Oracle VM 3.0 and Oracle OpenWorld

I recently attended Oracle OpenWorld and was able to get a look at Oracle VM 3.0. The product has definitely undergone a facelift from the administration standpoint. The ability to manage the virtual environments through the VM Manager and Cloud Control 12c have been improved. The underlying product has also been upgraded from the standpoint that it is using a newer version of the Linux kernel and a newer version of Xen. The underlying architecture has not changed, and in my opinion does not need to change.

Oracle VM 2.2.1 Memory Issue

According to Oracle documentation the dom0 memory settings do not need to be changed and are automatically set to 504 MB + 0.0205 * amount of physical memory (in MB). This would be great if it actually worked. I have installed two Oracle VM 2.2.1 systems one with 2 GB of RAM and one with 256 GB of RAM. Both systems were automatically configured by the Oracle VM installer with dom0 memory set to 254 MB. This was OK on the 2 GB system but caused extensive problems on the 256 GB system, which according to the documentation should have been set to 504 MB + 256 * 1024 * 0.0205 = 504 + 5374 or 5877 MB of RAM.

So, until a future release fixes this bug, when installing an Oracle VM 2.2.1 system always set the memory of dom0 by editing the boot line in /etc/grub/grub.conf and changing the value of dom0_memory to the proper setting.

FYI. The 256 GB system was using over 800 MB of RAM when performing live migrations on the Master/Utility Server.

Oracle VM Server for x86

This is the first entry that I am making on this blog. The timing is very specific. Tonight I just turned in the last bits of work on my latest book for Oracle Press "Oracle VM Implementation and Adminstration Guide". In the next few weeks I am going to use this forum to share some of the knowledge that I've acquired on the Oracle VM product as well as taking some requests of questions and comments and replying to them. I hope that you are enjoying Oracle VM, and I will keep you informed about the progress of the book through the publication and distribution process. Amazon.com says it will be available August 10th, but I hope it is before that.
Ed