HP Integrity Virtual Machines 4.2: Installation, Configuration, and Administration
Multipath options for a Virtual FileDisk device are discussed in Section 7.2.1.3 (page 105).
NOTE: Each Integrity VM guest can support a maximum of 30 Virtual FileDisks (combined
limit for both AVIO and VIO).
7.2.2.3.4 Virtual DVDs
A Virtual DVD is an emulated SCSI DVD-ROM with virtual media that comes from a disc inside
of a CD/DVD drive on the VM Host. The VM Host CD/DVD drive is specified using an HP-UX
sdisk character device file.
While the Virtual DVD is read-only, the slowness of the physical VM Host CD/DVD drives
prohibits them from being shared across active virtual machines. Thus only one active virtual
machine at time should be given a particular Virtual DVD resource. Virtual DVD resources can
be changed dynamically between active virtual machines (see Section 7.3 (page 118)).
Because the Virtual DVDs are read only, they do not require management to prevent conflicts
writing to the device. However, to prevent sensitive information from being accessed by the
wrong virtual machine, make sure you know which virtual machine currently owns the device
before you load a CD/DVD. This information can be found on the VM Host with the hpvmstatus
commands.
The agile Virtual DVD resource statement takes the following form:
dvd:scsi::disk:/dev/rdisk/disk#
where /dev/rdisk/disk# is an HP-UX esdisk character device file for a VM Host CD/DVD
drive. The legacy Virtual DVD resource statement takes the form
dvd:scsi::disk:/dev/rdsk/cXtYdZ, where /dev/rdsk/cXtYdZ is an HP-UX sdisk
character device file for a VM Host CD/DVD drive.
Typically, the HP-UX esdisk and sdisk character files will already be created before booting
the VM Host. If they are not, they can be created and managed using the ioscan, insf, and
rmsf utilities. For example:
# ioscan -NfunC disk
disk 7 64000/0xfa00/0x6 esdisk CLAIMED DEVICE
TEAC DW-224E
/dev/disk/disk7 /dev/rdisk/disk7
# diskinfo /dev/rdsk/disk7
SCSI describe of /dev/rdsk/disk7:
vendor: TEAC
product id: DW-224E
type: CD-ROM
size: 4300800 Kbytes
bytes per sector: 2048
In this example, the Virtual DVD resource statement is dvd:scsi::disk:/dev/rdisk/disk7.
For a virtual machine to recognize a Virtual DVD, physical media must be present inside the
VM Host CD/DVD drive. If media is not added at virtual machine start time, it can be inserted
into the VM Host CD/DVD drive after the virtual machine is already up. A rescan by the guest
OS picks up the new media and adds the Virtual DVD to the virtual machine.
If for some reason the VM Host Administrator requires control of the VM Host CD/DVD drive
claimed by a virtual machine but has no media for the VM Host CD/DVD drive, then a Virtual
NullDVD should be specified (see Section 7.2.2.3.6 (page 115)). Physical media can then be inserted
into the VM Host CD/DVD drive and become virtual media for a Virtual DVD using the
hpvmmodify or the virtual console's insert command (see Section 7.3.1.2 (page 119)).
After the Virtual DVD is in the virtual machine, the VM Host CD/DVD drive is locked. The VM
Host CD/DVD drive is automatically unlocked when the virtual machine is shut down. The VM
Host CD/DVD can also be changed while the virtual machine is up using the virtual console's
114 Creating Virtual Storage Devices