Ten Reasons Why Oracle Databases Run Best on VMware

[admin]

New from VMware's performance team:

Ten Reasons Why Oracle Databases Run Best on VMware

We're really excited about the buzz around Oracle in virtualized environments. One of the best kept secrets is just how well Oracle performs on VMware ESX. This didn't happen by accident - there are a number of features and performance optimizations in the VMware ESX server architecture, specifically for databases.

In this blog, I'll walk through the top ten most important features for getting the best database performance. Here are a few of the performance highlights:

• Near Native Performance: Oracle databases run at performance similar to that of a physical system

• Extreme Database I/O Scalability: VMware ESX Server's thin hypervisor layer can drive over 63,000 database I/Os per second (fifty times the requirement of a typical database)

• Multi-core Scaling: Scale up using SMP virtual machines and multiple database instances

• Large Memory: Scalable memory - 64GB per database, 256GB per host

We've continued to invest a great deal of work towards optimizing Oracle performance on VMware, because it's already one of the most commonly virtualized applications. The imminent ESX 3.5 release is our best database platform to date, with several new advanced optimizations.

In this blog article we'd like to explain the unique and demanding nature of database applications such as Oracle produces and show the performance capabilities of ESX Server on this type of workload.

[esiebert7625]

I think the biggest challenge to virtualizing Oracle on VMware is their very diificult support and licensing terms, especially now that they announced their own virtualization offering. Oracle is an example of one of those companies that do not like to play nice with others. I think VMware would be smart to team with Microsoft/IBM to offer discounts to people who virtualize SQL/DB2 on VMware to combat Oracle's arrogant attitude. Their Oracle VM FAQ says: "Oracle VM is the only x86-based server virtualization environment on which Oracle products are supported." More on this at the below link:

http://www.virtualization.info/2007/11/oracle-announces-its-own-xen-based.html

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Thanks, Eric

Visit my website:

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[admin]

Eric -- my understanding is that what you quote is not the complete story. From this page on Virtualizing Your Oracle Landscape:

Oracle will provide support for issues that either are known to occur on the native OS, or demonstrated as not being a result of running on VMware Infrastructure. Please refer to article 249212.1 on Oracle metalink for details.

I think if Oracle customers are unsatisfied with this policy, they should let Oracle know.

[esiebert7625]

Judging from the page on the website and the recent document posted in the forums it looks like VMware is really making a push to get Oracle users on ESX. That link to the metalink article is not publically available, I've asked our Oracle dba's to see if they can send me the contents of that article. I agree the best way to get Oracle to change some of there support and licensing policies is for there customers to make some noise. I have a collection of Oracle links on my website also.

http://vmware-land.com/Vmware_Links.html#Oracle

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Thanks, Eric

Visit my website:

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[esiebert7625]

Here's the contents of that article:

Subject: Support Status for VMWare

Doc ID: Note:249212.1 Type: ANNOUNCEMENT

Last Revision Date: 03-JUL-2007 Status: PUBLISHED

Purpose

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Explain to customers how Oracle supports our products when running on VMware

Scope & Application

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For Customers running Oracle products on VMware virtualized environments.

No limitation on use or distribution.

Support Status for VMware Virtualized Environments

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Oracle has not certified any of its products on VMware virtualized

environments. Oracle Support will provide support for Oracle products

when running on VMware in the following manner: Oracle will only provide

support for issues that either are known to occur on the native OS, or

can be demonstrated not to be as a result of running on VMware.

If a problem is a known Oracle issue, Oracle support will recommend the

appropriate solution on the native OS. If that solution does not work in

the VMware virtualized environment, the customer will be referred to VMware

for support. When the customer can demonstrate that the Oracle solution

does not work when running on the native OS, Oracle will resume support,

including logging a bug with Oracle Development for investigation if required.

If the problem is determined not to be a known Oracle issue, we will refer

the customer to VMware for support. When the customer can demonstrate

that the issue occurs when running on the native OS, Oracle will resume

support, including logging a bug with Oracle Development for investigation

if required.

NOTE: Oracle has not certified any of its products on VMWare, but use of

Oracle products in the RAC environment is specifically not supported.

This is noted because some Oracle product demonstrations have been conducted

in a RAC environment using VMware. These are demonstrations only and not

certified for use by customers.

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Thanks, Eric

Visit my website:

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[admin]

We should start a separate thread on support.

The VROOM! blog post above was impressive (at least for me) -- I hadn't seen the performance numbers laid out explicitly like that alongside the other features (like large pages, NUMA support, and page-sharing) -- and the ESX Server 3.5 IO numbers were pretty amazing. All hypervisors are not alike!

I think there was "conventional wisdom" about database virtualization floating around from a few years back that may not have been true even then, but is certainly not true today.

[MartijnLo]

The problem of Oracle licensing remains however and if you don't address licensing before you start deploying Oracle VM's than you can get into serious trouble with Oracle's license audit team.