascaded, that is, an initiator group can contain other initiator groups. A single level of cascading allows the user to create a single initiator group that has a total of 1,024 initiators. Storage groups – These groups contain Symmetrix storage device identification numbers. Port groups – These groups contain Symmetrix director port numbers. Views – This is the name of the construct that is created when an initiator group, a storage group, and a port group are associated with one another. A view enables a set of initiators access to a group of devices using the front-end Fibre Channel or iSCSI ports on the Symmetrix VMAX storage array. These objects can be created using either Symmetrix Management Console or Solutions Enabler version 7.0 and later command line utilities.

EMC PowerPath for Oracle VM PowerPath for Oracle VM Server is supported with Oracle VM Server version 2.2.0 or 2.2.1. PowerPath for Oracle VM Server provides the following features: Dynamic load balancing – PowerPath is designed to use all paths at all times. PowerPath distributes I/O requests to a logical device across all available paths, rather than requiring a single path to bear the entire I/O burden. Auto-restore of paths – Periodic auto-restore reassigns logical devices when restoring paths from a failed state. Once restored, the paths automatically rebalance the I/O across all active channels. Device prioritization – Setting a high priority for a single or several devices improves their I/O performance at the expense of the remaining devices, while otherwise maintaining the best possible load balancing across all paths. This is especially useful when there are multiple virtual machines on a host with varying application performance and availability requirements. Automated performance optimization – PowerPath support for Oracle VM 2.2 automatically identifies the type of storage array and sets the highest performing optimization mode by default. Note that for VPLEX, the default mode is Adaptive. Dynamic path failover and path recovery – If a path fails, PowerPath for Oracle VM redistributes I/O traffic from that path to functioning paths. PowerPath stops sending I/O to the failed path and checks for an active alternate path. If an active path is available, PowerPath for Oracle VM redirects Oracle VM Server for x86 Live Migration with EMC VPLEX and Symmetrix VMAX Applied Technology

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I/O along that path. PowerPath for Oracle VM can compensate for multiple faults in the I/O channel (for example, HBAs, fiber-optic cables, Fibre Channel switch, storage array port). Automatic path testing – PowerPath for Oracle VM periodically tests both live and dead paths. By testing live paths that may be idle, a failed path may be identified before an application attempts to pass I/O down it. By marking the path as failed before the application becomes aware of it, timeout and retry delays are reduced. By testing paths identified as failed, PowerPath for Oracle VM will automatically restore them to service when they pass the test. The I/O load will be automatically balanced across all active available paths. In summary, EMC PowerPath provides support for Oracle VM 2.2 with Oracle Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Linux, and Windows guest hosts with the ability to move workloads between servers locally with Live Migration and between locations using VPLEX Metro.

Implementing VPLEX Metro with Oracle VM Live Migration Oracle VM deployments in a VPLEX Metro environment EMC VPLEX breaks the physical barriers of data centers and allows users to access data at different geographical locations concurrently. This functionality in an Oracle VM context allows for transparent load sharing between multiple sites while providing the flexibility of migrating workloads between sites in anticipation of planned events such as hardware maintenance. Furthermore, in case of an unplanned event that causes disruption of services at one of the data centers, the failed services can be quickly and easily restarted at the surviving site with minimal effort. Although the architecture of VPLEX is designed to support concurrent access at multiple locations, the first version of the product supports a two-site configuration separated by synchronous distance with a maximum round trip latency of 5 ms between the two sites. In addition, the VPLEX Metro solution requires extension of a VLAN to different physical data centers. Technologies such as Cisco’s Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) can be leveraged to provide the service. For further information on EMC VPLEX Metro configuration readers should consult the TechBook EMC VPLEX Architecture and Deployment: Enabling the Journey to the Private Cloud available on Powerlink®.

Lab configuration The following section identifies and briefly describes the technology and components used in the environment.

Physical environment The diagram in Figure 7 illustrates the overall physical architecture of the environment.


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Figure 7. VPLEX Metro configuration for Oracle VM Live Migration

Hardware and software resources The hardware setup consists of setting up Fibre Channel connectivity between the VPLEX, Symmetrix VMAX storage, switches, and servers, and setting up the network interconnectivity for the cluster. The main guidelines during this step are to maximize hardware redundancy such as using two switches, more than a single HBA, multipath for dynamic path failover, and load balancing. The hardware and software used to validate the Oracle VM with VPLEX Metro solution are listed in the following tables. Hardware EMC Symmetrix VMAX EMC VPLEX Metro Sun Fire X4100 server Express (2 HBA ports used per server)

Quantity 2 2 2 4

Release Enginuity 5874 VPLEX 4.0.1 Metro storage clusters 2 x dual core, 16 GB RAM

Software

Release

Server Virtualization Software

Oracle VM Server 2.2.1

EMC PowerPath for Oracle VM

5.3.0 for Oracle VM Server

Guest OS

Oracle Enterprise Linux Release 5 Update 3 x64

VM Manager

Oracle VM Manager 2.2.1

Oracle

Oracle Database 10g R2 (10.2.07) and Oracle Database 11g R1 (11.1.x) for Linux x86-64


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Set up Symmetrix VMAX storage The following steps are required to provision storage from the Symmetrix VMAX system to a VPLEX virtual storage environment, which is basically the same as to provision storage to physical or virtual servers. The process described assumes this is the first time storage is being provisioned from the Symmetrix VMAX array to the VPLEX Metro system. It also assumes that the VPLEX have been zoned to access appropriate front-end ports on the Symmetrix VMAX storage array. The Symmetrix actions should be executed from a management host connected via gatekeeper to the Symmetrix, or using a Symmetrix Management Console client.

Step 1

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Action Create Symmetrix devices using either Symmetrix Management Console or the Solutions Enabler command line interface. Create a Symmetrix storage group by executing the following command: symaccess –sid –name –type storage create For example, the command, symaccess –sid 191 –name VPLEX1_Storage_Group –type storage create creates the storage group, Storage_Group_Test.

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Create a Symmetrix port group. The command, symaccess –sid 191 -name VPLEX1_Port_Group -type port create creates the port group, Port_Group_Test.

4

Create a Symmetrix initiator group where the VPLEX back-end ports’ WWNs are the “host” initiators to the Symmetrix initiator group. The creation of the initiator group, Initiator_Group_Test, can be achieved by running the command, symaccess –sid 191 –name VPLEX1_Initiator_Group –type init create

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Create the Symmetrix masking view to group the storage, port, and initiator groups: symaccess –sid 191 create view –name VPLEX1_View –storgrp VPLEX1_Storage_Group –portgrp VPLEX1_Port_Group –initgrp VPLEX1_Initiator_Group

Set up VPLEX Metro VPLEX connectivity To ensure the highest level of connectivity and availability to the Oracle VM virtualization platform even during abnormal operations for connecting Oracle VM Servers to EMC VPLEX, each Oracle VM Server in the Oracle VM Infrastructure environment should have at least two physical HBAs, and each HBA should be connected to at least two front-end ports on different directors on EMC VPLEX. This configuration ensures continued use of all HBAs on the Oracle VM Server even if one of the front-end ports of the EMC VPLEX goes offline for either planned maintenance events or unplanned disruptions. When a single VPLEX Engine configuration is connected to an Oracle VM Infrastructure environment, each HBA should be connected to the front-end ports provided on both the A and B directors within the VPLEX Engine. Connectivity to the VPLEX front-end ports should consist of first connecting unique hosts to port 0 of each I/O module emulating the front-end directors before connecting additional hosts to the


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remaining ports on the I/O module. If multiple VPLEX Engines are available, the HBAs from the Oracle VM Servers should be connected to different engines. The connectivity from the VPLEX Engines to the storage arrays should follow the best practices recommendation for the array. A detailed discussion of the best practices for connecting the back-end storage is beyond the scope of this paper. Interested readers should consult the EMC VPLEX Architecture and Deployment: Enabling the Journey to the Private Cloud TechBook.

VPLEX Metro administration Administration of VPLEX Metro can be done primarily through the Management Console, although the same functionality exists with VPlexcli. On authenticating to the secure web-based GUI, the user is presented with a set of on-screen configuration options, listed in the order of completion. For more information about each step in the workflow, refer to the EMC VPLEX Management Console online help. The following table summarizes the steps to be taken, from the discovery of the arrays up to the storage being visible to the host.

Step

Action

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Discover available storage VPLEX Metro automatically discovers storage arrays that are connected to the backend ports. All arrays connected to each director in the cluster are listed in the Storage Arrays view.

2

Claim storage volumes Storage volumes must be claimed before they can be used in the cluster (with the exception of the metadata volume, which is created from an unclaimed storage volume). Only after a storage volume is claimed, can it be used to create extents, devices, and then virtual volumes.

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Create extents Create extents for the selected storage volumes and specify the capacity.

4

Create devices from extents A simple device is created from one extent and uses storage in one cluster only.

5

Create a virtual volume Create a virtual volume using the device created in the previous step.

6

Register initiators When initiators (hosts accessing the storage) are connected directly or through a Fibre Channel fabric, VPLEX Metro automatically discovers them and populates the Initiators view. Once discovered, you must register the initiators with VPLEX Metro before they can be added to a storage view and access storage. Registering an initiator gives a meaningful name to the port’s WWN, which is typically the server’s DNS name, to allow you to easily identify the host.

7

Create a storage view For storage to be visible to a host, first create a storage view and then add VPLEX Metro front-end ports and virtual volumes to the view. Virtual volumes are not visible to the hosts until they are in a storage view with associated ports and initiators.

Figure 8 shows the GUI interface for logical layout and provisioning storage from EMC VPLEX.


16

Figure 8. EMC VPLEX GUI management interface The browser-based management interface, as seen in Figure 8, schematically shows the various components involved in the process. Storage from EMC VPLEX is exposed using a logical construct called ―Storage View‖ that is a union of the objects, ―Registered initiators,‖, ―VPLEX ports,‖ and ―Virtual Volume‖. The ―Registered initiators‖ object lists the WWPN of the initiators that need access to the storage. In the case of an Oracle VM Server environment, the ―Registered initiators‖ entity contains the WWPN of the HBAs in the Oracle VM Servers connected to the EMC VPLEX. The object ―VPLEX ports‖ contains the front-end ports of the VPLEX array through which the ―Registered initiators‖ access the virtual volumes. The ―Virtual Volume‖ object is a collection of volumes that are constructed from the storage volumes that are provided to the EMC VPLEX from the back-end storage arrays. It can be seen from the inset in the bottom left corner of Figure 8 that a virtual volume is constructed from a ―Device‖ that in turn can be a combination of different devices built on top of an abstract entity called an ―Extent‖. The figure also shows that an ―Extent‖ is created from the ―Storage Volume‖ exposed to the EMC VPLEX. However, in order to leverage array-based replication technologies, we map each storage device from VMAX in its entire (one-to-one mapping) pass-through configuration (device capacity = extent capacity = storage volume capacity) to VPLEX and has a RAID 0 (single extent only) VPLEX device geometry. By doing so, the underlying storage devices are left untouched by VPLEX and the back-end array LUN replication technology, such as TimeFinder/Clone and TimeFinder/Snap, continues to function normally. Also shown in Figure 8 in the bottom right corner inset are the seven steps that are required to provision storage from EMC VPLEX. The wizard supports a centralized mechanism for provisioning storage to different cluster members in case of EMC VPLEX Metro. The first step in the process of provisioning storage from EMC VPLEX is the discovery of the storage arrays connected to it. This step needs to be rarely executed since the EMC VPLEX proactively monitors for changes to the storage environment. The second step in the process is the ―claiming‖ of storage that has been exposed to EMC VPLEX. The process of claiming the storage creates the object’s ―Storage Volume‖ that was shown in Figure 8. The Create Storage View wizard enables you to create a storage view and add initiators, ports, and virtual volumes to Oracle VM Server for x86 Live Migration with EMC VPLEX and Symmetrix VMAX Applied Technology

17

the view. Once all the components are added to the view, it automatically becomes active. When a storage view is active, hosts can see the storage and begin I/O to the virtual volumes. After creating a storage view, you can only add or remove virtual volumes through the GUI. To add or remove ports and initiators, use the CLI. For comprehensive information about VPLEX Metro commands, refer to the EMC VPLEX CLI Guide.

Set up Oracle VM Set up Oracle VM Server Preparations If Oracle VM Server is planned to be installed on the local disk (that is, doesn’t boot from SAN storage), it is recommended to disconnect the HBA ports from the storage prior to installation. This will eliminate the discovery and prompt to partition each of the SAN storage SCSI devices. Once the installation is completed, connectivity should be restored and the system rebooted. If Oracle VM Server is planned to be booted from the SAN, it is recommended to mask (make visible) the boot device for ease of installation and later present the rest of the devices. The tests described in the paper installed Oracle VM on the local drive. Set up multipath for Oracle VM Servers As part of the best practice for the connectivity of Oracle VM Servers to VPLEX, each Oracle VM Server should have two HBA ports with each port connected to a separate FC switch for increased availability. In such a configuration, the host must use a multipathing solution to handle multiple paths to the same storage device for the purpose of providing high availability, load balancing, and live migration. You can either install EMC PowerPath for Oracle VM Server as the multipathing solution, or use the Linux native multipath solution, device mapper, to configure Oracle VM Servers. For Oracle VM Live Migration in an EMC VPLEX Metro configuration, as described in this paper, we installed EMC PowerPath 5.3.1 for Oracle VM Server version 2.2.1 on both physical servers. Alternatively, to manually configure multipath devices on Oracle VM Server using the Linux device mapper solution, please refer to ―Oracle VM Server Configuration - multipathed SAN storage‖ on the Oracle Wiki. PowerPath installation and configuration Install PowerPath rpm on each host [root@ OVM Server 1: licoe022 ]rpm -i EMCpower.LINUX-5.3.1.00.03002.ovs221.i386.rpm A reboot may be required the first time after PowerPath is installed for the host to register the /dev/emcpower pseudo devices. Install a PowerPath license on each host [root@ OVM Server 1: licoe022 ]emcpreg –add Configure PowerPath on each host [root@ OVM Server 1: licoe022 ] powermt config [root@ OVM Server 1: licoe022 ] powermt display … Pseudo name=emcpowerk Invista ID=FNM00100600231 Logical device ID=6000144000000010A002636D3C679C6A state=alive; policy=ADaptive; priority=0; queued-IOs=0 ============================================================================== ---------------- Host --------------- Stor -- I/O Path - -- Stats --### HW Path I/O Paths Interf. Mode State Q-IOs Errors ============================================================================== 1 lpfc sdaq 08 active alive 0 0 2 lpfc sdbu 00 active alive 0 0 2 lpfc sdcy 08 active alive 0 0 1 lpfc sdm 00 active alive 0 0


18

Note in the output that the device has four paths and displays the default optimization mode for VPLEX devices – ADaptive. However, the advanced cache coherency and management system used by EMC VPLEX is not fully leveraged when the adaptive policy is used. EMC, therefore, recommends changing the PowerPath path management policy for all VPLEX devices from ADaptive to StreamIO (si). In the future, PowerPath algorithms would automatically assign the appropriate policy for EMC VPLEX devices that it detects. The path management policy for VPLEX devices can be changed to StreamIO using the powermt command: powermt set policy=si class=invista host= The above command uses the class definition for VPLEX devices (Invista ®) to change the policy. The change to the path management policy should be performed on a device-by-device basis. For more information on how to perform this, and on the powermt commands and output, consult the appropriate PowerPath Installation and Administration Guide available on Powerlink®. PowerPath pseudo device names or native considerations On a Linux platform, PowerPath allows the use of either pseudo device naming (such as /dev/emcpowerz, or /dev/emcpoweraa1), or the use of native device naming (such as /dev/sda, or /dev/sddx1). In both cases PowerPath will make use of all available paths for load balancing and path failover. After server reboots, the order in which SCSI devices are discovered by the host may change (if HBA persistent binding is not used, or devices are added or removed). Therefore if native names are used and not monitored carefully for changes, filesystem mountpoints or symbolic links may be pointing to incorrect devices. PowerPath pseudo device names, however, are persistent across server reboots and therefore it is recommended to use the pseudo device name rather than the SCSI native device name. Another advantage of using pseudo device names is that it is relatively easy to match the PowerPath pseudo device names for shared devices between Oracle VM cluster server nodes. Having the device name match between the nodes reduces management complexity. As a note, matching device names between Oracle VM cluster server nodes is required for block devices attached to a VM guest that are subject to living migration between Oracle VM Servers. Match PowerPath pseudo device names across Oracle VM Server nodes To match the PowerPath pseudo device names across Oracle VM Server nodes, EMC recommends to use the PowerPath utility ―emcpadm‖. The utility allows the renaming of pseudo devices one at a time. Configure shared Oracle Cluster File System for VM repositories VPLEX Metro devices are presented to Oracle VM source and target servers, and these devices presented from VPLEX in a clustering configuration are mirrored as shared virtual devices among the Oracle VM Servers, and configured as emcpower devices by EMC PowerPath on Oracle VM Servers. For live migration of virtual machines to other Oracle VM Servers, you need to create a shared virtual disk to be used for the live migration. We chose to set up shared virtual disks on VPLEX Metro devices among the Oracle VM Servers using the OCFS2 with SAN configuration. Create partitions for shared virtual devices for VM repositories To create the partitions on a PowerPath device, type the fdisk command as the following example: fdisk /dev/emcpowerk EMC strongly recommends to align Linux partitions to a 64 KB Symmetrix track size boundary. To do this, simply start fdisk as shown above, and once the partitions are created, type ―x‖ to enter Expert mode. Type ―p‖ to show (print) the current partition table, including the offset in block units. Type ―b‖ to change any partition offset. For example, move partition 1 from its default offset of 32 blocks to 128. Since each block is 512 bytes, then 128 x 512 bytes = 64 KB offset. If more than one partition is created on the LUN, verify


19

that the rest of the partitions are aligned, or follow a similar step to change their offset to a number that is 128 blocks (64 KB) aligned. Create a shared virtual disk using OCFS2 on SAN The following table summarizes the steps to be taken to configure shared Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS2) for VM repositories.

Step

Action

1

Create an OCFS2 configuration file as /etc/ocfs2/cluster.conf on all server pool nodes.

2

Unmount the local OCFS2 volume (umount /OVS) if there is one.

3

Review the status of the OCFS2 cluster service, and stop the service “o2cb” (service o2cb stop) if it is already running: service o2cb status

4 5 6

Load the OCFS2 module: . Set the OCFS2 service to be online: service o2cb online. Configure the service O2CB. The network idle timeout value had to be set to 60000 to allow the network timeout during xend network reconfiguration at boot time: service o2cb configure …… Specify heartbeat dead threshold (>=7) [70]: 100 Specify network idle timeout in ms (>=5000) [30000]:60000 (required to overcome network timeout during xend startup which performs bridge configuration) Specify network keepalive delay in ms (>=1000) [1000]: Specify network reconnect delay in ms (>=2000) [2000]:

7

Perform steps 1-4 on the other nodes in the pool.

8

Review the partitions by checking /proc/partitions:

9

Format the shared disk volume from either one of the servers in the cluster. For example: mkfs.ocfs2 -b 4k -C 64k -L ovs /dev/emcpowerb1

10

Change /etc/fstab to have the shared volume mounted at boot. For example: /dev/emcpowerb1 /OVS/running_pool/ovm02 ocfs2 defaults 1 0

11

Mount all the OCFS2 volumes: mount –a –t ocfs2

.

The following is a sample cluster.conf file for a two-node server pool: node: ip_port = 7777 ip_address = 10.243.159.22 number = 0 name = licoe022 cluster = ocfs2 node: ip_port = 7777


20

ip_address = 10.243.159.23 number = 2 name = licoe023 cluster = ocfs2 cluster: node_count = 2 name = ocfs2 NOTE: Execute /usr/bin/system-config-securitylevel to disable the firewall; otherwise the mount of OCFS2 volumes will fail.

Set up an Oracle VM guest Oracle VM guests are best created using preconfigured templates. Oracle provides VM Templates, including Enterprise Manager Grid Control, Oracle VM Manager, Oracle Database, and Oracle Real Application Clusters at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/vm/templates101937.html?ssSourceSiteId=ocomen. In that case you can use the Oracle VM Manager to facilitate this step and therefore should first configure the Oracle VM Manager using its template, or as described in the manual operation steps below. Alternatively, the following steps can be taken to create the VM guest from scratch: During the installation of the operating system for a paravirtualized machine, the location of the install media cannot be changed. As a result, installing directly from multiple CD ISO files is not possible (the install can be made directly from a single ISO file such as the DVD ISO of OEL53x64). In addition, we cannot create guests using CDROM or from the hard drive; however we can create an installation tree on the host operating system (Oracle VM Server), and mount it from the Oracle VM serving as an NFS share. We use the virt-install command-line interactive tool to create the guest on the OVM Server. The following are the steps for setting up a VM guest:

Step

Action

1

Mount each Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 ISO file and copy the contents of /media/iso for each ISO file to a target directory using the –var option. Make certain the services related to NFS are started. NFS mount Oracle Enterprise Linux ISO files for guest installation by exporting the mount point to make it available to the OVM Server (domU), for example, exportfs *:/OEL52x64. Create the directory that will contain the virtual machine files, such as /OVS/running_pool/ovm02. Create the VM guest using the virt-install command interactively, and supply the path of virtual disk, hostname, and IP address for the virtual machine guest to be installed, accordingly.

2

3 4

Configure shared virtual disks for an OEL guest Prepare shared block devices as virtual disks VPLEX Metro devices presented from VPLEX in a clustering configuration are shared among the Oracle VM Servers and configured as emcpower pseudo devices by EMC PowerPath. We can attach these shared emcpower devices to a running Oracle VM guest host as block devices using the ―xm block-attach‖ command:


21

To make the device attached to the VM permanent, edit the Oracle VM guest configure file, vm.cfg, and add the specified physical devices to it as the following, so that they would be permanent to the guest host.

Partition OEL guest virtual disks Create disk partitions on the shared virtual device (for example, /dev/sdc to /dev/sdn) from as described in the “ Create partitions for shared virtual devices for VM repositories‖ section, and align the partitions on a 64 KB boundary (128 blocks) with expert mode in partition. Configure OEL for Oracle Database software installation and configuration The following table summarizes the steps to be taken to configure an OEL guest for an Oracle ASM database, according to Oracle 11g Database Installation Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1) for Linux. Please refer to the installation guide for further details.

Step

Action

1

Create Oracle user groups and accounts for installing and maintaining Oracle 11g on OVM. Configure the kernel parameters and edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file. Set the shell limits for the oracle user in the /etc/security/limits.conf file. Modify the /etc/pam.d/login file and the /etc/profile file accordingly. Install Oracle 11g R1 software. Apply a patch to upgrade Oracle 11g R1. Configure Oracle Cluster Synchronization Services (CSS) for ASM. Create an ASM instance. Create an Oracle database with size and init parameters to meet the desired database workload and performance requirements.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Set up Oracle VM Manager Oracle VM Manager is a server-based interface that enables you to create, clone, deploy, and run virtual machines. It is also possible to register and manage existing virtual machines to implement a working environment. The process of installing and configuring Oracle VM Manager is quite straightforward; refer to the Oracle VM Manager Installation Guide for details. Configure Oracle VM server pools As mentioned, you can use Oracle VM Manager to create and manage virtual machines. To create and manage a virtual machine using Oracle VM Manager, you must first set up a server pool containing a server pool master, utility server, and virtual machine server. An Oracle VM server pool is a logical, autonomous region that contains one or more physical Oracle VM Servers. Server pools are essential for creating and managing new VMs. The following table summarizes the steps to configure Oracle VM server pools that can perform VM guest domain live migration through Oracle VM Manager. For more detailed information for configuring Oracle VM Manager and the server pool, please refer to the Oracle VM Manager User’s Guide.

Step

Action

1

Create a server pool with Oracle VM Server information for the server pool master and server pool name.


22

2

Import a virtual machine image to Oracle VM Manager.

3

Add a server to a server pool for live migration.

The followings are a list of prerequisites for configuring Oracle VM server pools: Prerequisites for creating a server pool Before creating a server pool, ensure that the following is in place: An Oracle VM Server that will deploy as the server pool master, utility server, or virtual machine server A storage repository that can be used for live migration of virtual machines and for local storage on the Oracle VM Servers IP address or hostnames of the Oracle VM Servers Passwords to access the Oracle VM agents installed on the Oracle VM Servers Prerequisites for importing a virtual machine image to Oracle VM Manager Before beginning the import, copy all virtual machine images to the /OVS/running_pool/VM_Name/ directory, and rename the virtual machine configuration file to vm.cfg. Modify the /OVS/running_pool/VM_name /vm.cfg file as the following to indicate the correct location of the image file: disk = [’file:/OVS/running_pool/VM_name/system.img,xvda,w’,]

Access a virtual machine console Oracle VM Manager requires a VNC browser plug-in to enable remote access to the virtual machine (guest) consoles. Linux users who access virtual machines using Mozilla Firefox must download and install the ovm-console package on the client side before running Oracle VM Manager. Download it at http://oss.oracle.com/oraclevm/manager/RPMS. Once server pool configuration is completed, you can use Oracle VM Manager to view and monitor server running status, performance level of the CPU, memory, and virtual disk storage information of an existing server. You can also manage VM Server restart, shutdown, or live migration through Oracle VM Manager.


23

Figure 9. Oracle VM Manager: Confirm Server and Virtual Machine Summary views

Oracle VM Live Migration in a VPLEX Metro setting Oracle VM Live Migration is a process to migrate a running virtual machine from one Oracle VM Server to another, while applications on the existing virtual machine continue to run. Live migration ensures high availability of virtual machines. This feature is important, and useful, when the existing Oracle VM Server may be out of commission, or on a planned shutdown for maintenance purposes. To perform live migration of VMs, both source and destination Oracle VM Servers must have the same hardware architecture, and the same make and model. Both source and destination hosts must have the same Oracle VM Server release installed, and must be within the same server pool. In order to use Oracle VM Live Migration in conjunction with VPLEX the VM images (and therefore OCFS2 filesystem) need to be created on VPLEX shared virtual disk. As described in the section ―Configure shared Oracle Cluster File System for VM repositories,‖ we created an OCFS2 virtual volume, /OVS/running_pool/ovm02, shared by the source (licoe022) and target (licoe023) OVM Servers in a cluster for live migration of the guest domain, ovm02. The disk image of the guest domain to be migrated is located on the shared /OVS repositories, accessible from both source and destination hosts. The following example demonstrates the capability of migrating running Oracle virtual machines between the VPLEX Metro cluster, and hence physical data centers. From the Oracle VM Server perspective the physical location of the data centers does not play a role in providing the capability to move live workloads between sites supported by EMC VPLEX Metro.

Perform Oracle VM Live Migration Start live migration In this example, ovm02 is the installed guest on the source host for migration. This OEL guest is running the Oracle 11gR1.0.7.0 ASM database instance with online transactions. xm list Name ID Mem VCPUs State Time(s) Domain-0 0 665 4 r----2702.7 Oracle VM Server for x86 Live Migration with EMC VPLEX and Symmetrix VMAX Applied Technology

24

OVManager ovm02

2 4

2048 2048

1 1

-b----b----

1411.2 22.0

Issue the following command on the source host licoe022 to perform live migration: xm migrate --live where

--live is migrating the domain without shutting down the domain.

The command line below will migrate the guest, ovm02, to the target host, licoe023: xm migrate –-live ovm02 licoe023

Verify the migration on the destination On the destination host, licoe023, check the active guest by: xm list Name ID Mem VCPUs State Time(s) Domain-0 0 665 4 r----- 152353.6 ovm02 1 2048 1 -b---1232.5 You could access the console to verify if the guest is working properly, for example: xm console ovm02 Enterprise Linux Enterprise Linux Server release 5.3 (Carthage) Kernel 2.6.18-128.el5xen on an i686 localhost login: Alternatively, you can also perform live migration using OVM Manager. Figure 10 shows a snapshot during the nondisruptive migration of a virtual machine from one site to another conducted through the Oracle VM Management Console. The figure highlights the lack of any impact to the virtual machine during the live migration process.

Figure 10. Oracle VM Live Migration view


25

Conclusion To meet the business challenges presented by today's on-demand 24x7 world, data must be highly available—in the right place, at the right time, and at the right cost to the enterprise. This solution demonstrates the new virtual storage capabilities of VPLEX Metro in a virtualized application environment incorporating Oracle VM Server for x86 and the Oracle Database application. EMC VPLEX’s advanced data caching and distributed cache coherency, together with Oracle VM, provide workload resiliency, automatic sharing, and balancing and failover of storage domains, and enable both local and remote data access with predictable service levels. An Oracle VM data center backed by the capabilities of EMC VPLEX provides improved performance, scalability, and flexibility. In addition, the capability of EMC VPLEX to provide nondisruptive, heterogeneous data movement, and volume management functionality within synchronous distances enables customers to offer nimble and cost-effective business operations spanning multiple physical locations.

References The following documents are available on EMC’s Powerlink website: Implementation and Planning Best Practices for EMC VPLEX Technical Notes VPLEX 4.0 CLI Guide VPLEX Management Console Help EMC VPLEX Architecture and Deployment: Enabling the Journey to the Private Cloud EMC Solutions Enabler Symmetrix Array Controls CLI Version 7.0 Product Guide EMC Symmetrix VMAX Series Product Guide PowerPath Installation and Administration Guide (platform-specific) The following Oracle VM and database documentation is available on Oracle.com: Oracle VM Server for x86 Flash demonstration http://www.oracle.com/pls/ebn/swf_viewer.load?p_shows_id=8910842&p_referred=0&p_width= 1000&p_height=675 Oracle VM Server Installation Guide http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15458_01/doc.22/e15442/toc.htm Oracle VM Manager Installation Guide http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15458_01/doc.22/e15439/toc.htm Oracle VM Server User's Guide http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15458_01/doc.22/e15444/toc.htm Oracle VM Manager User's Guide http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15458_01/doc.22/e15441/toc.htm Oracle Database Installation Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1) for Linux http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/install.111/b32002/toc.htm


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