Oracle Linux Reviews

My company is based out of Virginia. I do a lot of work with the federal government.

I absolutely love how I can go out, get Oracle Linux, develop something with the Identity and Access Management, and be able to deploy, it and test it, and work on it very, very quickly. That's absolutely what I love, how portable it is and how much it relates. 

If the enterprise I work for has licenses for Red Hat, I don't have to go get a license from Red Hat to start working on my Oracle product. But, once it's developed in Oracle Linux, I can easily take it, and adapt it, and move it onto Red Hat, and it works seamlessly. 

Benefits: If you start with Oracle Linux, you can adapt to any of the Oracle products a little bit easier than any other OS. 

The kernel could be expanded, a little bit more maximized to work with Kubernetes and the like. That's probably where they are going to go, a little bit more orchestration, system maintenance management.

The ability to do self-diagnostics. Run one command and it runs top head memory, tell me what's going on. The ability for the OS to regulate itself, to do self-diagnostics, so you could take out the UNIX admins and the UNIX supports. Tell me what's really wrong, right now in the OS, what does it look like right now?

Stability, scalability, like I said, it compares directly with Red Hat. In some things, the packages, the ability to reach out to the Oracle yum packages, and do automatic updates, it gives you the ability to scale. 

Patching, there's quarterly patches. I actually think they may even do bi-weekly patches now for Oracle Linux. 

The scalability, as long as you have someone to manage it, you're good to go and it's right up there in reliability with the Red Hat stuff.

I can't tell you any experience about the Oracle Linux. But Oracle Support in general, I have to put in tickets for Identity Management all the time. They usually come back, depending on the severity of the problem, within a reasonable amount of time, and I always get what I need. 

At an organizational level, I would love to see them going more Oracle Linux, actually adapting that, getting rid of a little bit of the Red Hat, the notion that Red Hat is the best. I want to see Oracle Linux, it's expanding. 

I think all the stuff that they are doing with analytics and all this work with the autonomous database, it's only going to get to the point where you're going to have autonomous OS's and Linux is going to be autonomous. Why not move to Oracle Linux now? It'll be easier than to move off in the future.

If you don't know Linux, then go learn some Linux. But relatively, if you want to set up a virtual box, set up the Oracle Linux stuff, it's pretty much drag, drop, click, click, click.

I wish my enterprise would adapt it, so I give it a 10 out of 10 in my book. But I guess we'll have to give it a seven and eight out of 10 from an enterprise level, just because they haven't bought in yet.

If you're going to go into the Oracle industry, learn Oracle Linux, learn the ins and outs, and it'll help you out. Like I said, with the whole cloud infrastructure, the whole cloud architecture, I think Oracle Linux is the way to go.

The operating system is tweaked to work well with Oracle DB and other Oracle applications. Some kernel parameters have already been adjusted to suit Oracle products.

Ksplice is a cool feature with Oracle Linux that allows you to patch your systems without reboot.

The DTrace tool is available for debugging issues. If you’re a Solaris professional, you might be used to it and it’s always handy.

The Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS2) works well with OVM and other cluster scenarios.

All these features come with the Oracle Linux UEK kernel, however a Red Hat supported kernel is also available. It always feels good to have a choice.

I think it’s fair to compare this product to Red Hat Linux and although both OSs almost have same features, Oracle Linux is cost effective.

You can expect it to work well with Oracle products like OVM and Oracle OpenStack. I have been using it on physical boxes, VMware vSphere and Oracle Virtualization for x86.

As someone who has also worked with service based companies, I would say the choice of using Oracle Linux will depend on the environment.

Oracle environment: If you plan to run mostly Oracle products in your environment, then Oracle Linux is a good choice since you don’t have to run behind multiple vendors for troubleshooting. It also gives you a chance to convince Oracle to throw in some discounts.

Cost: If cost is a big factor in your environment, you could save some money by going for Oracle Linux support.

Availability: Linux has seen increases in security patches and most of these kernel patches require reboot. The Ksplice feature comes in handy if your environment can’t afford any downtime.

Despite these cool features, the choice would depend on over all IT goals and is mostly driven by two factors: how your environment is setup and how you plan to support your IT infrastructure.

The product is not very different from the market leader Red Hat Linux Operating System.

However, it has some issues when run in a virtualized environment. These NTP and other bugs get worse with the kind of support Oracle provides for Oracle Linux. Oracle support drags out issues and they like to play ping-pong between various teams.

I faced few issues with time sync on Oracle Linux when running on OVM & I had a tough time resolving it with Oracle support.
They could not provide any proper solution & dragged out the issue for a very long time.

I have been using Oracle Linux for over three years.

The operating system is fairly stable.

We have not had any scalability issues.

I rate them at 2.5/5. This is a big area of improvement for this product. Even the knowledge base isn’t as good as Red Hat’s.

I have used both OL5 and OL6. The choice depends on the application running on the OS.

Setup is not different from other OSs in the market.

You can certainly save money on support.

I have worked with other Linux distributions like Ubuntu and CentOS. I have also worked with Oracle Solaris, HPUX, and AIX.

Make sure you have good Linux support staff.

The first most valuable feature of Oracle Linux is its kernel design to meet business needs, especially on other Oracle products like Engineered Systems and Cloud Services. It supports demanding workloads such as those on Oracle Database; has features such as Btrfs, Dtrace, OCFS2, Smart Flash Cache, InfiniBand, OpenStack, Linux Container and Docker; and supports data integrity by providing hardware fault management.

Secondly, the Ksplice feature enables zero-downtime kernel updates for bugs and critical security updates. It also minimizes security risks by keeping the system up to date without downtime. It will provide critical kernel patches for both kernel and user space without needing to reboot.

Third, it supports the automatic storage management library for Oracle Database and Oracle Clusterware for Linux.

Lastly, with Spacewalk, you can manage and monitor systems in different locations.

The Oracle Linux OS plays a significant role in my organization. We've moved most of our systems and applications that were running on Windows, Solaris 10, and Red Hat and consolidated them on our database machine with Exadata, Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, Oracle Secure Backup/NetBackup, Domain, NTP, and Oracle VM Manager. We've also deployed many of our business applications using Oracle Linus and the Oracle VM hypervisor.

I think there's a lot of room for improvement. As our business shifts to virtualization and the cloud, the Oracle Linux infrastructure has seen a lot of changes. And even as virtualization consolidates servers and hypervisors have matured and assumed a strategic position within our datacenter, many applications still don't run on hypervisors. Instead, they run on OS's that run on top of hypervisors. This means that in order for there to be a larger impact, there are some improvements that could be made, such as:

• Optimization of Linux for the virtual environment.
• Containers. We think that the Linux OS will be a great candidate to host container-packaged application workloads. It's still early in the development process, but we expect Oracle to significantly adopt this technology. Oracle has already started deploying some images using Docker with WebLogic and Storage Cloud.
• New deployment models. With virtualization, there are now new ways to deploy software, such as with software appliances and the integrated stack of OS and application software. Oracle Linux should be tailored and optimized to run a single application and managed as a single entity.
• Cloud adoption. With the shift towards cloud application deployments, changes in architecture and delivery model are necessary, which will impact other areas of the datacenter ecosystem.

I'd also like to see Oracle Linux for SPARC. Oracle announced last year the SuperCluster M7, SPARC T7, and SPARC M7 servers, all based on the 32-core, 256-thread M7 microprocessor. If this is supported on Oracle Linux, it will be the first end-to-end implementation of data security in hardware for the Linux foundation. Oracle currently doesn't offer support for Linux for SPARC.

We started using Oracle Linux kernel at our data center in 2014. It was deployed on Oracle Exadata X4-2.

We didn’t encounter any issue during the deployment of Oracle Linux for many different platforms.

We have had no issues with the stability. The OS is stable and reliable on a hardware layer stack, and Oracle has done a very good job of that. Oracle has done a good job of validating hardware Oracle Linux Hardware Certification List. We are very happy with the investment we have made.

There have been no issues scaling it.

Oracle provides enterprise-level support for Oracle Linux:

• Zero-downtime kernel updates with Ksplice.
• Management and clustering software is included at no additional charge.
• Includes premier backports, legal indemnification, and full-stack testing.

We used Red Hat, Solaris x86-64 bit, but we chose Oracle Linux for the reasons above.

Oracle Linux is straightforward in its initial setup because it comes with a pre-installed package that for installation of other Oracle products or Oracle Database on Oracle Linux with UEK. The pre-installed package download includes a software package, repertories, and specific versions needed for application installation.

In-house. For this environment, the greatest value gained from implementing Oracle Linux resulted from implementing the management pack components and clustering software that we would have to pay for otherwise. Another was very specific with regard to the value of Ksplice, with which we can update our environment with latest patches and updates with zero-downtime.

From our review of Oracle Linux software and support, we believe that tangible ROI benefits can be realized from consolidating the enterprise Linux environment to Oracle Linux.

Pricing/licensing is much lower than other commercial Linux distributions. For Oracle Linux support is available at Basic and Premier levels via a yearly subscription that includes support for the UEK and/or the Red Hat Compatible Kernel. Support levels can be assigned on a per-physical server basis. Customers can choose either Oracle’s Enterprise manager (included with Basic and Premier Support licenses) or Oracle’s release of Spacewalk for Oracle Linux. Pricing is calculated on a per-system basis and varies with the level of support from Basic to Premier. A free support option is also available.

I have recommend Oracle Linux for the reason Oracle is the only vendor in the industry that offers a complete Linux-based solution stack—applications, middleware, database, management tools, operating system and hardware—along with a single point of support. Customers that deploy Oracle Linux benefit greatly from the latest Linux innovations as well as rigorous testing with real world workloads. IT departments can deploy applications more quickly using lightweight Linux Containers and Docker images, or combine these approaches to improve application isolation, resource control, and rapid provisioning.

Traditional virtualization using Oracle VM can be an optimal approach for Tier 1 applications or when application requirements dictate the need for multiple operating systems. To deliver applications as private cloud services, Oracle OpenStack technology may be an ideal approach in conjunction with Oracle VM. In any of these deployment scenarios, Oracle Linux can add value through its optimized performance and scalability and the ability to perform seamless, zero-downtime upgrades with Ksplice.

As the number of application environments expands across data centers, managing them on a day-to-day basis becomes a greater administrative challenge and expense. Customers that have Oracle Linux Premier Support contracts can use Ksplice to help keep their critical application environments—whether using containers, VMs, or OpenStack compute nodes—updated with the latest security errata and bug fixes, without interruption.

And Oracle’s comprehensive support—providing support for Docker and OpenStack as a part of Oracle Linux Premier Support—helps IT organizations innovate and evolve cost-effectively.

We are using Oracle Linux for our database.

Oracle Linux is very secure making it one of the most valuable features. Additionally, it is easy to manage.

Oracle Linux could improve by having more documentation.

I have been using Oracle Linux for approximately 12 years.

The solution is highly stable.

We have approximately 100 users using this solution in my organization.

The initial setup is straightforward because there are a lot of documents available to follow.

I rate Oracle Linux a nine out of ten.

Docker containers allow you to deploy a lot of workloads at scale. If you can think of the old batch jobs, what they do is allow us to deploy that into the cloud so we can elastically expand or contract and only pay for what we use. I think that's part of it.

You have high availability, so you can run your containers in multiple availability zones. They're very cost-effective, much more cost-effective than writing your own scripts. And they're layered so they're very lightweight; they don't consume quite as many resources as how we would traditionally deploy this.

I would really like to see more frequent releases and I would like to see a very lightweight kernel for embedded systems. I'm really anticipating the new Oracle Database XE as it relates to Oracle Linux because now I can run that in production, and that was just announced as well.

It's young, so I think it's fair that they have some work to do. A little bit more variability, the ability to expand, take advantage of bare metal. I think that that's really going to be a key as they grow.

The Oracle container engine is actually built on the Enterprise Linux kernel. So I think it's extremely stable and secure. I think it's one of the most stable and secure Linux variants in the world. When we actually build our Docker containers we utilize Oracle Linux as a basis for those as well.

I think what's great about it is if you're a small customer you can install Oracle Linux, just pull it down off of the site, update it. And if you're a large customer you can go with the unbreakable kernel. You can run that on on-premise, and when you go to the cloud which, of course, is scaled out to literally millions of nodes, it's the basis for all of Oracle's cloud.

What's great is having the Oracle Linux, also having Oracle products. You've really goy one vendor to call. Some people like to say one neck to choke but I say one hand to high-five.

You might have a development team that kind of runs off and goes rogue and installs several different operating systems. Or they've assembled a Docker container and deployed it in the Cloud under the guise of microservices. The first time you have a hiccup with that, or the credit card doesn't process and you don't know where to find the code or the developer, I think at that point you really need to put some controls in place.

When it comes to important criteria when selecting a vendor, I think experience is there, but they really have to care. They have to own the problems; I think owning your client's problems is the number one thing.

We are a system integrator from Slovenia and we work extensively with OVM and Linux products.

Definitely price. And when it comes to OVM, apart from License benefits, we see that it's possible to monitor all Oracle products across the Oracle infrastructure with one product, Oracle Enterprise Manager, in combination with OVM Manager. To have a single source of truth, that is really, really valuable for us.

I think there is always room for improvement. We would like to see new features, we would like to see lots of enhancements, especially in OVM, because Linux is already stable enough and for us it does the job.

In OVM, I think it's hot cloning. I think it's also more analytical capabilities, reporting could be significantly improved, and also SLI dashboards, so that we can follow and monitor SLI more precisely and more profoundly.

Linux is stable. OVM could be better but it's still stable enough to do day-to-day operations.

Yes it's scalable, but we don't have a big installation. We only have four physical servers with two OVM server pools, so it's not really a very extensive installation. We don't see any projects on the horizon that will extend this to a large scale but, so far so good, we are happy with it.

Support is good, we have OVM support and Linux support. OVM support, especially, has proved to be very valuable because they provide us with code and scripts that are already developed for other customers. Otherwise, it would take a couple of days or even a week to develop on our own. In this way, we share the knowledge that was acquired by Oracle at other customers' sites and that's really great, it cuts the time needed to do the job.

Linux is a 10 out of 10. I would say that it's very affordable, that it's very stable, it has a great community behind it, and it's also very scalable and it performs really, really well. Up-time could be two to three years, which is unbelievable compared to the Windows world, for example.

The ones I really appreciate are things like the fact that, from a costing perspective, it is only the support cost. That's the only thing you have to pay for.

There are the little hidden things like Kubernetes of packaging, OpenStack, it's all built in to the subscription as part of Oracle Linux. When you get Oracle Linux, you get OpenStack and Kubernetes which, is coming down the path.

Ksplice is a huge piece for us for supportability as well.

Pre-validated configuration is a huge benefit for us, because we're doing database installation all the time. 

I think the biggest benefits you'll see are things like rapid deployment, things like templates. Again, like I mentioned before about validated configuration. You don't have to set individual parameters, and set up settings. DBAs just run this RPM and, boom, you have an environment that's already pre-configured, pre-set for Oracle configurations.

Kubernetes, as I mentioned before, that's coming down soon. 

Stability and scalability, we don't have any issues. We're running it on PCA, we're running on bare metal, we're running on different cloud configurations, OVM. For us, UEK versions 2 and 3 have been very stable and very scalable. We run RAC on it as well.

That's interesting because I came from Oracle support, it's near and dear to my heart. One of the beauties of Oracle support is the fact that the guys who are in Oracle support actually came from Oracle database support. So when you make a call to Oracle support, if you're calling about a web or app server, especially a database server, they know exactly what you're talking about, because they came from that world. You don't have to explain to them what a database is, what a process is. They totally get it.

Very straightforward. Setting up Linux, we usually use templates, ISO images. We use Spacewalk, which is part of the subscription model, it's free; so we use Spacewalk quite a bit.

I always tell them, if you're running Oracle workloads like database, that's a natural fit for Oracle Linux. Because, like I said, It's pre-configured, you get to validate configuration, you get Spacewalk, support. It's a nice little bundle.

When selecting a vendor, the things we focus on are high availability, scalability, and business requirements. All those things come together. We figure out whether it's a RAC solution, OVM solution, virtualize, a middle-tier stack that all fit in together.

I would say it's a nine out of 10. Start using it. If you're familiar with Red Hat, you're going to be familiar with Oracle Linux. It's pretty much the same thing, so start investing time and testing it in-house.

It’s a good product. It’s Linux.

Oracle Linux is Red Hat Linux is Linux. It is a good and evolving platform that is an excellent base for today’s world where uptime and commodity hardware are the expected norm.

Linux is a cost effective substitute for Unix.

Support could be improved.

I have been using Oracle Linux for over five years.

Of course, we have had stability issues. Linux is a work in progress.

We have not had any scalability issues.

I rate technical support 3/5. The support for Oracle Linux is effective for less difficult problems. We had problems with support when an engineering level of review was required; Oracle basically said they couldn’t help.

We were using Red Hat Linux. We went to Oracle because of licensing problems. We went back to Red Hat because of support problems.

Setup is somewhat complex. It’s Linux.

Oracle Linux saves money, but it is at the expense of support.

We evaluated Red Hat Linux.

Support for difficult problems is lacking.