Oracle VM – experimentation

/!\ Article in progress, not yet finish /!\

I was looking  to test Oracle Linux since Open World, mostly because I’m curious about OVM and the nice integration with Enterprise manager 12c as a global system to manage hardware, operating system, hypervisor, virtual machine on demand and middle-ware + software.

Here is the first step of this test with the installation of the Oracle Linux system.

Prerequisites

As you may know, I’m an OpenSuse convinced user and my RedHat experience was a decade ago… by the way, it’s never late to be back on market and take a look to this.

The first step of this test was to bring a machine back to life and the configuration I finally use is a Core 2 Duo machine with 6Gb of memory on an Asus P5N E SLI with an ATA 250Gb drive. This machine, with an approximative identical configuration ran well to host my Xen hypervisor by the past and should be appropriate for this test.

Oracle VM 3.0.3 Installation

For this installation, at least, 2 machines are required:

  • The first one will be part of the Server pool, it hosts the VM Guests
  • The second one is the Oracle VM Manager used to control VM

The first one must be a physical machine and as OVM 3 only supports 64b hardware it limits your hardware choice. (I mean, it limits my hardware choice).

For the second one, I’ll try to install it on my KVM server as I do not have another 64b system available for this test.

Oracle VM Server 3.0.3

This firs step is to install the Oracle VM Server in the physical box. Eventually it can be installed on multiple box to create a pool of machines. It requires to get the following software:

  • Oracle VM Server 3.0.3 (V29655-01)

This CD starts the Xen bare metal hypervizer installation. In my configuration I was not able to install on a PATA drives, it seems that the driver was not complied for the xen kernel. Standard Sata drive on JMicron ran correctly. Then the Anaconda installer request for the network configuration and machine name and other classical install question. Note that even if I chosen French Latin, I only got a US keyboard make my password setting more complicated…

The end of the installation is quick and silent, 5 minutes later the new server is ready to be part of a pool and execute VM.

I set the network as fixed IP 10.0.2.1

Oracle VM Manager installation

The second  step to install the Oracle VM Manager is to get the source installation.

  • Oracle Linux 5 update 6 (V24479-01)
  • Oracle VM Manager 3.0.3 (V29653-01)

Once downloaded and un zipped, I used kvm Qemu to create a vm with Oracle Linux 5, created with 2Gb of memory and 24 VP and a 21GB disk drive on file. Both previous .iso are affected to two cdrom drives. Vm boot and installation started.

I created two partitions 20G on / and 4Gb on swap. Then I set Ethernet card as using a static IP 10.0.2.2.

After installing the Oracle Linux 5u6, it was not able to boot un server mode due to the bad reference to /dev/hda1 in the grub.conf file. It was possible to boot on using the second boot option server-base. Then being on the post installation process.

Then in a terminal, it is possible to edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and change the line

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-100.26.2.el5 ro root=/dev/hda1 rhgb quiet

By

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-100.26.2.el5 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet

Then reboot ; it starts. (see orabug 10055889)

At this step, the Oracle VM Manager ISO must be mount in /tmp. As I associated the iso to cdrom2, the command line is :

mount /dev/cdrom-sr1 /mnt

A directory /u01 must be created

mkdir /u01

Then the installation is started by executing, from /mnt as root user (be carefull su is not recognized as being log as root.

./createOracle.sh
[...]
./runInstaller.sh

I choose the “Demo” installation mode, based on a XE database instead of a SE or EE version. The XE (Express Edition) is the free version limited to 1BG of RAM, 11GB of data and 1 CPU.

Oracle VM Manager configuration

Then I boot the OVM Server machine (on 10.0.2.1)

Once done, I  log into the ovm console (on the OVM Manager – 10.0.2.2)

http://10.0.2.2:7001/ovm/console

Assign Oracle VM Server

To discover the OVM Server, on the hardware panel (left side), select Resources then right click and Discover Server. This will prompt you for setting an IP Range and the agent password. Then the OVM Server can be found in the non assigned server list.

Configure Network

To configure network to be able to be used for any usage (testing purpose), go to hardware panel, Resources, chose Network tab and edit the current network to check VM and Storage. Allow IP

To be assigned to VM, create a pool of MAC addresses : go to Tool top bar menu and choose Vnic Manager. Then, set the first MAC address to use and the number of desired MAC addresses for the future VM. Click on Generate.

Configure storage

To use a local disk drive on the Oracle VM Server, you need to have a second drive with no existing partition : the hard drive uses to install the system can’t be used. This is the choice I made to add a second drive for a simpler test. It is also possible and better to use NAS or SAN attachment otherwise HA, fail-over is a nonsense.

Create a Server Pool

Last step is to create a server pool. Go to Home panel, Server Pool, then add a server pool. Set a name/ip/keyboard mapping. As the vm will be installed on the local drive, it can’t be in clustered mode and the option need to be unchecked. So, no storage information is required. Click Next and add the OVM Server to the selected server list.

Create an iso repository

This step allow to create a repository where to store the .iso files and template files use to create the virtual machine. It can be a NFS repository but not a local drive or a distant drive. So for this configuration I choose to create another VM based on FreeNas / OpenFiler (see other article)

The NFS volume shared must be RW for all.

Then go to storage / file server to register a new file server. Enter IP of the server, then the system list the available shares. Only the one access RW for all are visible.

Then the file system must be refreshed. Click on refreshe on the share path name.

Go to Home, Repository, create a new one, associated with this share. Leave path empty. Present to server vmsrv

Sur le serveur 10.0.2.1, lancer les commandes suivante

iscsiadm -m discovery -t sendtargets -p 10.0.2.5

Next, restart the iscsi service

service iscsi restart

Le disque apparait alors dans les physical disk du server

 

Create a virtual Machine

 

 

Oracle Linux 6 installation

The Anaconda graphical installer is pretty easy, everything smells professional usage like the network configuration panel allowing a full configuration of all the network device type including VPN and the ability to access to mac address easily – rare setting.  Partitioner is going the same way, simple but complete enough for any kind of configuration.

Installation is proposing multiple predefined configuration for basic server, web server, for sure database server, desktop or development platform and an interesting profile to create virtual host.

The next choice is less clear as it is about package repository and allow to choose Load Balancing, High Availability. I would expect this to be some architectural choice for the previous predefined configuration but it look strange to present this as a package source. I choose Linux Desktop to start, the installation is silent.

Post install step starts with the update process configuration. It is interesting to see that Oracle Login/Pass and CSI is required to proceed update. Oracle Linux is free … but it is recommended to be a client ! Before being able to connect, you need to register to ULN (Unbreakable Linux Network) even if you already have an account on Oracle. Then, for this you need to have a valid CSI for Oracle Linux. So I choose to skip this step.

As a consequence my system will not be updated ; it means you can’t use Oracle Linux for anything else than a test, even for a personal usage.

The system request me to create a standard user but fails with a not understandable message and I was afraid to see my password in clear in the log generated …. oups !! This killed the installer and the last part of the configuration has not been done.

Solution : go to terminal and reset the password of the user (this one has been created), reboot. Then the post install step will restart, just skip the user creation and finish the configuration. It works.

 

Reference links

orabug 10055889

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