6.1 Server Pool Overview

A server pool consists of one or more Oracle VM Servers, and represents a logical view of the storage where the virtual machines reside.

A server pool is scalable. If you find a server pool does not have sufficient resources, such as CPU or memory, to run the virtual machines, you can expand the server pool by adding more Oracle VM Servers. See Section 6.9.2, “Adding an Oracle VM Server to a Server Pool”.

Oracle VM's deployment architecture utilizes server pools, with shared access to storage across Oracle VM Servers in the server pool. Virtual machines are stored on the shared storage and placed on one of the Oracle VM Servers to balance the workloads of the server pool.

Since the virtual machines are not bound to any specific Oracle VM Server in the server pool, virtual machines are not prevented from starting up simply because an individual Oracle VM Server happens to be down for maintenance or otherwise unavailable at the time. Further, options are provided to specify the start policy for the virtual machines in the server pool. The start policy can implement a load-balancing algorithm that assures that a virtual machine is only started on the Oracle VM Server with the most resources available. Load balancing is achieved using the same algorithms used for Dynamic Power Management (DPM) and for the Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). Load-balancing further helps assure the maximum aggregate performance from the server pool.