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Oracle® VM Manager User's Guide
Release 2.1

Part Number E10901-04
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1 Overview of Oracle VM Manager

This chapter gives an overview of Oracle VM Manager. It includes the following topics:

What Is Virtualization?

Virtualization is the ability to run multiple virtual machines on a single piece of hardware. The hardware runs software that enables you to install multiple operating systems capable of running simultaneously and independently, in their own secure environment, with minimal impact on performance. Each virtual machine has its own virtual CPU, network interfaces, storage, and operating system.

Why Virtualize?

With increased server provisioning in the datacenter, several factors play a role in stifling growth. Increased power and cooling costs, physical space constraints, man power, and interconnection complexity all contribute significantly to the costs and feasibility of continued expansion.

Commodity hardware manufacturers have begun to address some of these concerns by shifting their design goals. Rather than focusing solely on raw gigahertz performance, manufacturers have enhanced the feature sets of CPUs and chip sets to include lower wattage CPUs, multiple cores per CPU die, advanced power management, and a range of virtualization features. By employing appropriate software to enable these features, several advantages are realized:

Introduction to Oracle VM

Oracle VM is a platform that provides a fully equipped environment to better leverage the benefits of virtualization technology. Oracle VM enables you to deploy operating systems and application software within a supported virtualization environment. The components of Oracle VM are:

Figure 1-1, "Oracle VM Architecture" shows the components of Oracle VM.

Figure 1-1 Oracle VM Architecture

Description of Figure 1-1 follows
Description of "Figure 1-1 Oracle VM Architecture"

This book discusses Oracle VM Manager. See the Oracle VM Server Installation Guide and the Oracle VM Server User's Guide for information on installing and using Oracle VM Server.

Configuration of Oracle VM Manager

This section describes the configuration structure of Oracle VM Manager.

Figure 1-2 Deployment View of Oracle VM Manager

Description of Figure 1-2 follows
Description of "Figure 1-2 Deployment View of Oracle VM Manager"

As shown in Figure 1-2, when you deploy Oracle VM Manager, the following components are involved:

Roles in Oracle VM Manager

As a user of Oracle VM Manager, you can have one of three roles: User, Manager, or Administrator.

Table 1-1 briefly lists the available functions for each user role.

Table 1-1 Available Functions for Each Role

Roles Available Functions

User

Manager

Administrator


Main Features of Oracle VM Manager

Oracle VM Manager provides the following main features: