Virtualization Management - Oracle Solaris 10 System Virtualization Essentials - page 321

Wizards greatly simplify Ops Center tasks, especially OS provisioning. These
wizards hide the implementation details of those different installation tools.
Provisioning quality is strengthened by the use of a software dependency engine
to avoid errors and omission of OS components.
Provisioning is also simplified by the use of a library of OS profiles and im-
ages. An image is a copy of an installable OS distribution. In addition to vendor-
supplied images (which are often distributed as ISO files on DVDs), you can create
your own images—for example, a Solaris Flash Archive (FLAR). Profiles specify
particular configurations of an OS, starting with an OS image. For instance, you
might define a web server profile using an image of a particular Solaris 10 update
and specifying a list of OS packages to be installed.
An OS profile library includes multiple profiles. In addition to using images that
include all of the OS packages, your library might include an image preconfigured
to be a database server. With that profile in your OS library, provisioning a new DB
server is as simple as identifying the target system and the profile, and letting Ops
Center do all of the work. Ops Center delivers the image and updates its repository
of system information—and a new system is soon waiting for SQL commands.
9.3.5.3 Provisioning Logical Domains
Ops Center has special features for SPARC CMT systems and Logical Domains.
Every CMT system has the ability to host Logical Domains. If a CMT system
will include guest domains, it must first have a special-purpose domain called the
control domain . You use the control domain to create and otherwise manage other
domains, including service domains and I/O domains. See Chapter 3, “Oracle VM
Server for SPARC,” for more information about SPARC CMT systems and Logical
Domains.
Yo u c a n u s e O p s C e n t e r t o i n s t a l l a c o n t r o l d o m a i n o n a C M T s y s t e m , a n a c t i o n
that also installs a VC on the control domain to create and manage other domains.
Ops Center also automatically uses the control domain as the service and I/O do-
mains. After the control domain has been installed, Ops Center can install guest
domains.
Although a primary goal of Ops Center is the simplification of one operation
being performed on many systems in a data center, it provides additional function-
ality. For example, a virtual pool is a set of domains configured to run on a set of
SPARC CMT systems. Using this feature, you can enable Ops Center to automati-
cally load-balance the domains across the systems.
Whenever a domain in the virtual pool boots, it will boot on the most lightly
loaded system in the pool. You can also configure a domain to automatically re-
start on a running system in the pool if the system it was running on suddenly
halts. Because all of the domains in one VP use shared storage, they can easily be
moved from one CMT system to another to balance the load on the computers.