Hard and Soft Partitioning With Oracle VM 06-16-14 PDF

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Last update: 06/16/14

This chapter of the Oracle Cloud Cookbook describes how to use hard and soft
partitioning with Oracle VM for x86 to gain total control over Oracle CPU license
costs. The Oracle VM product line includes Oracle VM for x86 and Oracle VM for
SPARC, previously called Sun Logical Domains. This chapter of the Oracle Cloud
Coookbook covers Oracle VM for x86 and applies to all Oracle VM 3 releases.
Table of Contents
Oracle Licensing and Hard and Soft Partitioning with Oracle VM
Hard Partitioning RAC and RAC One Node with Oracle VM
How to Pin a Virtual Machine

Conrm the Oracle VM Server CPU Topology
Pin CPUs with the ovm_vmcontrol Utility
CPU Pinning and the vm.cfg File
Change Log
Revision
Change Description
Updated By
Date
1.0
Document Creation
Roddy Rodstein
07/11/12
1.0
Content Refresh
Roddy Rodstein
06/16/14
Oracle Licensing and Hard and Soft Partitioning

with Oracle VM
Two and four core CPUs are now end of life. New Intel and AMD x86 servers ship with
quad-, hexa-, 8-, 10-, 12-, and 16-core CPUs. As Intel and AMD add more cores to CPUs,
your next hardware refresh could dramatically increase your Oracle CPU license costs.
The goal of this chapter of the Oracle Cloud Cookbook is to explain how Oracle VM for
x86 can be used with hard and soft partitioning to gain total control over Oracle CPU
license costs.
Most Oracle customers license their Oracle technology products, including database
and applications, by physical processor, and/or by named user. With physical servers,
Oracle processor and named user licensing is static, with each Oracle product bound to
a physical server licensed by the number of the server's processors. Conversely, with
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server virtualization, Oracle processor licensing is dynamic, with each Oracle product
allocated to a subset of a hypervisor's CPUs, this is referred to as hard partitioning,
and/or bound to a single hypervisor, or a subset of hypervisors within a cluster, this is
referred to as soft partitioning. Unlike hard partitioning that allows us to license
a subset of a hypervisor's CPUs to Oracle products, soft partitioning requires all of
a hypervisor's processors to be licensed for each Oracle product. Many Oracle
customers often select standard editions products over enterprise editions products to
reduce Oracle licensing costs. The Oracle Software Investment Guide (SIG) states that
Oracle standard edition products are limited to 4 CPU sockets. Oracle standard edition
products are fully supported with Oracle VM soft partitioning. Understanding how to
use hard and soft partitioning with Oracle VM can help your organization gain total
control of their Oracle licensing costs.
Since the rst release of Oracle VM, which was announced at Oracle Open World in
November 2007, Oracle has provided certied support for Oracle technology products
on Oracle VM, including both hard and soft partitioning for Oracle licence management.
Oracle VM is Oracle's agship server virtualization solution that makes Oracle
applications easier to deploy, manage, support, and license. Oracle VM is the only x86
virtualization solution that Oracle tests, certies and is fully supported by Oracle for
Oracle technology products. Oracle does not test, certify, or support Oracle technology
products on any Non-Oracle x86 virtualization solutions. With Non-Oracle x86
virtualization solutions, the only Oracle licensing option is soft partitioning.
To help understand how to use Oracle VM as an Oracle license management tool, lets
review how Oracle processor licensing is calculated. Oracle processor licensing is
calculated by counting the number of each CPU core accessed by an operating system
running an Oracle technology product, this calculation is called a processor factor.
Oracle recognizes each CPU core as a separate CPU and each CPU type with a dierent
processor factor.
Table 1 lists Oracle' processor factors.
Oracle Processor
Licensing
Processor
Factor
UltraSparc T1
0.25
AMD/Intel
0.50
All other Multi-core

Servers
0.75
Single Core Servers

& IBMs P6 and P7
Multi-Core chips
1.00
Note: Oracle VM for x86 exclusively uses Intel or AMD CPUs.

To better understand Oracle processor licensing with Oracle VM and
AMD/Intel multi-core CPUs, lets review List 1.
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List 1 shows the processor factor for a single socket four, eight, ten, twelve and sixteen
core Intel and/or AMD CPU.
Intel or AMD CPU
1 four core CPU requires 2 processor licenses
1 eight core CPU requires 4 processor licenses
1 ten core CPU requires 5 processor licenses
1 twelve core CPU requires 6 processor licenses
1 sixteen core CPU requires 8 processor licenses
As shown in List 1, as the core count increases, so does the Oracle processor license
count.
Intel/AMD CPUs have Hyperthreading technology that makes one CPU core look like
two. From an Oracle processor licensing perspective, Hyper-threading does
not increase the Oracle processor license count. Enabling Hyper-threading will
increase the overall processor capacity of an Oracle VM Server, and an Oracle VM
Server pool. For example, with hyper-threading disabled, a CPU is running a single
thread per core. With hyper-threading enabled, the number of threads within a core
double, and virtual machines can use the additional threads without incurring
additional Oracle processor licensing penalties. With hyper-threading enabled, a virtual
machine with 4 CPUs is actually is accessing 2 CPU cores, 4 CPU threads, or 1 Oracle
CPU license. With hyper-threading disabled, the same virtual machine with 4 CPUs is
actually is consuming 4 CPU cores, or 2 Oracle CPU license. Oracle recognizes each
CPU core as a separate CPU and each CPU type with a dierent processor factor. The
processor factor determines the processor count. The processor count determines the
number of processors required to license the Oracle product.
With Oracle VM, hard partitioning allows us to pin a virtual machine's CPUs to a subset
of an Oracle VM Servers CPU cores, and only pay Oracle for the pinned CPUs. For
example, with Oracle VM hard partitioning, a standard or enterprise edition Database
could run on a virtual machine that is pinned to an Oracle VM Server with 4 CPUs (four
sockets) each with 24 cores (96 cores), and you only pay Oracle for the pinned CPUs,
i.e. you can pin the virtual machine's CPUs to the exact number of CPUs you need. The
same virtual machine running on a VMWare server with 4 CPUs (four sockets) each
with 24 cores (96 cores) with a standard or enterprise edition Database would require
48 Oracle processor licenses. With any Non-Oracle x86 virtualization solutions, the only
Oracle licensing option is soft partitioning. With hard partitioning you only pay Oracle
for the CPUs you actaully need/pin.
Soft partitioning requires all of the physical server's processors to be licensed. The
number one use case with soft partitioning is the ability to license a subset of Oracle
VM Servers within a cluster. For example, with Oracle VM soft partitioning, a standard
or enterprise edition Database could run on virtual machines that are restricted to
a subset of Oracle VM Servers within a cluster, for example 2 Oracle VM Servers from
32, essentally reducing the processor count and licensing costs from 32 servers to 2
servers. Customers elect to use soft parttitoning over hard partitiong to take advantage
of Oracle VM's Live Migration, Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and Distributed
Power Management (DPM) features that are only supported with soft partitioning. The
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use of hard and soft partition will inuence your Oracle VM server pool design.
Tip: Hard and soft partitioned virtual machines can be restricted to one or more Oracle
VM Servers by placing the virtual machine les on a storage repository that is
presented only to the Oracle VM Server(s) were the virtual machine can run.
Table 1 provides an overview of hard and soft partitioning with Oracle VM.
Partitioning
Overview
Type
Requirements
Hard
Partitioning
CPU pinning is a manual

process that includes
Hard partitioning allows us to pin a
documenting an Oracle VM
virtual machine's CPUs to a subset of
Server's CPU topology, then
an Oracle VM Servers CPU cores, and pinning each virtual
only pay Oracle for the pinned CPUs.
machine's CPUs to the
desired Oracle VM Server
Note: Oracle VM High Availability is fully
CPU cores using
supported by Oracle with hard partitioning. Live
ovm_vmcontrol.
Migration, Distributed Resource Scheduler
ovm_vmcontrol is included in
(DRS) and Distributed Power Management
the Oracle VM 3 utilities.
(DPM) are not supported by Oracle with
The Oracle VM 3 utilities are
hard partitioning.
available via My Oracle
Support Patch 13602094.
Soft
Partitioning
Soft partitioning requires all of

the physical server's processors to be
licensed. The number one use
case with soft partitioning is the ability Soft partitioned virtual
to license a subset of Oracle VM
machines can take advantage
Servers within a cluster.
of Live Migration, Distributed
Resource Scheduler (DRS)
Note: High Availability, Live
and/or Distributed Power
Migration, Distributed Resource
Management (DPM).
Scheduler (DRS) and Distributed
Power Management (DPM) are
supported with soft partitioning.
The next example in Figure 1 shows three AMD/Intel servers, each server has two eight
core CPUs with a processor factor of eight. The rst AMD/Intel server is an example of
a physical server with an operating system installed directly on the server hardware,
running a single Oracle 11G Database. The second AMD/Intel server is an example of
soft partitioning with Oracle VM installed directly on the server hardware running eight
virtual machines, each virtual machine is running an Oracle 11G Database. The third
AMD/Intel server is an example of hard partitioning with an Oracle VM installed
directly on the server hardware running eight virtual machines, and only one of the
eight virtual machines is running an Oracle 11G Database with one pinned Oracle
processor license.
7 of 27
As shown in Figure 1, the rst AMD/Intel physical server has only one Oracle 11G
Database licensed with soft partitioning with eight Oracle processor licenses. With
physical servers, Oracle processor licensing is xed, with each Oracle product bound to
a physical server licensed by the number of the server's processors. Regardless of the
number of Oracle processor licenses you need, you must pay Oracle for all of the
physical server's processors. The second AMD/Intel Oracle VM example is licensed with
soft partitioning running eight Oracle 11G Database virtual machines, with eight Oracle
processor licenses. In contrast to the rst example with an operating system installed
directly on the server hardware running a single Oracle 11G Database, the second
example shows how Oracle VM with soft partitioning can run 8 or more Oracle 11G
Database virtual machines on the same hardware as the physical server with 1 Oracle
Database. An Oracle VM Server's CPU, RAM and I/O resources determine the number of
virtual machines that can simultaneously run. I select the number 8 as an arbitrary
example. The third AMD/Intel Oracle VM example is licensed with hard partitioning
one Oracle 11G Database virtual machine using as little as one up to eight Oracle
processor license. Using hard partitioning you can license only the CPU you need
regardless of the physical server's processor factor. The additional Oracle VM Server
CPUs could be used to hard partition other Oracle technologies, or be used to run other
workloads along side the hard partitioned Oracle 11G Database virtual machine.
Tip: We can restrict hard partitioned virtual machines to one or more Oracle VM
Servers by placing the virtual machine les on a storage repository that is presented
only to the Oracle VM Server(s) where the virtual machine can run.
The next hard partitioning example in Figure 2 shows an Oracle VM Server with two
eight core Intel CPUs, with one hard partitioned virtual machine running an Oracle 11G
Database. The virtual machine is pinned to two of the Oracle VM Servers CPU cores (2
cores = 1 CPU license). From an Oracle licensing perspective, the Oracle VM Server
has a processor factor of 8. Using hard partitioning, the pinned virtual machine
requires only 1 Oracle processor license. The additional 7 CPUs could be used to hard
8 of 27
partition other Oracle technologies or be used to run other workloads on the same
Oracle VM Server.
The next hard partitioning example in Figure 3 shows an Oracle VM Server with two
eight core Intel CPUs, with two pinned virtual machines running an Oracle 11G
Database. The virtual machines are pinned to the same CPU cores, with a processor
factor of 1. Its possible to pin multiple virtual machines running an Oracle 11g
Database to the same CPU cores, and only pay for the pinned CPU cores. In this
example multiple virtual machines are running Oracle 11g Databases using the same
CPU cores, and the same license. Please note that since each virtual machine is pinned
to the same CPU cores, the performance of each virtual machine may be impacted by
CPU contention. The additional 7 CPU cores could be used to hard partition other
Oracle technologies or be shared for other workloads on the Oracle VM Server.
9 of 27
Soft
partitioning requires all of the physical server's processors to be licensed. An

interesting use case with soft partitioning is the ability to license a subset of Oracle VM Servers
within a cluster. For example, with soft partitioning, its possible to license as little as 2
Oracle VM Servers from an Oracle VM cluster with 32 Oracle VM Servers, essentally
reducing the processor count and licensing costs from 32 servers to 2 servers. Soft
partitioning with Oracle VM supports High Availability, Live Migration, Distributed
Resource Scheduler (DRS) and Distributed Power Management (DPM) with total control
over the total number of licensed CPU cores with an Oracle VM cluster.
Tip: We can restrict soft partitioned virtual machines to one or more Oracle VM Servers
by placing the virtual machine les on a storage repository that is presented only to the
Oracle VM Server(s) were the virtual machine can run.
The next example in Figure 4 shows an Oracle VM server pool with six Oracle VM
Servers. Each Oracle VM Server has two eight core CPUs. The Oracle VM server pool
has a total of 96 cores with a processor factor of 48 Oracle CPU licenses. In Figure 4,
there are a total of eight virtual machines in the Oracle VM pool running Oracle
Database 11G. The eight virtual machines with Oracle Database 11G can run on any of
the 6 Oracle VM Servers, requiring a total of 48 Oracle processor licenses.
10 of 27
Figure 5 shows the same Oracle VM server pool as in Figure 4, with a total of 96 cores
and a processor factor of 48 Oracle CPU licenses. In Figure 5, there are a total of 8
virtual machines in the pool running Oracle Database 11G that are pinned to two of the
six Oracle VM Servers. The soft partitioning scenario shown in Figure 5 requires only
16 Oracle CPU licenses.
The example shown in Figure 5 supports Live Migration without Distributed Resource
Scheduler (DRS) and/or Distributed Power Management.
Hard Partitioning RAC and RAC One Node with

11 of 27
Oracle VM
Oracle has a wide variety of high availability solutions for databases, applications and
virtualization that oer dierent levels of availability. Hard and soft partitioning with
Oracle VM can be used with Oracle RAC, RAC One Node, DataGuard and Application
Server Guard to provide an additional layer of high availability with total control over
Oracle CPU licensing costs.
Oracle VM's high availability features are complementary with Oracle's high availability
solutions for databases, Fusion Middleware and applications. For example, Oracle VM
high availability (HA) detects and responds to catastrophic Oracle VM Server failures
by restarting virtual machines, RAC nodes, RAC One Nodes, DataGuard and/or
Application Server Guard nodes on a live Oracle VM Server. Oracle VM Live Migration
is used to eliminate planned downtime by migrating running virtual machines from one
Oracle VM Server to another Oracle VM Server during a maintenance event, i.e. for
repairs or an upgrade. Hard and soft partitioning with Oracle VM can be used with
RAC, RAC One Node, DataGuard and Application Server Guard to provide and
additional layer of high availability with total control over Oracle CPU licensing costs.
RAC is one of Oracles database high availability solutions that oers operational
continuity in the event of server and hardware failure. If one RAC node in a multi node
RAC cluster fails, the Oracle database would continue to run without disruption of
service. An Oracle 11g Database R2 feature named RAC One Node, also oers database
high availability in the event of catastrophic failure, with a single node architecture.
Both RAC and RAC One Node are certied and supported with Oracle VM. Hard
partitioning with Oracle VM can be used with RAC and RAC One Node to provide
database high availability with total control over Oracle CPU licensing costs.
Figure 6 shows how hard partitioning with Oracle VM can be used with RAC to gain
total control over processor licensing costs.
12 of 27
If reducing costs, Database high availability and Live migration is a requirement, RAC
One node with Omotion can be used as live fail-over option on Oracle VM without
incurring additional CPU license penalties. RAC One Node is certied and supported
with Oracle VM. RAC One Node continually monitors the status of a Database running
inside a virtual machine, and if the RAC One Node instance experiences a catastrophic
failure, RAC One Node will restart the aected database in place or on another standby
RAC One Node virtual machine. Following the Oracle Software Investment Guide (SIG)
failover rule, a standby RAC One Node virtual machine can run an Oracle Database
without additional licensing fees for up to 10 days in any calendar year.
Figure 7 shows how hard partitioning with Oracle VM can be used with RAC One Node
to gain total control over processor licensing costs.
Note: The 10-day rule applies to Oracle products using failover technologies in an
active/passive cluster. With Oracle products in an active/passive cluster, if a primary
node fails, failover to a second node for up to 10 days in any calendar year is permitted
without additional license fees.
How to Pin a Virtual Machine

This section will start with a brief review of Oracle VM's CPU credit scheduler. Next, we
will walk through the procedure to pin a virtual machine's CPUs to a subset of an
Oracle VM Server's CPU cores using the ovm_vmcontrol utility. The chapter concludes
with CPU pinning examples by manually editing a vm.cfg le with the xm command.
13 of 27
Virtual Machine CPU Pinning Road Map

Hard Partitioning:
1- Validate the hard partitioned Oracle VM Server CPU topology
2- Pin CPUs with the ovm_vmcontrol Utility
Oracle VMs default CPU scheduler is the credit scheduler. The credit scheduler uses a
credit/debit system to fairly share CPU resources between virtual machines. Credits are
assigned to each running virtual machine, along with the allocated fraction of CPU
resources. The credit scheduler continually increments/decrements credits from
running virtual machines, which is how the credit scheduler balances CPU resources. In
many ways, the credit scheduler is like the Linux scheduler. The Linux scheduler is used
as the default CPU scheduler with the KVM hypervisor. Both schedulers can preempt
processes as needed while trying to ensure proportional fair share allocations.
The default behavior of the credit scheduler is to bind each virtual machine CPU to a
separate physical core. For example, when you create a virtual machine with two CPUs,
the credit scheduler will map the two virtual machine CPUs to two physical cores. So
when pinning virtual machine CPUs, we follow the credit schedulers default behavior
of mapping virtual machine CPUs to an Oracle VM Servers CPU cores.
Excluding pinned virtual machines, virtual machine CPUs will occasionally bind to
dierent physical cores. A virtual machine's CPUs will bind to dierent physical cores,
due to the credit schedulers use of the credit/debit system that dynamically re-balances
CPU resources. For example, if you periodically checked an unpinned virtual machines
CPU mapping, you would see a dierent CPU mappings throughout the day.
There are two methods to pin virtual machine CPUs. The CPU mapping can be hardcode
a virtual machines vm.cfg le or mapped using the xm command. The dierence
between pinning CPUs by hardcoding in the vm.cfg le and with the xm command is the
persistence of the CPU mapping. Hard coding the CPU mapping in a virtual machiness
vm.cfg le is persistent between reboots. CPUs that are pinned with the xm command
are not persistent between reboots.
Please note that hard partitioning could cause guest performance issues. For example,
if you pin a virtual machines CPUs to a specic subset of named CPUs without
considering how the lower-level I/O interrupts are being assigned, you can end-up
hurting performance. I/O interrupts are typically mapped to a specic CPU. If that CPU
is not the same as the pinned CPU, the interrupts have to be "re-directed" to the CPU
you pinned, which could cause the performance of the guest to decrease. If a hard
partitioned virtual machines experience performance issues, the CPU pinning would be
an area to investigate.
Tip: All CPU cores are not equal, so you may need to test various virtual CPU mappings
using the xm command before pinning CPUs in a vm.cfg le.
Conrm the Oracle VM Server CPU Topology
14 of 27
Before you pin a virtual machine's CPUs to an Oracle VM Server's CPU cores, its
necessary to understand the Oracle VM Server's CPU topology to be able to pin a
virtual machine's CPUs to the desired Oracle VM Server's CPU cores and/or threads.
There are a number of commands to list an Oracle VM Server's CPU topology.
dmidecode and xenpm are my favorite commands to map out an Oracle VM Server's
CPU topology. dmidecode is a tool that reports information about a system's hardware
as described in the system BIOS. As root, type "man dmidecode" to print the dmidecode
man page. xenpm stands for Xen Power Management. Xenpm is a userspace program
that lists CPU power information and provides control over power policies. Type xenpm
or xenpm --help to print the xenpm command list.
To gain a clear picture of an Oracle VM Server's CPU topology, as root, type "dmidecode
-t 4 | grep CPU" to list the system' CPU details. Next, as root, type xenpm get-cputopology to list the CPU topology. The details from dmidecode and xenpm get-cputopology will allow you to generate a CPU pinning plan showing the
mapping between virtual machine CPUs to Oracle VM Server CPU cores.
The next example shows the CPU topology of an Oracle VM Server with Quad (4),
Octo-core (8) CPUs, with hyper-threading enabled. The example server has 32 CPU
cores with an Oracle processor factor of 16, i.e. 16 CPU licenses. Virtual machine CPUs
can be pinned from 1 up to 16 of CPU licenses.
Table 2 shows the example servers processor factor, cores, threads, and virtual machine
pinning and NUP options.
Sockets/CPUs
Cores
32
Threads
64
Processor
Factor
16 CPU
Licenses
VM Pinning Options
1 CPU License = 2 Cores
= 4 Threads = 4 vCPUs
= 8 Threads = 8 vCPUs
= 12 Threads = 12
vCPUs
= 16 Threads = 12
vCPus
5 CPU License =
10 Cores = 20 Threads
= 20 vCPUs
6 CPU License =
= 24 vCPUs
7 CPU License =
= 28 vCPUs
8 CPU License =
= 32 vCPUs
9 CPU License =
= 36 vCPUs
10 CPU License =
= 40 vCPus
11 CPU License =
= 44 vCPUs
12 CPU License =
DB NUPs
App Server NUPs
25 users per
processor
10 users per
processor
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= 48 vCPU
13 CPU License =
= 52 vCPUs
14 CPU License =
= 56 vCPUs
15 CPU License =
= 60 vCPUs
16 CPU License =
= 64 vCPUs
dmidecode -t 4 | grep CPU

From the Oracle VM Server's console, as root, type "dmidecode -t 4 | grep CPU" to list
the system' CPU details:
# dmidecode -t 4 | grep CPU
Socket Designation: CPU1
Version:
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-4640 0 @ 2.40GHz
Version:
Version:
Version:
The above "dmidecode -t 4 | grep CPU" command uses the "-t 4" option, -t means type,
and 4 means CPU, then we use grep CPU to only show the CPU details.
xenpm get-cpu-topology
From the Oracle VM Server's console, as root, type "xenpm get-cpu-topology to list the
servers CPU topology:
# xenpm get-cpu-topology
CPU core socket node
CPU0
0
0
0
CPU1
0
0
0
CPU2
1
0
0
CPU3
1
0
0
CPU4
2
0
0
CPU5
2
0
0
CPU6
3
0
0
CPU7
3
0
0
CPU8
4
0
0
CPU9
4
0
0
CPU10
5
0
0
CPU11
5
0
0
CPU12
6
0
0
CPU13
6
0
0
CPU14
7
0
0
CPU15
7
0
0
CPU16
0
1
1
16 of 27
CPU17
CPU18
CPU19
CPU20
CPU21
CPU22
CPU23
CPU24
CPU25
CPU26
CPU27
CPU28
CPU29
CPU30
CPU31
CPU32
CPU33
CPU34
CPU35
CPU36
CPU37
CPU38
CPU39
CPU40
CPU41
CPU42
CPU43
CPU44
CPU45
CPU46
CPU47
CPU48
CPU49
CPU50
CPU51
CPU52
CPU53
CPU54
CPU55
CPU56
CPU57
CPU58
CPU59
CPU60
CPU61
CPU62
CPU63
0
1
1
2
2
3
3
4
4
5
5
6
6
7
7
0
0
1
1
2
2
3
3
4
4
5
5
6
6
7
7
0
0
1
1
2
2
3
3
4
4
5
5
6
6
7
7
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
Once you have the Oracle VM servers CPU topology, you can pin a virtual machines
17 of 27
CPUs to any of the Oracle VM Server's cores. A best practice is to follow the default
behavior of the credit scheduler and pin each of the virtual machine CPUs to a separate
physical core.
From an Oracle CPU licensing perspective, Hyper-threading does not increase the CPU license count of an
Oracle VM Server or a pinned virtual machine. Enabling Hyper-threading will increase the overall CPU
capacity of an Oracle VM Server and its virtual machines. For example, without hyper-threading, an Oracle
VM Server or virtual machine is only running a single thread per core. With hyper-threading, the number of
cores increases, and the Oracle VM Server or virtual machine can use the additional threads without
incurring additional Oracle CPU licensing penalties.
The next example shows the CPU topology of an Oracle VM Server with Dual (2),
Quad-core (4) CPUs, without hyper-threading enabled. The example server has 8 CPU
cores with an Oracle processor factor of 4, i.e. 4 CPU licenses. Virtual machine CPUs
can be pinned from 1 up to 4 of CPU licenses.
Table 2 shows the example servers processor factor, cores, threads, and virtual machine
pinning and NUP options.
Sockets/CPUs
Cores
Threads
NA
Processor
Factor
VM Pinning
Options
DB NUPs
App Server NUPs
4 CPU
Licenses
1 CPU License = 2
Cores = 2 vCPUs
2 CPU License =
4 Cores = 4 vCPUs
3 CPU License =
6 Cores = 6 vCPUs
4 CPU License =
8 Cores = 8 vCPus
25 users per
processor
10 users per
processor
dmidecode -t 4 | grep CPU

From the Oracle VM Server's console, as root, type "dmidecode -t 4 | grep CPU" to list
the system' CPU details:
# dmidecode -t 4 | grep CPU
Version: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2637 v2 @ 3.50GHz
Version: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2637 v2 @ 3.50GHz
The above "dmidecode -t 4 | grep CPU" command uses the "-t 4" option, -t means type,
and 4 means CPU, then we use grep CPU to only show the CPU details.
xenpm get-cpu-topology
From the Oracle VM Server's console, as root, type "xenpm get-cpu-topology to list the
servers CPU topology:
CPU
core socket node
CPU0
1
0
0
CPU1
2
0
0
CPU2
3
0
0
CPU3
4
0
0
CPU4
1
1
1
CPU5
2
1
1
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CPU6
CPU7
3
4
1
1
1
1
Once you have the Oracle VM servers CPU topology, you can pin a virtual machines
CPUs to any of the Oracle VM Server's cores. A best practice is to follow the default
behavior of the credit scheduler and pin each of the virtual machine CPUs to a separate
physical core.
Pin CPUs with the ovm_vmcontrol Utility

In this section, we will pin a virtual machine with two CPUs to various CPU threads
using the ovm_vmcontrol utility. A virtual machine's CPUs can be immediately pinned to
any CPU core or thread using the ovm_vmcontrol utility as well as with the xm
command, xm vcpu-set. This section of the Oracle Cloud Cookbook reviews CPU pinning
with the ovm_vmcontrol utility.
Note: The Max. Processors property shows the maximum number of CPUs that can be
allocated and/or pinned. The number of processors is actually the number of allocated
physical CPU cores or threads, and is limited to 128. The Max. Processors property
can only be edited when a virtual machine is stopped. The Processors property shows
the current number of allocated CPUs. The Processors property can be changed with
running virtual machine up to the value of Max. Processors.
Figure 8 shows the CPU properties for the example virtual machine used through this
chapter. The ID and the CPU allocations are highlighted in red.
19 of 27
The virtual machine's ID is 0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0 with two CPUs

allocated.
The Oracle VM 3 utilities' ovm_vmcontrol is an ideal tool used to query and immediately
set virtual machine CPU pinning using Oracle VM Manager. The Oracle VM utilities
provide a command line interface for Oracle VM Manager. The Oracle VM utilities
allow Oracle VM Manager administrative tasks such as CPU pinning to be performed
from the command line or executed using scripts.
Tip: The Oracle VM utilities are a great command line alternative to Oracle VM
Manager and oer exceptional performance over WAN connections when Oracle VM
Manager is not an option.
There are a total of ten [10] Oracle VM utilities:
ovm_logger
ovm_managercontrol
ovm_poolcontrol
ovm_repocontrol
ovm_reporestore
ovm_servercontrol
ovm_vmcontrol
ovm_vmdisks
ovm_vmhostd
20 of 27
ovm_vmmessage
The Oracle VM utilities are available as a patch download from My Oracle Support. As of this writing
the latest release is My Oracle Support patch 13602094 (p13602094_30_Linux-x86-64.zip). The
p13602094_30_Linux-x86-64.zip le contains two les, ovm_utils_1.0.2.zip and readme.txt. Once
downloaded, unzip p13602094_30_Linux-x86-64.zip on the Oracle VM Manager host.
# unzip p13602094_30_Linux-x86-64.zip
Archive: p13602094_30_Linux-x86-64.zip
extracting: ovm_utils_1.0.2.zip
inating: readme.txt
Tip: If a previous version of the Oracle VM utilities are already installed, Oracle recommends to delete
the previous version, i.e. "cd /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/", then "rm -rf ./ovm_utils", before
installing the new version.
Next, unzip p13602094_30_Linux-x86-64.zip in the /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3 directory.
# unzip ovm_utils_1.0.2.zip -d /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/
Archive: ovm_utils_1.0.2.zip
creating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/
creating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/man/
creating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/man/man8/
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/man/man8/ovm_vmcontrol.8
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/man/man8/ovm_vmhostd.8
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/man/man8/ovm_logger.8
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/man/man8/ovm_vmdisks.8
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/man/man8/ovm_reporestore.8
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/man/man8/ovm_poolcontrol.8
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/man/man8/ovm_managercontrol.8
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/man/man8/ovm_vmmessage.8
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/man/man8/ovm_servercontrol.8
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/man/man8/ovm_repocontrol.8
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/ovm_logger
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/ovm_repocontrol
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/ovm_vmdisks
creating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/class/
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/class/OvmVmMessage.class
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/class/OvmLogger.class
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/class/OvmRepoRestore.class
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/class/OvmVmHostd.class
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/class/OvmRepoControl.class
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/class/OvmVmControl.class
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/class/OvmVmDisks.class
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/class/OvmServerControl.class
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/class/OvmCoreControl.class
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/class/OvmPoolControl.class
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/ovm_vmcontrol
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/ovm_managercontrol
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/ovm_vmhostd
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/vm-dump-metrics
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/ovm_reporestore
creating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/lib/
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/lib/log4j.jar
inating: /u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/lib/OvmClient.jar
21 of 27
inating:
inating:
inating:
inating:
/u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/lib/commons-logging.jar
/u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/ovm_servercontrol
/u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/ovm_poolcontrol
/u01/app/oracle/ovm-manager-3/ovm_utils/ovm_vmmessage
The man pages for the Oracle VM utilities are in the ovm_utils/man/man8 directory. Since the Oracle
VM utilities man pages are not in the default man path, it is necessary to type "man
path_to_man_page to read each man page. The following example shows how to read each of
the Oracle VM utilities man pages.
-rw-r--r--rw-r--r--rw-r--r--rw-r--r--rw-r--r--rw-r--r--rw-r--r--rw-r--r--rw-r--r--rw-r--r--
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
root
root
root
root
root
root
root
root
root
root
root
root
root
root
root
root
root
root
root
root
1054 Nov 28 09:52 ovm_logger.8

3523 Nov 28 09:52 ovm_managercontrol.8
2572 Nov 28 09:52 ovm_poolcontrol.8
1444 Nov 28 09:52 ovm_repocontrol.8
1371 Nov 28 09:52 ovm_reporestore.8
4331 Nov 28 09:52 ovm_servercontrol.8
4808 Nov 28 09:52 ovm_vmcontrol.8
1547 Nov 28 09:52 ovm_vmdisks.8
949 Nov 28 09:52 ovm_vmhostd.8
2046 Nov 28 09:52 ovm_vmmessage.8
Before you pin a virtual machine's CPUs to an Oracle VM Server's CPU cores, it is necessary to understand the
Oracle VM Server's CPU topology. There are a number of commands to list an Oracle VM Server's CPU
topology. The xenpm command is my favorite command, xenpm stands for Xen Power Management. Xenpm is
a userspace program that lists CPU power information and provides control over power policies. Type xenpm
or xenpm --help to print the xenpm command list.
The next exmple shows the CPU topology from the Oracle VM Server used through this
section. The example Oracle VM Server has 1 CPU, 4 cores with hyperthreading
enabled.
CPU
core socket node
CPU0
0
0
0
CPU1
0
0
0
CPU2
1
0
0
CPU3
1
0
0
CPU4
2
0
0
CPU5
2
0
0
CPU6
3
0
0
CPU7
3
0
0
The next example shows how to query the CPU pinning from a virtual machine named
yum-chekov. Substitute admin with your Oracle VM Manager user account, password
with your admin user account password, and yum-chekov with the name of your virtual
machine, i.e. the name displayed in Oracle VM Manager.
Run ovm_vmcontrol from the Oracle VM Manager host:
./ovm_vmcontrol -u admin -p password -h localhost -v yum-chekov -c vcpuget
Oracle VM VM Control utility 0.5.2.
Connected.
22 of 27
Command : vcpuget
Virtual Machine 'yum-sulu' has no pinned vcpus.
The above example shows that the virtual machine is not pinned.
The next example shows how to pin both CPUs to core 0. Run ovm_vmcontrol from the
Oracle VM Manager host.
# ./ovm_vmcontrol -u admin -p password -h localhost -v yum-chekov -c vcpuset -s 0
Connected.
Command : vcpuset
Pinning virtual CPUs
Pinning of virtual CPUs to physical threads '0' 'yum-chekov' completed.
To conrm CPU pinning, access the Oracle VM Server running the pinned virtual
machine, (Oracle VM Manager shows which server virtual machines are running on and
the virtual machine's UUID/name), and as root type "xm vcpu-list Domain ID or
UUID". The next example shows the output from "xm vcpu-list Domain ID or UUID"
for yum-chekov. Replace 0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0 with your virtual
machines name or ID, i.e. type xm list to list the running virtual machines on a host.
# xm vcpu-list 0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0
Name
ID VCPU CPU State Time(s) CPU Anity
0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0 41
0
0 -b17.0 0
0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0 41
1
0 -b40.4 0
The next example shows how to pin both CPUs to core 0 and 3. Run ovm_vmcontrol
from the Oracle VM Manager host.
# ./ovm_vmcontrol -u admin -p password -h localhost -v yum-chekov -c vcpuset -s 0,3
Connected.
Command : vcpuset
Pinning of virtual CPUs to physical threads '0,3' 'yum-chekov' completed.
Name
0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0 41
0
0 -b17.3 0,3
0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0 41
1
3 -b40.5 0,3
23 of 27
The next example shows how to pin both CPUs to core 1 and 2. Run ovm_vmcontrol
from the Oracle VM Manager host.
Connected.
Command : vcpuset
Name
0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0 41
0
2 -b17.4 1-2
0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0 41
1
1 -b40.7 1-2
CPU Pinning and the vm.cfg File

In this section, we show how to view the CPU pinning in a virtual machine's vm.cfg le.
Each virtual machine has a vm.cfg le which controls the virual machine's resource
allocations. vm.cfg les are managed by Oracle VM Manager, editing vm.cfg les by
hand is not recomended and will cause unexpected results.
Before you can view a virtual machine's vm.cfg le, you must locate it.
To list all of the virtual machines vm.cfg les in an Oracle VM server pool, as root,
access one of the Oracle VM pool members and type:
# nd /OVS/Repositories -type f -name vm.cfg -exec grep -iH simple_name {} \;
To list a specic virtual machine's vm.cfg le, as root, access one of the Oracle VM pool
members and type:
# nd /OVS/Repositories -type f -name vm.cfg -exec grep -iH simple_name {} \; | grep
<VIRTUAL MACHINE NAME>
Note: Replace <VIRTUAL MACHINE NAME> with the virtual machines name.
Once the vm.cfg le has been located, it can be viewed using Vim (vi). Vim is the default
text editor for Oracle VM Server.
Lets locate and view a virtual machine's default unpinned vm.cfg le. The virtual
machine's vm.cfg le can be located by accessing one of the Oracle VM servers in the
24 of 27
pool, and as root, type:

nd /OVS/Repositories -type f -name vm.cfg -exec grep -iH simple_name {} \; | grep
yum-chekov
/OVS/Repositories/0004fb000003000000c6307a0210108c/VirtualMachines
/0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0/vm.cfg:OVM_simple_name = 'yum-chekov'
Note: Substitute yum-chekov with the name of your virtual machine.
Please note the maxvcpus = 2 and the vcpus = 2 entries.
# vi /OVS/Repositories/0004fb000003000000c6307a0210108c/VirtualMachines
/0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0/vm.cfg
vif = ['mac=00:21:f6:00:00:52,bridge=0004fb001025f15',
'mac=00:21:f6:00:00:69,bridge=192.168.3.0']
OVM_simple_name = 'yum-chekov'
disk = ['le:/OVS/Repositories/0004fb000003000000c6307a0210108c/VirtualDisks
/0004fb00001200001715425de783bb2a.img,xvda,w', 'le:/OVS/Repositories
/0004fb000003000000c6307a0210108c/VirtualDisks
/0004fb0000120000b400de1a5c40d6dc.img,xvdb,w', 'le:/OVS/Repositories
/0004fb00001200005266f7966823c7c8.img,xvdc,w']
uuid = '0004fb00-0006-0000-dbf9-0ab3718822c0'
on_reboot = 'restart'
boot = 'c'
cpu_weight = 27500
memory = 1024
cpu_cap = 0
maxvcpus = 2
OVM_high_availability = True
maxmem = 1024
timer_mode = 0
OVM_description = ''
on_powero = 'destroy'
on_crash = 'restart'
bootloader = '/usr/bin/pygrub'
name = '0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0'
guest_os_type = 'linux'
vfb = ['type=vnc,vncunused=1,vnclisten=127.0.0.1,keymap=en-us']
vcpus = 2
OVM_os_type = 'Oracle Linux 5'
OVM_cpu_compat_group = None
OVM_domain_type = 'xen_pvm'
:q!
The maxvcpus = 2 entry denes the maximum CPU count for the virtual machine. In
this example, maxvcpus = 2 means that the virtual machine can have up to two CPUs
(CPUs actually mean CPU cores or threads). The vcpus = 2 entry denes the
initially allocated number of CPUs. If the virtual machine has maxvcpus = 2
with vcpus = 1, 1 additional CPU could be allocated using Oracle VM Manager up to
the maxvcpus = 2 vaule.
25 of 27
Listing the above virtual machine CPU pinning with ovm_vmcontrol would show that the
virtual machine is not pinned. The next example shows the output from ovm_vmcontrol
on an unpinned virtual machine.
./ovm_vmcontrol -u admin -p password -h localhost -v yum-chekov -c vcpuget
Connected.
Command : vcpuget
Virtual Machine 'yum-sulu' has no pinned vcpus.
The next vm.cfg example shows a new line in the vm.cfg le, cpus = '1,2'. The cpus =
'1,2' entry shows that the virtual machines CPUs are pinned to the Oracle VM servers
CPU cores 1 and 2. The following example vm.cfg CPU pinning was set by typing the
following command:
Connected.
Command : vcpuset
Please note the vcpus = 2 entry, one line above the cpus = '1,2' entry. The vcpus = 2
entry denes the allocated number of CPUs.
# vi /OVS/Repositories/0004fb000003000000c6307a0210108c/VirtualMachines
/0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0/vm.cfg
vif = ['mac=00:21:f6:00:00:52,bridge=0004fb001025f15',
'mac=00:21:f6:00:00:69,bridge=192.168.3.0']
OVM_simple_name = 'yum-chekov'
disk = ['le:/OVS/Repositories/0004fb000003000000c6307a0210108c/VirtualDisks
/0004fb00001200001715425de783bb2a.img,xvda,w', 'le:/OVS/Repositories
/0004fb0000120000b400de1a5c40d6dc.img,xvdb,w', 'le:/OVS/Repositories
/0004fb00001200005266f7966823c7c8.img,xvdc,w']
uuid = '0004fb00-0006-0000-dbf9-0ab3718822c0'
on_reboot = 'restart'
boot = 'c'
cpu_weight = 27500
memory = 1024
cpu_cap = 0
maxvcpus = 2
OVM_high_availability = True
maxmem = 1024
timer_mode = 0
OVM_description = ''
on_powero = 'destroy'
26 of 27
on_crash = 'restart'
bootloader = '/usr/bin/pygrub'
name = '0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0'
guest_os_type = 'linux'
vfb = ['type=vnc,vncunused=1,vnclisten=127.0.0.1,keymap=en-us']
vcpus = 2
cpus = '1,2'
OVM_os_type = 'Oracle Linux 5'
OVM_cpu_compat_group = None
OVM_domain_type = 'xen_pvm'
:wq!
The above example vm.cfg le shows a hard partitioned virtual machine with two CPUs
using 1 Oracle processor license. The virtual machines CPUs are pinned to the Oracle
VM Servers CPU cores 1 and 2.
27 of 27

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How to Pin a Virtual Machine

Oracle Licensing and Hard and Soft Partitioning

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All other Multi-core

Single Core Servers

Note: Oracle VM for x86 exclusively uses Intel or AMD CPUs.

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CPU pinning is a manual

Soft partitioning requires all of

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partitioning requires all of the physical server's processors to be licensed. An

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Hard Partitioning RAC and RAC One Node with

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How to Pin a Virtual Machine

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Virtual Machine CPU Pinning Road Map

Conrm the Oracle VM Server CPU Topology

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App Server NUPs

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dmidecode -t 4 | grep CPU

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App Server NUPs

dmidecode -t 4 | grep CPU

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Pin CPUs with the ovm_vmcontrol Utility

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The virtual machine's ID is 0004fb0000060000dbf90ab3718822c0 with two CPUs

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1054 Nov 28 09:52 ovm_logger.8

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CPU Pinning and the vm.cfg File

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pool, and as root, type:

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