Supporting Software - Expert Consolidation in Oracle Database 12c - page 126

The definition in the management interface is propagated to all VM Servers, visible in the output of ifconfig:
[root@oraclevmserver1 ~]# ifconfig | grep ^[0-9a-z] -A1
bond0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 52:54:00:AC:AA:94
inet addr:192.168.1.21 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
--
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 52:54:00:AC:AA:94
UP BROADCAST RUNNING SLAVE MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
--
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 52:54:00:69:E3:E7
inet addr:192.168.100.21 Bcast:192.168.100.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
--
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
In the output, bond0 is the management network and eth1 is the storage network. Most production systems
would use bonded devices here. The difference is a simple mouse click when creating the interface for which you
can chose to use a single port or an aggregated interface. With the networks in place, you can begin to add storage to
the configuration.
Begin by switching to the “Storage” tab and expand the list of “SAN Servers” in the left navigation pane. Then
click the “Discover SAN Server” button. Remember, the example assumes a simple setup using iSCSI. Although the
documentation makes you believe that iSCSI performs better than NFS, this is too much of a generalization. You
should carefully evaluate all types of network storage for performance, resilience, and ease of administration before
deploying such a scenario into production. With the advent of 10GBit/s Ethernet, the situation somewhat eases, but
iSCSI still remains a protocol with significant overhead. Fibre Channel, conversely, is a well-established alternative
and has proven its worth in thousands of installations.
Back to the “SAN discovery wizard,” you need to follow a few steps to make use of the iSCSI targets provided by
your device. On the first page of the wizard, you need to supply a name and description for the new iSCSI target, and
the target type needs changed to iSCSI. On the second page in the wizard, provide the name of the iSCSI host. If you
are using a dedicated IP storage network, ensure that the iSCSI targets are exported using it, not via the management
interface. In case you are using firewalls on the iSCSI host, ensure that port 3260 is open to allow storage discovery.
In the next step, you define administration servers for the group before you govern access to the iSCSI target.
In the example, oraclevmserver1 and oraclevmserver2 both have access to the shared storage. To do so, edit the default
access group and add the iSCSI initiators to the list of servers allowed to start iSCSI sessions. Once the “SAN Server”
configuration is finished, OVM Server discovers targets to which it has access. The process of target discovery may
last a minute or longer. After this, a new entry with the name chosen during the storage discovery appears in the tree
structure underneath “SAN Servers.” By default, it lists all the iSCSI targets visible. If your device does not appear in
the list, ensure that either the authentication credentials are correct and/or the ACL on the iSCSI device allows you to
perform the discovery.
Next, add the unassigned Oracle VM Servers to a server pool. If you have not yet discovered the servers, you can
do so in the “Servers and VMs” tab. Clicking the “Discover Server” icon opens a wizard that lets you discover servers
based on IP address. The newly discovered servers are initially placed into said “unassigned servers” pool before they
can be used.
Back in the tab “Servers and VMs,” click on the “Create Server Pool” button to begin this process. The wizard is
self-explanatory, except for two options. Be sure to tick the “clustered storage pool” check box, and then use “Physical
Disk”. Click on the magnifying glass to pick a LUN. You discovered storage in the previous steps using the “Storage” tab
in the OVM Manager.
In the following step, add all the relevant Oracle VM Servers to the pool. You are nearly there! There is only one
more step required in preparation of the virtual machine creation, and that is the repository creation. Change to the
“Repositories” tab, and click the green plus sign to create one. The repository is used for your VMs, templates, and ISO
files, plus any other auxiliary files needed for running virtual machines. Select a previously detected storage unit, at
least 10GB (preferably more), and create the repository. Notice that the repository is shared across virtual machines