VMware Cloud Community
vmNewb35
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Attn Oracle DBAs

We are getting ready (or at least entertaining the idea of) to switch to Oracle 11g on RHEL. We understand that this is a very successful configuration in the IT world currently. We are wanting to run this on ESX and will thus be adding additional licensed copies to our environment should this be the final direction.

1. Is this a good fit for VMWare (i.e. are you folks doing it currently?)

2. We will be running EPM (PeopleSoft) on this and we understand that it is fairly intensive model building and data warehousing.

3. We have been told that it will require major cpu and ram but, like everything else, this is generally not the case once you put it on VMWare as you end up seeing how little of it gets used.

I would appreciate any and all answers/thoughts. We will also be looking at professional help for this implementation should we go down this path so any suggestions you have along these lines would be appreciated too.

Thanks!

Reply
0 Kudos
23 Replies
esiebert7625
Immortal
Immortal

Oracle has some goofy licensing when it comes to virtual servers, they essentially license off the physical hardware that the server is on and not the virtual hardware assigned to the Oracle VM.

IBM/Oracle licensing with virtual servers - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=94868

There have been a few posts on people running Oracle...

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=703431&#703431

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=711348&#711348

vmNewb35
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

When you say goofy Eric, I think you are politely saying 'makes little to no sense without reading a WHOLE bunch of stuff!' Who has time to read this stuff? Where is the easy button?

So what I have seen from the posts you listed are: No, Oracle will only support what you can duplicate on 'real' hardware and Yes, VMWare is a partner. I remember seeing someone else post a while back, a VMWare employee, that said that VM/Oracle are business partners.

I guess I need a definitive answer for the CIO...a la: yes this is viable and wise; no, this is not recommended.

/frustrated...

Message was edited by: me

Reply
0 Kudos
esiebert7625
Immortal
Immortal

Yeah definitely being polite about it, they seem very arrogant to not recognize and support licensing models in virtual environment.

http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/partitioning.pdf

Reply
0 Kudos
vmNewb35
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Now that made some sense...so let's summarize:

If you can't hard partition (a la LPARs, etc.) you must pay for the total number of CPUs on the box. But if you have 16 CPUs and you cut an LPAR for 8 and run Oracle solely for this partition then you only pay an 8-way license.

Sounds like if you go VMWare with Oracle, you will pay for the number of CPUs you build into the VM and then license that way. And if you end up needing more, then you will pay additional costs as you grow.

Unless I have missed the boat entirely, this[/u] seems to be reasonable. Thanks a bunch for finding that Eric.

Now as to whether or not it is a good solution, remains to be answered by you guys a whole lot smarter than me. I figured this thread would get tackled with all kinds of posts since it seems Oracle has such a strong market share/presence.

Reply
0 Kudos
petedr
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

We migrated Oracle production environments to VMs many years ago and our licensing was not an issue since all of our licenses were based on Named Users. I have not done any Oracle licensing recently so I don't know if that is still an option.

www.thevirtualheadline.com www.liquidwarelabs.com
vmNewb35
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

That's interesting because this is a really isolated app that only a few budget/finance gurus will use (possibly a max of 10). I will definitely have to ask the Oracle rep about this when I call on him/her. Thanks for that petedr[/b]

Reply
0 Kudos
petedr
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

That may be a better option with the low user count.

www.thevirtualheadline.com www.liquidwarelabs.com
Reply
0 Kudos
vmNewb35
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Most definitely...if they will go this route.

Reply
0 Kudos
vmNewb35
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hello? Testing 1..2..3 Hello? Anybody out there? Are you guys going to let Eric get ALL the points again?[/b] Surely there are hundreds of Oracle aces out there.

Anybody know how tough the RHCT and RHCE exams are??? We are switching to RHEL too...I guess next they will switch us to Xen now that I have my VCP.... Smiley Happy

Reply
0 Kudos
esiebert7625
Immortal
Immortal

Surely there are hundreds of Oracle aces out there.

There have been a few postings about Oracle in the forums but noboby really responds (except petedr). They must be all running HP/UX or not virtualizing there servers.

Reply
0 Kudos
vmNewb35
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I guess you are right on this too...looks like you and petedr are the point getters this week (again). Smiley Wink

I had assumed (wrongly I guess) that the world was full of Oracle-types. I guess I need to join ome Oracle boards then.

Reply
0 Kudos
vmNewb35
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks to Eric and Pete so far...they get the helpful points. I will leave this question unanswered for now in hopes that somebody shows up with some more deep-dive info. Chad

Reply
0 Kudos
petedr
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

thanks, you see Oracle posts come up on vmtn once and awhile but not that many. When I was running my Oracle environment I mainly used metalink for Oracle issue searching.

I definitely think Oracle is a good fit for running as a VM. Lots of benefits, ease of backups, not being hardware dependent, creation of development and testing environments ( VMs make much easier ), patch and code testing with snapshots ( in our dev environments ), etc.

www.thevirtualheadline.com www.liquidwarelabs.com
Reply
0 Kudos
jdisnard
Contributor
Contributor

I have a few customer who have deployed Oracle 10g on my ESX cluster.

In general, make sure to avoid using the balloon driver at all cost.

The memory reservation must match the memory allocation for success.

Carve a dedicated lun for oracle data and another for logs.

My opinion, Oracle is bumpy ride on ESX, but I have to admit that it does work, especially if it's given a dedicated esx in your cluster. That said, why not just give dedicated hardware to RHEL in the first place.

good luck

Reply
0 Kudos
petedr
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Every environment is different but we ran an Oracle applications production environment ( 11.5.9, 9.2.0.2 database ) as a VM for about 7 years with a lot of success. We actually first ran it under GSX and then move to ESX.

www.thevirtualheadline.com www.liquidwarelabs.com
Reply
0 Kudos
ZippySLC
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

My company develops software for managing and deploying Oracle databases. We have close to 100 VM's running Oracle, including single instance as well as RAC in VMWare, for development, QA, and customer demos.

We also are experimenting with it in Sun Logical Domains, but so far the results are disappointing there.

We've been very happy with our success running Oracle in VMWare.

Reply
0 Kudos
petedr
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Its good to hear about some other Oracle success stories with vmware.

www.thevirtualheadline.com www.liquidwarelabs.com
Reply
0 Kudos
aandriolli
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

You may be interested in reading Ten Reason Why ESX is the best platform to run Oracle.

I used to be an Oracle DBA myself, and it makes perfect sense for me.

[VMs Made in Brazil|http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/aandriolli] PS: por favor considere dar pontos a este ou qualquer outro post caso lhe seja útil.
Reply
0 Kudos
petedr
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

thanks I just saw the posted the other day on the VMTN blog pages.

www.thevirtualheadline.com www.liquidwarelabs.com
Reply
0 Kudos