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Oracle VM Server for SPARC

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by ScotXW (talk | contribs) at 14:19, 22 October 2013 (ScotXW moved page Logical Domains to Oracle VM Server for SPARC over redirect: the current name). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Logical Domains / Oracle VM Server for SPARC
Original author(s)Sun Microsystems
Developer(s)Oracle Corporation
Stable release
3.1[1] / August 20, 2013
PlatformSPARC V9 (T-Series)
TypeHypervisor
LicenseProprietary
Websitewww.oracle.com

Logical Domains (LDoms or LDOM) is the server virtualization and partitioning technology from Sun Microsystems released in April 2007 for a range of UNIX server computers based on SPARC V9 architecture. Since Oracle Corporation completed the acquisition of Sun in January 2010,[2] the product has been re-branded as Oracle VM Server for SPARC from version 2.0 onwards.

Each domain is a full virtual machine with a reconfigurable subset of hardware resources. Domains can be securely live migrated between servers while running. Operating systems running inside Logical Domains can be started, stopped, and rebooted independently. A running domain can be dynamically reconfigured to add or remove CPUs, RAM, or I/O devices without requiring a reboot.

Supported hardware

The SPARC Hypervisor runs in the Hyper-Privileged execution mode, which was introduced in the sun4v architecture. The sun4v processors released as of March 2013 are the UltraSPARC T1, the T2, T2 Plus, the SPARC T3[3] , T4,[4] and T5; all are used in T-series servers. Systems based on UltraSPARC T1 support only Logical Domains versions 1.0-1.3. The newer types of T-series servers support both older Logical Domains and newer Oracle VM Server for SPARC product version 2.0 and later.

These include the UltraSPARC T1-based:

  • Sun / Fujitsu SPARC Enterprise T1000 and T2000 servers
  • Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers
  • Netra T2000 Server
  • Netra CP3060 Blade
  • Sun Blade T6300 Server Module

UltraSPARC T2-based:

  • Sun / Fujitsu SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers
  • Sun Blade T6320 Server Module
  • Netra CP3260 Blade
  • Netra T5220 Rackmount Server

UltraSPARC T2 Plus systems:

  • Sun / Fujitsu SPARC Enterprise T5140 and T5240 servers (2 sockets)
  • Sun Blade T6340 Server Module (2 sockets)
  • Sun / Fujitsu SPARC Enterprise T5440 (4 sockets)

SPARC T3 systems:[5]

  • Sun / Fujitsu SPARC T3-1 servers (1 socket)
  • Sun SPARC T3-1B Server Module (1 socket)
  • Sun / Fujitsu SPARC T3-2 servers (2 sockets)
  • Sun / Fujitsu SPARC T3-4 servers (4 sockets)

SPARC T4 systems[6]

  • SPARC T4-1 Server (1 socket)
  • SPARC T4-1B Server Module (blade)
  • SPARC T4-2 Server (2 sockets)
  • SPARC T4-4 Server (4 sockets)

SPARC T5 systems[7]

  • SPARC T5-1B Server Module (blade)
  • SPARC T5-2 Server (2 sockets)
  • SPARC T5-4 Server (4 sockets)
  • SPARC T5-8 Server (8 sockets)

Technically, the virtualization product consists of two interdependent components: the combination of the hypervisor in the T-series server firmware and the Logical Domains Manager software installed on Solaris operating system running within the control domain (see Logical Domain roles). This dictates the strict requirements for the versions of the software and firmware: each particular version of Logical Domains (Oracle VM Server for SPARC) software requires a certain minimum version of the hypervisor to be installed into the T-series server firmware.

Logical Domains exploits the "Chip Multi Threading" (CMT) nature of the listed CoolThreads processors. A single chip contains up to 16 CPU cores, and each core has either four hardware threads (for the UltraSPARC T1) or eight hardware threads (for the UltraSPARC T2/T2+, and SPARC T3/T4) that act as virtual CPUs. All CPU cores execute instructions concurrently, and each core switches between threads—typically when a thread stalls on a cache miss or goes idle—within a single clock cycle. This lets the processor gain throughput that is lost during cache misses in conventional CPU designs.

Each processor can support as many as one domain per hardware thread — that's up to 32 domains for the UltraSPARC T1, 64 domains for the UltraSPARC T2 and SPARC T4, and 128 domains for UltraSPARC T3 in case of a single-processor server. Servers with 2-4 UltraSPARC T2+ or 2-8 SPARC T3-T5 CPUs support as many logical domains as the number of processors multiplied by the number of threads of each CPU.[8] Alternatively, and typically, a given domain can be assigned multiple CPU threads for additional capacity within a single OS instance. CPU threads, RAM, and virtual I/O devices can be added to or removed from a domain by administrator issuing command in the control domain. This change takes effect immediately without the need to reboot the affected domain, which can immediately make use of added CPU threads or continue operating with reduced CPU threads.

In case of hypervisor hosts connected to a shared storage (SAN or NAS), running guest domains can be securely live migrated between servers without outage (starting with Oracle VM Server for SPARC version 2.1). The process involves high-speed encryption of VM memory contents before they are transmitted between servers, by cryptographic accelerators available on all processors with sun4v architecture.

Logical Domain roles

All logical domains are the same except for the roles that you specify for them. There are multiple roles that logical domains can perform such as:

  • Control domain
  • Service domain
  • I/O domain
  • Root domain
  • Guest domain

The Control domain, as its name implies, controls the logical domain environment. It is used to configure machine resources and guest domains, and provides services necessary for domain operation, such as virtual console service. The control domain also normally acts as a service domain.

Service domains present virtual services, such as virtual disk drives and network switches, to other domains. In most cases, guest domains perform I/O via bridged access through services domains, which are usually I/O domains and directly connected to the physical devices. Service domains can provide virtual LANs and SANs as well as bridge through to physical devices. Disk images can reside on complete local physical disks, shared SAN block devices, their slices, or even on files contained on a local UFS or ZFS file system, or on a shared NFS export.

I/O domains have direct ownership of a PCI bus and direct access to physical I/O devices, such as a network card in a PCI controller. It shares the devices to other domains in the form of virtual devices. You can have a maximum of two I/O domains for the UltraSPARC T1 (Niagara) servers, one of which also must be the control domain. UltraSPARC T2 Plus, SPARC T3, and SPARC T4 servers can have as many as 4 I/O domains. Multiple I/O domains can be configured to provide resiliency against failures.

Root domains have direct ownership of PCIe "root complex" and all associated PCIe slots. This can be used to grant access to physical I/O devices. A root domain is also an I/O domain.

Guest domains run an operating system instance without performing any of the above roles, but leverage the services provided by the above in order to run applications.

Control and service functions can be combined within domains, however it is recommended that user applications not run within control or service domains in order to protect domain stability and performance.

Supported guest operating systems

The only operating system supported by the vendor for running within logical domains is Solaris version 10 starting from release 11/06 and later, and Solaris 11 starting from GA release (11/11) and later.

Also there are operating systems that are not officially supported, but can still be run within logical domains:

See also

References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ "Oracle + Sun: Transforming the IT Industry". Oracle Corp. Retrieved 2010-01-27.
  3. ^ "Oracle Unveils SPARC T3 Processor and SPARC T3 Systems". Retrieved 2010-09-20. Using the newly announced Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.0, the SPARC T3 systems offer advanced virtualization and have multiple virtual machines ranging from one per core to 128 virtual machines on a single server, delivering greater efficiencies and lower costs through consolidation.
  4. ^ "Oracle Launches Next Generation SPARC T4 Servers". Retrieved 2011-09-26. Oracle's SPARC T4 Servers Offer Built-In Virtualization, Security and Dynamic Threads.
  5. ^ "Oracle Unveils SPARC T3 Processor and SPARC T3 Systems". Retrieved 2010-09-20. Sun SPARC Enterprise T-Series RackMount Systems New! SPARC T3-1 Server New! SPARC T3-2 Server New! SPARC T3-4 Server {{cite web}}: line feed character in |quote= at position 48 (help)
  6. ^ "Oracle Launches Next Generation SPARC T4 Servers". Retrieved 2011-09-26. Oracle's SPARC T4 Servers Offer Built-In Virtualization, Security and Dynamic Threads.
  7. ^ "Oracle Unveils SPARC Servers with the World's Fastest Microprocessor". Retrieved 2013-03-27. Oracle's new SPARC T5 and M5-32 servers include zero-overhead virtualization via Oracle VM Server for SPARC.
  8. ^ "Oracle Unveils SPARC T3 Processor and SPARC T3 Systems". Retrieved 2010-09-20. Oracle VM Server for SPARC (previously called Logical Domains) is a server virtualization solution that allows up to 128 virtual servers on one system .
  9. ^ "Support for Logical Domains on Sun's CoolThreads servers". OpenBSD Journal. Retrieved 2009-03-19.
  10. ^ "Wind River To Support Sun's Breakthrough UltraSPARC T1 Multithreaded Next-Generation Processor" (Press release). Wind River Systems, Inc. November 1, 2006. Retrieved 2007-05-02.
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