Tools That Make Your Work with Oracle VM Easier

After completing your Oracle VM and Oracle VM Manager installation (see my previous blog posts here), you are ready to start your friendship with Oracle VM technology. However, to make your life and experience even more enjoyable, I suggest you follow a few simple steps listed below.

Configure Public Oracle YUM and install additional tools:

cd /etc/yum.repos.d
wget https://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el5.repo
yum install man
yum install vnc-server
yum install firefox
yum install telnet

Added on 2012.05.20

yum install strace
yum install time

After some time playing with Oracle VM, you will realize that you’ll like to manage it via command prompt and scripts. Hopefully, Oracle will come with a command line interface (cli) soon. Meanwhile, you may want to install a set of tools from Wim Coekaerts @wimcoekaerts (Oracle VM team) that would do exactly that.

MOS Patch 13602094
cd /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/
unzip /tmp/ovm_utils_0.5.2.zip
MANPATH=/u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/man:$MANPATH; export MANPATH

As with the patch README’s, it isn’t too obvious what these tools could do for you. I’ll provide some parts of MAN pages bellow. Helpfully after reading these, you will no longer be doubtful of whether you should install those tools or not :) For official utilities documentation from Oracle, please see Chapter 2. Using the Oracle VM Utilities from Oracle® VM Utilities Guide for Release 3.

Enjoy your Oracle VM experience,

Yury

NOTES
       The Oracle VM utilities are provided as-is and are not formally supported.
NAME
ovm_managercontrol - basic Oracle VM Manager control utility

SYNOPSIS
ovm_managercontrol [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION
ovm_managercontrol operates on the Oracle VM Manager level. The utility allows the admin to execute basic Manager level commands. Set
up the YUM repository, create CPU Compatibility Groups and configure an SSL keystore.

...
-c COMMAND
Oracle VM Manager control command (required)
[yuminfo, setupyum, addkeystore, keystoreinfo, createcpugroup, removecpugroup, addservertocpugroup,  removeserverfromcpugroup,
listcpugroups, getsessiontimeout, setsessiontimeout]

yuminfo                  : display yum configuration
setupyum                 : configure yum
addkeystore              : configure the SSL keystore
keystoreinfo             : display keystore file and path
createcpugroup           : create a CPU Compatibility group
removecpugroup           : delete CPU Compatibility group
addservertocpugroup      : add server to CPU Compatibility group
removeserverfromcpugroup : remove server from CPU Compatibility group
listcpugroups            : list all CPU Compatibility groups and its servers
setsessiontimeout        : set VM Console session timeout
getsessiontimeout        : display VM Console session timeout
...

NAME
ovm_poolcontrol - basic Oracle VM Pool control utility

SYNOPSIS
ovm_poolcontrol [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION
ovm_poolcontrol  operates on the Oracle VM Server Pool level. The utility allows the admin to execute basic pool management commands,
query status and info on a given Oracle VM server pool.

...
-c COMMAND
Oracle VM pool control command (required)
[list, events, status, info, refresh, addserver, removeserver]

status   : display the current status of the server pool
info     : display server pool  info such as memory, utilization, servers,...
list     : list all server pools registered with this Oracle VM Manager instance
events   : list all latest event types for this server pool
addserver: add server to this server pool (-S server name)
removeserver: remove server to this server pool (-S server name)
refresh  : refresh storage in the server pool
...

NAME
ovm_repocontrol - basic Oracle VM Repository control utility

SYNOPSIS
ovm_repocontrol [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION
ovm_repocontrol allows you query the status of an Oracle VM repository.
...
-c COMMAND
repository control command (required)
[list, status, info, refresh, fixup, create]
list    : list all repositories
status  : query repository status
info    : display repository information
refresh : send a repository refresh command
fixup   : fix a failed repository create
create  : create repository on a storage device br

...

NAME
ovm_servercontrol - basic Oracle VM Server control utility

SYNOPSIS
ovm_servercontrol [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION
ovm_servercontrol  operates on a physical Oracle VM server. The utility allows the admin to execute basic server management commands,
query status and info on a given Oracle VM server.
...
-c COMMAND
Oracle VM server control command (required)
[start, stop, restart, kill, mainton, maintoff, status, info, lock, upgrade, list, events, discover, listnfsexports, deletenf-
sexport, createnfsexport]

start           : use IPMI to power-on the server
stop            : shutdown the server
kill            : use IPMI to power-off the server
mainton         : turn on maintenance mode for this server
maintoff        : turn off maintenance mode for this server
status          : display the current status of the server (Running, Stopped,...)
info            : display server info such as memory, utilization, serverpool,...
lock            : temporarily lock the server disallowing any updates to happen
upgrade         : send an upgrade command to the server
list            : list all servers registered with this Oracle VM Manager instance
events          : list all latest event types for this server
discover        : discover server with provided hostname or IP address and Oracle VM agent password (-P)
listnfsexports  : list NFS exports on this server
deletenfsexport : delete an NFS export on this server
createnfsexport : create a new NFS export on this server
...

NAME
ovm_vmcontrol - basic Oracle VM Virtual Machine(VM) control utility

SYNOPSIS
ovm_vmcontrol [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION
ovm_vmcontrol  allows  you  to send basic VM control commands to the Oracle VM Management server.  It allows you to start, stop, sus-
pend, resume, kill, restart and list the VM(s). It is also possible to simply query the  status  of  the  Virtual  Machine  (Running,
Stopped) , get VM info, such as memory, serverpool, number of vCPUs etc.
...
-c COMMAND
Virtual Machine control command (required)
[start,  stop,  suspend, kill, resume, restart, status, info, lock, list, migrate, events, vcpuset, vcpuget, gettags, settags,
fixcfg, delete]

start    : start the Virtual Machine
stop     : Power-off the Virtual Machine
suspend  : Suspend a running Virtual Machine
kill     : Kill the Virtual Machine
resume   : Resume a suspended Virtual Machine
restart  : Restart a running Virtual Machine (Power-off, start)
status   : display the current status of the Virtual Machine (Running, Stopped, Suspended)
info     : display Virtual Machine info such as memory, utilization, serverpool,...
lock     : temporarily lock the server disallowing any updates to happen
events   : list all latest events for this Virtual Machine requiring acknowledgement
list     : list all Virtual Machines registered with this Oracle VM Manager instance
vcpuset  : bind virtual cpuâs to physical threads for this Virtual Machine
vcpuget  : list bindings of virtual cpus to physical threads for this Virtual Machine
settags  : store a set of comma separate custom tags for a Virtual Machine
gettags  : retrieve list of tags for this Virtual Machine
fixcfg   : fix Virtual Machine Configuration file
delete   : delete Virtual Machine

...

NAME
ovm_vmdisks - basic Oracle VM Virtual Machine(VM) disk query utility

SYNOPSIS
ovm_vmdisks [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION
ovm_vmdisks  is a utility designed to help the admin make backups of Virtual Machines. In particular when the Virtual Disks are files
in a repository on a remote NFS server. The utility takes a Virtual Machine name or UUID and lists out every Virtual  Disk  file  for
that VM, including the Virtual Machine configuration file. This allows an admin to take the files listed in the output of the utility
and back them up to a server or tape.

If the Virtual Disks are actual physical devices directly attached to the VM, the utility lists the device mapper device of server to
which the VM is assigned. In the case of files on an NFS server, the utility lists the NFS servername, mountpoint and file name/loca-
tion.

NAME
ovm_vmmessage - Oracle VM Virtual Machine Message Send/Receive utility

SYNOPSIS
ovm_vmmessage [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION
ovm_vmmessage  is  a  utility that allows the user to send a message to a running Virtual Machine, or to query the value of a message
sent from within a Virtual Machine to the Oracle VM Management server using the Oracle VM API messaging interface.

These values are basic key/value pairs such as foo=bar. New Oracle VM templates released by Oracle contain  a  configuration  utility
called  ovmd  which  is  used to do firstboot installation configuration. Either locally from the Virtual Machine console or remotely
through this messaging interface. Ovmd also allows the owner of the Virtual Machine to send messages back to the management server.
...

The following is an example of how you should run the utilities:

[root@team5lab ovm_utils]# ovm_managercontrol -u admin -p < password >  -h localhost -c yuminfo
Oracle VM Manager Control utility 0.5.2.
Manager version : 3.1.1.305
Connected.
Command : yuminfo
YUM Repository information :
        Base URL       : 'Undefined'
        Enable GPG Key : 'false'
        GPG Key        : 'undefined'
Exit...
[root@team5lab ovm_utils]#