You use Oracle VM Manager to create and configure storage repositories, and to present one or more storage repositories to Oracle VM Servers in a server pool. This chapter discusses the flow of the operations you perform after the discovery of your physical storage hardware, LUNs, file systems and so on, in order to make a storage repository available to the Oracle VM Servers in your server pool. Once the storage repository is accessible, you can start adding storage resources and building VMs with those resources.
Depending on the configuration of Oracle VM Servers in your environment, restrictions may apply to the creation of storage repositories:
When using server pools without clustering functionality, two storage options are available: file servers (NFS) and local physical disks in a local storage array. Remember that local storage imposes severe restrictions, as described in Section 4.6.4, “Using Local Storage”.
Local storage, or unused disks in your Oracle VM Servers, are discovered as LUNs in a local storage array. If you want to use a single-server setup with local storage, be sure to deactivate clustering in your server pool. This eliminates the need for a server pool file system, which cannot be on a local disk by definition.
Only a server pool with multiple servers, active clustering and attached storage (NFS, iSCSI, fibre channel) can offer high availability, load balancing and similar advanced functionality.
Oracle VM Manager allows you to perform a number of management operations on the storage repositories under its control. Table 4.2, “Storage Repository Management Operations” describes the possible operations at the level of a storage repository. To access these functions in Oracle VM Manager, open the Home view, select Server Pools and go to the Repositories tab.
Storage repositories are presented to individual servers, meaning that not all repositories are necessarily available for example when you deploy a VM on a specific Oracle VM Server. To see which servers have access to a storage repository, select the repository in the table and verify the access status on the right-hand side.
Table 4.2. Storage Repository Management Operations
Operation | Description |
---|---|
Create repository | |
Present repository |
See Section 4.8.2, “Presenting or Unpresenting a Storage Repository”. |
Edit repository |
|
Delete repository |
|
Refresh repository | Select a repository in the table and click Refresh. Oracle VM Manager re-checks the disk contents of the selected repository. Any detected changes will be reflected in the various content tabs (Assemblies, ISO files, ...) of the storage repository. |
Discover existing repository | If for any reason a storage repository exists on one of your storage providers, but is not visible in Oracle VM Manager – for example if the Oracle VM Manager host was reinstalled or the storage provider went down or moved to a different address – you can click Discover to detect pre-existing storage repository contents on the storage providers controlled by Oracle VM Manager. |