Types of logical domains

Purpose Name

No direct access to underlying hardware and does not provide virtual device or Guest
services to other ldoms. Uses virtual device.

has direct access to underlying hardware in the server. It can be used in cases like I/O
oracle DB which wants direct/raw access to the storage devices.

provides virtualized devices and services to guest domains. Servi

ce

Service domain that also runs the ldoms manager software to control the configuration Contr
of hypervisor. This ldom manager is responsible for mapping between physical and ol
virtual devices.

Virtual Services and Devices

Purpose Name Abbreviati
on

communication channel between logical domain and virtual logical VLDC

hypervisor domain channel

Acts as a virtual console for each logical domain Virtual console VCC
concentrator

provides network access for guest ldoms to the physical Virtual switch VSW
network ports service

provides virtual storage service for guest ldoms virtual disk service VDS

Each thread of a T series CPU acts as a virtual CPU virtual CPU VCPU
Each core of T series CPU will have a MAU for accelerated Mathematical MAU
RAS/DSA encryption arithmetic unit

Physical memory is mapped into virtual memory and Memory

assigned to ldoms

a port in guest ldom that connects to the VCC service in Virtual console VCONS
control domain

network port in guest ldom which is connected to the VSW Virtual network VNET
service in the control domain

physical storage device that is virtualized by VDS service Virtual disk service VSDEV
in control domain device

VDISK in guest domain is connected to the VDS service in Virtual disk VDISK
control domain/service domain

Installing the OVM software

To install the LDOM software simply unzip the software zip and run the install-ldm script with -
s option in case you don’t want to use the configuration assistant to configure the primary and
guest ldoms.

primary # unzip OVM_Server_SPARC_latest.zip

primary # ./install-ldm -s

Creating the default services

Create the essential services like vsw, vcc and vds required to serve the guest LDOMs.

primary# ldm add-vcc port-range=5000-5100 primary-vcc0 primary

primary# ldm add-vds primary-vds0 primary

primary# ldm add-vsw net-dev=nxge0 primary-vsw0 primary

primary# ldm list-services primary

VDS

NAME VOLUME OPTIONS DEVICE

primary-vds0

VCC

NAME PORT-RANGE

primary-vcc0 5000-5100

VSW

NAME MAC NET-DEV DEVICE MODE

primary-vsw0 02:04:4f:fb:9f:0d nxge0 switch@0 prog,promisc

Initial configuration of the control

domain
By default all the VCPUs, Memory and MAUs are assigned to the primary domain which is the
default domain created after installing the OVM for SPARC software. Primary or control
domain is used to configure all the guest ldoms and provide necessary virtual services to them
like vcc, vsw and vds. Logical domain manager is responsible to create, delete, modify and
control ldoms, thus make sure the ldmd service is running before configuring the primary and
guest domains. Use delayed reconfiguration in order to configure the primary ldom without
rebooting for previous changes to take effect.

primary# svcs -a | grep ldmd

online 14:23:34 svc:/ldoms/ldmd:default

primary# ldm set-mau 1 primary

primary# ldm set-vcpu 8 primary

primary# ldm start-reconf primary (delayed reconfiguration)

primary# ldm set-memory 4G primary

primary# ldm add-config new_config

primary# ldm list-config

factory-default

new_config [current]

Reboot the primary domain for configuration settings to take effect

primary# shutdown -y -g0 -i6

Enable networking between

primary and guest domains
By default communication between control domain and all the guest domains is disabled. To
enable it, virtual switch has to be configured as the network device instead of nxge0.

primary# ifconfig nxge0 down unplumb

primary# ifconfig vsw0 plumb

primary# ifconfig vsw0 192.168.1.2 netmask + broadcast + up

primary# mv /etc/hostname.nxge0 /etc/hostname.vsw0

Enable virtual network terminal
server daemon
The vntsd daemon is responsible to provide the virtual network terminal services to the guest
ldoms. If this service is not running enable it with svcadm command.

primary# svcadm enable vntsd

primary# svcs vntsd

STATE STIME FMRI

online Oct_12 svc:/ldoms/vntsd:default

Setting up the Guest Domain

We would assign 8 VCPUs, 2 GB of memory and 1 MAU to our first guest ldom. Also a virtual
network vnet1 will be created and associated with the virtual switch vsw0.

primary# ldm add-domain ldom01

primary# ldm add-vcpu 8 ldom01

primary# ldm add-memory 2G ldom01

primary-domain# ldm set-mau 1 ldom01

primary# ldm add-vnet vnet1 primary-vsw0 ldom01

Adding storage to the guest

domain
Here we first need to specify the physical device that needs to be exported by vdsdev to the
guest domain and then we actually add the virtual disk thus created to the guest domain. Now
use any one of the 3 methods mentioned below.
1. Adding physical disks

primary# ldm add-vdsdev /dev/dsk/c2t1d0s2 vol1@primary-vds0

primary# ldm add-vdisk vdisk1 vol1@primary-vds0 ldom01

2. Adding file

primary# mkfile 10g /ldoms/ldom01_boot

primary# ldm add-vdsdev /ldoms/ldom01_boot vol1@primary-vds0

primary# ldm add-vdisk vdisk1 vol1@primary-vds0 ldom01

3. Adding a volume

primary# zfs create -V 5gb pool/vol01

primary# ldm add-vdsdev /dev/zvol/dsk/pool/vol01 vol1@primary-vds0

primary# ldm add-vdisk vdisk1 vol1@primary-vds0 ldom01

Setting variables
Setup the boot environment variable for the guest ldom.

primary# ldm set-var auto-boot?=true ldom01

primary# ldm set-var boot-device=vdisk1 ldom01

Setting up the solaris ISO image

for installing guest ldom
Now we can also do a jumpstart installation of the guest domain. But one of the easiest and
most widely used method is add iso image as virtual disk to the guest ldom and install it from
it. Here you can access the vdisk sol10_iso in the ok prompt and boot from it.

primary# ldm add-vdsdev options=ro /data/sol_10.iso iso@primary-vds0

primary# ldm add-vdisk sol10_iso iso@primary-vds0 ldom01

Bind and start installing the ldom

primary# ldm bind ldom01

primary# ldm start ldom01

LDom ldom01 started

ok> devalias

ok> boot sol10_iso

Connect the guest domain

Now check the port which is bound with the guest domain and connect the virtual console of
the guest domain.

primary:~ # ldm list

NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME

primary active -n-cv SP 8 4G 0.3% 8h 46m

ldom01 active -n--- 5000 8 2G 48% 1h 52m

primary# telnet localhost 5000 Trying 127.0.0.1...

Connected to localhost.

Escape character is ’^]’.

Connecting to console "ldom01" in group "ldom01" .... Press ~? for control options ..

Flag definitions
Now you can see various flags in the “ldm list” command output. The falgs represent the
current state of the ldom.

column 3 column 2 column 1

d delayed reconfiguration n normal s starting or stopping

– placeholder t transition – placeholder

column 6 column 5 column 4

s source domain in migration v virtual I/O service domain c control domain

t target domain in migration – placeholder – placeholder
e error occurred in migration
– placeholder

Other useful Commands

View current version of Oracle VM server for SPARC software

primary# ldm -V

Long listing of domains

primary# ldm list -l

List the resource for all LDOMs and per LDOM

# ldm list -o cpu primary

# ldm list -o network,memory ldom01

List the boot variables

# ldm list-variable boot-device ldg1

boot-device=/virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/disk@0:a

List the bindings of all the LDOMs

# ldm list-bindings ldom

List all server resources, bound and unbound.

# ldm list-devices -a

# ldm list-devices mem