vxvm-snapshot-technology-cheatsheet

http://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/vxvm-snapshot-technology-cheatsheet

Ldom Basic

Prerequisite :

Solaris 10 11/06 OS with required patches 124921-02 and 125043-01 (with kernel update 118833-36) at a minimum

•124921-02 : which contains updates to the Logical Domains 1.0 drivers and utilities. LDoms networking will not function correctly without 124921-02.
•125043-01 :which contains updates to the qcn (console) drivers.

1. OVM for sparc or LDOMs uses Niagara processor with multi-threading and muti-core technology at the same time.
2. The most important thing of these processors is the support of hypervisor for virtualization.
3. Using the OracleVMServer we can create up to 128 virtual servers, called logical domains, on a single system.
4. This technology allows you to create multiple discrete systems, each with their own operating system, resources, and identity within a single system.
5. LDOM is used where each environment requires an independent kernel (remember, Solaris Containers use the same kernel structure).
6. In LDOM we can dynamically reconfigure the resources with reboot.

Note:## All the local zones have same kernel version as Global zone.
        ##  Symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) systems have multiple CPUs that can all process simultaneously.
   

Terms used in Ldom :

Hypervisor :  Creates multiple virtual systems by an additional software application in the firmware layer, interposed between the operating system and the hardware platform called the hypervisor. It abstracts the hardware and can expose or hide various resources, allowing for the creation of resource partitions that can operate as discrete systems, complete with virtual CPU, memory and I/O devices."

1. A firmware layer on the flash PROM of the motherboard, is a thin software layer with a stable interface, the sun4v platform, between the operating system and the hardware.
2. The hypervisor provides a set of support functions to the operating system, so that the OS does not need to know intimate details of how to perform functions with the hardware.This allows the operating system to simply call the hypervisor with calls to the sun4v platform. This is often described as a stable interface.
3. This layer is very thin and exists only to support the operating system for hardware-specific details.
4. Hypervisor is the engine that abstracts the hardware, it can choose to expose or hide various aspects of the hardware to the operating system.
5. Hypervisor is responsible for maintaining separation between domains, it also provides the capability to create channels, through which domains can communicate with each other.