Oracle VM: The Quickest Way to Move Poolfs to A New Storage Server (Doc ID 2908992.1)

Last updated on APRIL 21, 2024

Applies to:

Purpose

A classic textbook approach to move poolfs to a new Storage Server is well documented in Doc ID 1683899.1, which requires release ownership of Repositories.

But in reality it is troublesome, because Oracle VM Manager has strict data protection mechanism built-in to prevent an Oracle VM Server or a Repository from being accidentally removed from a clustered pool, that an admin user has to carefully fiddle vDisks around to have VM configuration file and all associated vDisks be in same single Repository of all VM guests before ownership of a Repository can be finally released. If a large scale setup, it can take days to finish the storage migration of vDisks just to release ownership of all Repositories, without any other real justification of storage migration. And in some high disk space utilized setup, storage migration of vDisks are not even possible to begin with. And after all the troubles we ought to go through, downtime for VM guests is yet inevitable anyway.

To think outside the box, what does the only thing matter during this task? Data, data in Repositories to be specific.
For a NFS Repository, it is an Oracle VM Manager level property, as long as the Oracle VM Manager uuid unchanged, a NFS Repository can be mounted to any clustered or non-clustered pool under the same Oracle VM Manager.
For a global heartbeat OCFS2 Repository (Cluster File System on ISCSI LUN or FC LUN), it can be tuned altering the cluster uuid without touching the metadata/data in the File System, in this way we are transfer a global heartbeat OCFS2 Repository from one clustered pool to another.
The cluster information is disposable, even playing by the book we have to toss out the old cluster anyway.
The Oracle VM Manager Database holds no exclusive information other than the simple names admin user provides to Virtual Disks and Physical Disks, everything else other than the simple names is derived from Oracle VM Server local database.

With above clarified, now the quickest way to move poolfs to a new Storage Server presents itself: reconstruct everything without touching the Repository data.

Despite scale of the setup, method mentioned in this document can get job done within 1 hour to 2 hours top, proven dozens of times in real world scenarios.

Scope

This document applies to Oracle VM 3.2.x to 3.4.x. 

Details

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