Solaris Xen Drop 66 - Release Notes

1. Download the DVD image of the Solaris Xen update

You can obtain the DVD ISO image of the Solaris Xen Update—OpenSolaris Drop (July 2007) at this location. For your convenience, download instructions from the Download Center are included here.

Due to filesize issues with third-party applications and some operating systems other than Solaris or Linux, Sun has broken the DVD image into several segments. The files and checksums are:

66-0624-nd-iso-a.zip = 15099e3cf09d761ef2ef60013893143d
66-0624-nd-iso-b.zip = f075bbd96f484b2834d24ba680f9a604
66-0624-nd-iso-c.zip = 62878541ae874f923c88deed7040cb0f
66-0624-nd-iso-d.zip = 2aa8691cca132e90af0f05400765543e
66-0624-nd-iso-e.zip = 4d0482b4d35c52e49601159a17c7baaf
66-0624-nd-iso-f.zip = 7c66cd07151fa8ba6c09bd28cf7360b3

After downloading and unzipping segments, follow these instructions to concatenate the files into a single image:

UNIX Systems: Reconstruct the full DVD image by using the cat command. The correct syntax is:
cat file1 file2 file3 > file.iso

Windows Systems: Reconstruct the full DVD image by using the COPY command. The correct syntax is:
copy /b file1 + file2 + file3 file.iso

2. Download the required binary and source

1. Installable DVD ISO

2. BFU archives

3. Full ON sources with our changes

4. ON patch against build 66 snapshot

5. Sun Xen packages

6. Source of Xen packages

3. Supported hardware and configuration

x64 and x86 based systems are supported.

Supported configurations include the following:

• Solaris dom0, Solaris domU, Linux domU, FreeBSD domU

• 32-bit and 64-bit Solaris

• Multiprocessor dom0 and domUs

The following information applies to dom0:

• ISA floppy is not supported.

• For 32-bit, the processor must support PAE.

• The NIC must support the latest version of GLD. These include bge, e1000g, xge, nge, and rge devices.

To determine the configurations of your system, the following commands are useful.

Use uname to determine the kernel you are running.

hostname% uname -a SunOS hostname 5.11 matrix-build-2007-06-01 i86pc i386 i86xpv 

Use the isainfo command to print the basic application environments supported by the currently running system.

hostname% isainfo -x i386: sse2 sse fxsr amd_3dnowx amd_3dnow amd_mmx mmx cmov cx8 tsc fpu 

Use the psrinfo command to display information about processors.

hostname% psrinfo -vp The physical processor has 1 virtual processor (0) x86 (Authentic AMD family 15 model 5 step 10 clock 2200 MHz) Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 275

Note: The isainfo command only display the application standpoint of CPU features. The PAE feature is not application aware. So try to use the third-party tools to determine this feature. For example,

Mplayer's "cpuinfo" utility tells that the cpu *does* have "pae":

% /home/tiger2/src/MPlayer-1.0pre8/TOOLS/cpuinfo

vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD  cpu family      : 6  model           : 6  stepping        : 2  flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mp mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow  cpu MHz         : 1533.385  model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) MP 1800+ 

4. Required resources

DomU disk image space requirements: If you plan to use VBD-based Solaris guest domains, you will need to allocate sufficient disk space at the time the dom0 system is installed. A full Solaris install (SUNWcxall) consumes approximately 4 Gb of disk space. The dom0 root partition must have at least 10 Gb of space allocated, although 20 Gb is preferable. Plan on reserving at least 5 Gb per client image, as well as 5 Gb for each guest prototype image. In addition, you will need space for the flar archive.

Solaris supports both file-backed and device-backed VBD images. File-backed images are files containing the UFS file system image. File-backed images are accessed by mounting the file using the loopback file driver described in the lofi(7D) man page. Device-backed images can be stored in a disk partition or a Solaris Volume Manager device. Solaris Volume Manager soft partitions are the recommended method for storing domU images for the flexibility and performance advantages they have over physical disk partitions and file-backed images.

Note: The default installation will allocate only ~5G for the root, 512M for the swap partitions, and give the left space to mount at the /export/home/. This is optimize for the advanced server, but is not good for the Solaris Xen. The right way is to allocate the enough space for swap partitions according to the memory size and give the left space to the root directory.

Memory requirements: To optimize the current dom0 handling of memory exhaustion, you should size memory allocated to domUs to be no more than approximately 55 percent of the total physical memory installed in your system, and then divide the allocated memory among the domUs you intend to run concurrently.

For example, if you have 2 GB of RAM installed in your system, you should not allocate more than approximately 1.1 GB of RAM to domUs.

Thus, if you only intend to run one domU, you can allocate the entire 1.1 GB to it. If you intend to run two domUs concurrently, you should not allocate more than 550 MB of RAM to either, and so on.

The memory allocated to a DomU is set via the

     memory = "amount in MB"

line in the Python configuration file passed to xm create to boot your domU.

For example, to set the memory usage for a domU to 1 GB, specify:

     memory = "1024"

in your Python configuration file.

Note: To display the amount of the RAM:

#/usr/sbin/prtconf | grep Memory
Memory size: 1844 Megabytes

Networking: By default, the hypervisor tools will use the first available NIC when creating guest domains. This link can be determined by examining the output of dladm show-link. To override the default on a system-wide basis, set the config/default-nic property of the svc:/system/xctl/xend:default service instance by using the svccfg(1) command.

It is also possible to override the default on a per-vif basis in the domain configuration. In the domain configuration, specify the name of the NIC as the "bridge" parameter when describing a vif. To configure the NIC on a per-vif basis:

vif = ['mac=aa:1:2:3:4:5, bridge=bge1']

Support for migration of guest domains to a host is controlled by the config/xend-relocation-server, config/xend-relocation-address, and config/xend-relocation-hosts-allow properties of the svc:/system/xctl/xend:default service instance.

Disks: If a domU needs to access a physical disk, the easiest approach is to export the disk (via the PCI mechanisms) to the domU.

Here is a sample .py file.

name = "solaris" 
vcpus = 1 
memory = "512" 
extra = "-k" 
root = "/dev/dsk/c0d0s0" 
disk = ['file:/export/guests/solaris/disk.img,0,w'] 
vif = [''] 
on_shutdown = "destroy" 
on_reboot = "restart" 
on_crash = "destroy" 

5. Solaris DomU sysidcfg Configuration

After the domain is created, the sysidcfg is initiated and you are prompted to answer a series of questions. Your screen will look similar to this:

SunOS Release 5.10 Version Generic 64-bit Copyright 1983-2006 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Hostname: my-zone Loading smf(5) service descriptions: 114/114 Select a Language       1. English      2. es      2. fr  Please make a choice (1 - 3), or press h or ? for help:  Select a Locale        1. English (C - 7-bit ASCII)       2. Canada (English) (UTF-8)       4. U.S.A. (UTF-8)       5. U.S.A. (en_US.ISO8859-1)       6. U.S.A. (en_US.ISO8859-15)       7. Go Back to Previous Screen        Please make a choice (1 - 7), or press h or ? for help:  What type of terminal are you using?       1) ANSI Standard CRT       2) DEC VT52       3) DEC VT100       4) Heathkit 19       5) Lear Siegler ADM31       6) PC Console       7) Sun Command Tool       8) Sun Workstation       9) Televideo 910       10) Televideo 925       11) Wyse Model 50       12) X Terminal Emulator (xterms)       13) CDE Terminal Emulator (dtterm)       14) Other Type the number of your choice and press Return: . . .

6. The use of xm utility

The following command connects to a console directly when starting a domU:

# xm create -c your-DomU-config

• To connect to the console of a domU that is already running, you must first know the domU ID. To obtain the ID, use:

  # xm list

  The system will display:

  Name            ID   Mem VCPUs      State   Time(s) Domain-0              0  2049     2     r-----   4138.5 sxc18                 3   511     1     -b----    765.5

• To connect to, for example, sxc18:

  # xm console sxc18

• You can detach from a console using the escape character:

  CTRL ]

7. Glossary

backend driver
Half of a virtual driver, providing an interface between the virtual device and an underlying real device. See frontend driver.

bare metal environment
A virtual environment where the virtualization product is directly installed on physical hardware, acting like a host OS. The opposite of a hosted environment.

domain
Virtual machine instance.

domU
Completely unprivileged domain; only virtual devices are accessible

dom0
Fully privileged domain, can create and destroy other domains, access real hardware etc.

driver domain
Like domU, but has access to hardware. Can be a fully fledged system, or can run minimal init.

frontend driver
A virtual device and its associated driver in a guest domain that communicates with a backend hosted in another guest domain. See backend driver.

paravirtualization
The name given to a hw virtualization technique that requires modifications to the guest operating system to invoke the Hypervisor API, rather than have the hypervisor simulate hardware devices

VT-x
Intel's extensions that make the x86 architecture be strictly able to be virtualized.

AMD-V
AMD's extensions that make the x86 architecture be strictly able to be virtualized; formerly known as 'SVM' or 'Pacifica.'

HVM
Hardware-assisted virtual machine. These are virtual machines that are taking advantage of Intel-VT-x or AMD-V extensions.