Intro
OLVM (Oracle Linux Virtual Manager) elevated the KVM (kernel-based virtual Machine) management processes and reduced administration overhead. As Oracle is moving out of OVM (Oracle Virtual Manager), customers who are using OVM as their virtualized platform need to plan the OLVM journey. Many small-medium scale businesses are still using virtualized ODA and hosted the VMS on top of ODA.
I think now is the right time to move out of OVM to Oracle KVM. KVM hypervisors are much more stable than OVM. Oracle's future plans are combined with open-source virtualization. Also, there are many more features than the OVM. The below-mentioned table demonstrates the enhancements OLVM has over the old OVM platform.
Virtualization technology still has a high demand for managing on-prem databases on top of Oracle KVM. Also, I have listed down some of the key features of OLVM.
Key features of OLVM
- Live VM migration between hosts
- Oracle Enterprise Manager Integration (OEM)
- CPU Pinning Capabilities
- VM High Availability
- Virtual Appliances & Templates (ovf/ova support)
- Snapshotting of existing VMs. This is an additional feature from OVM
- Role-based User access
- Web-based User Interface (UI)
- Representation State Transfer (REST)
- Application Programming Interface (API)
In this article, I will cover how to add pre-existing KVM hypervisor to the OLVM engine. I have shared the oracle note explaining how to prepare the KVM.
https://docs.oracle.com/en/virtualization/oracle-linux-virtualization-manager/getstart/getstarted-manager-install.html#manager-prep-kvm
OL8 server needs to enable the ol8 repo to integrate KVM with OLVM. Make sure you can have internet access on these hosts to access the repo. Once you configure the KVM then can remove the internet connection from KVM hypervisors.
dnf config-manager --enable ol8_baseos_latest
dnf install oracle-ovirt-release-el8
[root@kvm01 ~]# dnf install oracle-ovirt-release-el8
Last metadata expiration check: 0:02:04 ago on Fri 22 Jul 2022 12:08:59 AM EDT.
Dependencies resolved.
===============================================================================================================================================================================================================
Package Architecture Version Repository Size
===============================================================================================================================================================================================================
Installing:
oracle-ovirt-release-el8 x86_64 1.0-1.0.3.el8 ol8_baseos_latest 23 k
Transaction Summary
===============================================================================================================================================================================================================
Install 1 Package
Total download size: 23 k
Installed size: 35 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
oracle-ovirt-release-el8-1.0-1.0.3.el8.x86_64.rpm 9.0 kB/s | 23 kB 00:02
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 9.0 kB/s | 23 kB 00:02
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
Preparing : 1/1
Running scriptlet: oracle-ovirt-release-el8-1.0-1.0.3.el8.x86_64 1/1
Installing : oracle-ovirt-release-el8-1.0-1.0.3.el8.x86_64 1/1
Running scriptlet: oracle-ovirt-release-el8-1.0-1.0.3.el8.x86_64 1/1
Enabling OLVM 4.4 required Yum Channels...
Enabling ol8_baseos_latest Yum Channel...
Enabling ol8_UEKR6 Yum Channel...
Enabling ol8_gluster_appstream Yum Channel...
Enabling ol8_kvm_appstream Yum Channel...
Disabling yum module virt:ol
Enabling yum module virt:kvm_utils2
Enabling module pki-deps
Enabling module postgresql:13
Required oVirt 4.4 Yum Channels enabled.
Done.
Verifying : oracle-ovirt-release-el8-1.0-1.0.3.el8.x86_64 1/1
Installed:
oracle-ovirt-release-el8-1.0-1.0.3.el8.x86_64
Complete!
[root@kvm02 ~]#
This will list down the new repositories
[root@kvm01 ~]# dnf repolist
repo id repo name
ol8_UEKR6 Latest Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 6 for Oracle Linux 8 (x86_64)
ol8_appstream Oracle Linux 8 Application Stream (x86_64)
ol8_baseos_latest Oracle Linux 8 BaseOS Latest (x86_64)
ol8_gluster_appstream Oracle Linux 8 Gluster Appstream (x86_64)
ol8_kvm_appstream Oracle Linux 8 KVM Application Stream (x86_64)
ovirt-4.4 Latest oVirt 4.4 Release (x86_64)
ovirt-4.4-extra oVirt 4.4 Extra (x86_64)
[root@kvm01 ~]#
There are two ways to add KVM to OLVM
- Add KVM using the root password.
- Add KVM using OLVM (public key) - recommended approach
