Here is a question about updating Oracle VM:

Question:
How can I perform Oracle VM 3 server updates from Oracle VM Manager?

Answer by Gregory King, Principal Best Practices Consultant, Oracle VM Product Management:
Server Update Manager is a built-in feature of the Oracle VM Manager. Basically, Server Update Manager automatically configures YUM updates on all the Oracle VM Servers, pointing each to our Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) update channel for Oracle VM. The servers periodically check with our Oracle YUM repository and notify the Oracle VM Manager that an update is available for each server. Actual server updates must be triggered by the Oracle VM administrator – they are not executed automatically.

At this point, you can use the Oracle VM Manager to put a server into maintenance mode which live migrates all the running Oracle VM Guests to other Oracle VM Servers in the server pool. Once all the Oracle VM Guests have been migrated, the Oracle VM administrator can trigger the update on the server. The entire process is documented in the Installation and Upgrade Guide of Oracle VM Documentation so I won’t spend time detailing the steps.

However, configuring the Server Update Manager is exceedingly simple. Simply navigate to the Tools and Resources tab in the Oracle VM Manager, select the link for Server Update Manager and ensure the following values are added to the text boxes as shown in the illustration below:

• YUM Base URL: http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleVM/OVM3/latest/x86_64
• YUM GPG Key: file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle

Every server in the pool will be automatically configured for YUM updates once you choose the Apply button.

Many thanks to Greg and Rick for providing the answers to this week's questions. If you want to ask us something, hit up Twitter and use hashtag #AskOracleVirtualization. See you next week!

-Chris