Oracle Linux Reviews

Oracle Linux is mainly used for deploying Oracle databases. It can be used for a multitude of other functions. There are modules that can be implemented on systems to cater to your organization's needs.

The most valuable features are performance, frequent update patches, and security.

The solution could improve by giving the client or customer more control.

I have been using this solution for approximately five years.

The solution is very stable.

I have found the solution to be scalable. They have other options available, such as cloud and hybrid versions.

If you have premium technical support it is great, they have been responsive in solving our issues.

The installation is easy, there are readily available reference guides you can utilize to complete the installation. It took approximately two hours to complete the install.

The deployment and maintenance are done by vendor teams.

There is a license required for this solution and we are on an annual license.

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate Oracle Linuxan eight out of ten.

Healthcare IT.

Stable Oracle deployments.

Easy Oracle integration: Oracle preinstall packages available on YUM.

Kernel updates.

It's very easy to use. We have admins who have been able to administer this product. It is user-friendly. On top of that, we don't have any major issues with this product. The main issue we have with other, similar products that we use is performance. This product does not have any performance issues.

We are using it on a normal scale, but we are using a competitor application on a large scale. The application and the OS that we are using on a large scale has some performance issues. If we are talking about this application for this product, we are satisfied with the performance; we are satisfied with the output and throughput; and we have satisfied customers.

On top of that, this application does not break as compared to other applications.

I would like to see portability to other hardware, such as Dell and Intel platforms, instead of just putting a blinder on only Oracle products or Oracle hardware. The portability is the main challenge, I think. We should be able to port this application to other hardware and other vendors.

This product is more stable as compared to the competitor product that we have. It is more reliable. It doesn't break quite as often. It's user-friendly.

I don't think that it's that scalable, because you have to install Oracle Linux on an Oracle proprietary product. It is not that scalable; meaning, if you want to install this product on Dell or any other platform, you cannot do that. You have to buy an Oracle product in order to use this operating system.

Oracle technical support is quite good. We always have a few issues in this environment. They're user friendly; they’re cooperative with the customer. Their customer app is also excellent, and they provide excellent support.

Actually, my team was involved in supporting this product after it's built. We are in IT operations, so all the support after the handover was done through my team.

About 10 years ago, we were using this product a lot. Over the years, when we saw that it was not that scalable, we looked around for different solutions. We moved new applications onto the new product’s environment. This one we left as-is, so right now, it is in containment; meaning, any new product or any new applications are not porting into this application.

The number one criteria when choosing a vendor such as Oracle is reliability. Number two is cost. Number three is efficacy.

We chose this solution because it doesn’t break down. It provides good performance. It's reliable. Reliability was one of the factors in the decision to choose this.

If you are looking for a reliable product, this is the product. If you're looking for anything which can be scalable, you might need to look something else.

Based on performance, I would rate it higher. Based on scalability, I would rate it lower.

Well, the most valuable features are not the technical features. The most valuable feature is more of a support case feature. They build the operating system, we also run on Oracle hardware, and we run an Oracle database on top of that. The big benefit is having one vendor to go to for your hardware questions, your database questions and the operating system in the middle. So it makes life a lot easier. In general, they know more about it. They are simple cases, because you've got everything from one vendor.

One technical aspect I like is Ksplicing. You can patch Linux without having downtime.

Those two combined with the sophistication from Oracle products on Oracle Linux sums it up. Ksplicing and a certified one-vendor approach is in many cases the biggest benefits.

In general, if they move off from Windows, they will see quite heavy cost-cutting. You've got some heavier costs when you move off from Red Hat and especially if you combine it with the hardware deal where you run it on Oracle hardware. You get the support for the operating system for free; it's quite a major case. That is something you can expect and see a return on investment quite quickly.

In all honesty, there are not that many additional benefits except for the money and the other items I've mentioned, in relation to Red Hat, because the operating systems are quite the same. It is more about the financial and support and Ksplicing; those are the main differentiators. But, in general, we see customers going down in costs when they move off from Red Hat to Oracle Linux.

Regarding areas for improvement, I think they follow the main kernel filler. The only thing from what I can see as an improvement is the level of adoption in the Linux community because I too often see non-Oracle products at first not being released or not being certified as Oracle Linux. You see more adoption in Red Hat even though they are binary-compatible. You often see that those extras are not directly available on the Oracle download repositories, whereas with Red Hat there is a lot available. And Oracle is quite focused on its own product stack. You can get everything running; everything that you can run on Red Hat you can run on Oracle Linux. However, it is not that integrated. It's no big deal, it takes you a couple of extra commands, but they could spin off more adoption by doing that.

In all honesty, I know that their graphical user interface is very basic, but I think 99.9% of people use it on a server version that doesn't have any display connected to it. Therefore, there's no reason for doing that. I don't see that much improvement specifically for Oracle Linux; I have the same stuff as for Linux in general. There's the adoption of specific drivers as such, but nothing specific for Oracle Linux. I think that they are a very good competitor to Red Hat.

We adopted Oracle Linux seven or eight years ago, when we started moving off from Red Hat. In that time frame, you're generally investing knowledge into Oracle Linux. I think it's around seven years or something.

I haven't seen any big stability issues with a couple of customers that are doing Oracle Linux. The only issues we have seen are more generally kernel-related, so Red Hat would have the same issue.

The big benefit is that you have additional stability if you run Oracle products, because you always have the guarantee that if you upgrade anything, Oracle software will continue running. You're not running the risk that you'll break anything, within reason. A bug is always possible, but if you're running an Oracle shop, running Oracle Linux makes absolute sense because it is part of their testing strategy to ensure that the databases work if they bring out stuff.

That is, in general, what I tell my customers: "You're running an Oracle database, use Oracle Linux." There is stuff in there that helps you run your database optimally and those guys always have their own products in mind. If you are an Oracle shop, don't go for Red Hat. You've got the financial part, but also it's from the same vendor. They know the guys from database themselves, and they keep them in mind when they bring out a patch. That makes absolute sense.

With scalability, we have customers that are scaling up their machines, but also scaling up cluster-wise. In general, there is no big issue with scalability. It is really stable; Oracle puts out really stable releases.

I do not engage a lot with Oracle's customer support or technical support. In general, we do the outsourcing part. Our teams engage a lot with Oracle and we step in when things are not going that smoothly. If it is a really big issue and they can't find the root cause or a solution, that's when I step in. It's not that much, but every now and then I need to engage with those guys. Sometimes support is good, sometimes support is bad. I think that's the case with every vendor, but in general they have quite knowledgeable teams. What I see with Oracle is that they are willing to build you a solution if you can tell them what's wrong with something. If you find a bug, you quite quickly know that it's being promoted to the development teams. And you see that ending up in the next version, you see it ending up in patches. That's quite good.

There is not really that much to say about setup and the transition. It was quite a walk in the park for a lot of our engagements where we had a very simple transition, especially for databases. You have to remember everything is binary-compatible, so we just brought the new machines and moved over all the applications and all the databases we were running with Red Hat for those specific customers. We anticipated undergoing quite a heavy transformation, but it turned out that, in general, it was quite a simple transformation.

We still do that today, for new customers that onboard that are running IT professionally and say "We would like to move to a cloud-generated data center". We say, "Okay, you can stick with Red Hat, but for the same money, we can move you off to Oracle Linux and then you actually get a discount."

Because we already have Oracle Linux, we don't charge them for that and it makes our lives easier. Every now and then, you have an off-case where they did some funny stuff, but in general it is a very simple transformation. Nothing scary, nothing complicated over there. Quite easy.

My general feeling would be "Don't worry too much." It is not that complicated. It's a very stable Linux distribution, and especially when you're in doubt, you can always reach out to the guys from Oracle. That is, of course, if you chose to pay for it, but you can try this stuff for free. You can spin it off on a VirtualBox image. Just download stuff, just give it a try and you will see how easy it is. That's my general advice.

If you're an Oracle shop, it should be the first operating system in the Linux sphere to think about. Don't start doing stuff yourself with Red Hat or other distributions.

If you like it, buy the support. It is a stable release and in my honest opinion, I think we will see more and more that Oracle is optimizing their kernels for their software. In that case, it will continue to grow. I think in a couple of years, you will see much more Oracle software-specific stuff within that kernel. For the future, it's a good direction to head into if you're running Oracle shop and also if you're not running on Oracle shop.

We use the solution on our server and premises.

Pricing could be improved.

I have been using Oracle Linux for a few years.

The product is 99.99% stable.

The solution is very scalable. Sixty-five users are using it.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

It comes with an annual subscription.

If you were to buy Oracle Data Vault or something similar, it includes a firewall. Securing the DPU with Oracle Data Vault is great, but it costs a fortune.

In data center operations, we use distributors. As far as I know, it's distributed across sixteen sites. Besides Oracle Linux, we have other solutions such as Oracle Forms, Reports, and EDS.

I would advise knowing the number of calls and CPUs required for each application and their allocation.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

We use the solution for big packet inspection and as an operating system.

We like that we can use the C++ coding while working with it. 

The speed is quite good.

It's mostly very stable. 

The operating system is fine. 

It's pretty simple to setup, and we can do it in-house as it is not complex.

The solution is open-source. 

The network interface should be modernized. It's a bit out of date. 

It could be more scalable. 

We've used the solution for one project. We've used it for a few months. I haven't used it for that long just yet.

It is stable and mostly reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze on us. 

The scalability could be better. 

We have two or three people using the solution right now and do not have plans to increase usage. 

We did not use technical support. We've never had a need to reach out. I cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they would be. 

I've also used CentOS. The setup and scalability are the same as Oracle. 

The initial setup is straightforward. I haven't noticed any complexities. The deployment takes several days. It doesn't take too long. 

We have a team that handles deployment and maintenance. There are about five people and they are engineers.

We handled the setup ourselves. We did not need outside help. Our support team could easily deploy it. 

The licensing is open-source. We do not have to pay for licensing. 

We are using version nine. I cannot recall the exact version number. 

I'd recommend the solution to others.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten. 

We are currently using Oracle ERP, and based on Oracle's recommendation, it is best to use Oracle Linux.

The features that I have found to be the most valuable are the performance, stability, and support that Oracle offers for the solution.

I am not currently able to discuss the products in-depth, as I function at an upper level of management. I will need to consult with my team, who have hands-on experience with the solution. However, one improvement that I would like to see is an upgrade to increase its adaptability with new gadgets such as mobile devices and tablets. The interface should be easy to use. Also, the interface of the tool is a bit old and follows a traditional style.

I have been using Oracle Linux for the past three to four years. Our organization is currently using Oracle Linux Version 7, and we are considering upgrading it to Version 8.

Based on our experience so far, the stability of this solution has been good. I would rate it an eight out of ten for its stability.

In my opinion, this solution is scalable when benchmarked against KVM. While we have only recently implemented this solution, we have not experienced any scalability issues so far. From an ERP point of view, I think maybe ten people are using this solution. From a scalability perspective, I would rate it an eight or nine out of ten.

We receive support from Oracle for both Oracle Linux and Oracle ERP. In terms of technical support, I would rate this solution a six out of ten. The support process is time-consuming as it involves several steps. We first contact them for an issue, then they ask for some other sort of things like logs, after which they provide a patch. Then, we need to take a clone of that and apply the patch. After that, we need to test it out. Then, we again need to take time out for the protection services. We then apply the patch on the protection, take the backups, and do a few other things, which is overall a time-consuming job.

Neutral

We are currently in the process of upgrading to a KVM product. Before this, we were using Oracle OVS and Oracle VM, but we're moving to KVM. According to my team, KVM is a bit challenging to understand, and they need to invest a significant amount of time to properly configure it by reading the documentation. If I were to rate the setup process on a scale of one to ten, I would rate it a five from a KVM point of view, indicating an intermediate level of difficulty. It took my team a few weeks to deploy the solution, as we couldn't devote 100% of our time to the deployment process. However, we can spare some time in a day to carefully configure the solution. Also, our company has a team of three people.

Calculating ROI can be challenging, particularly in our economy, where the dollar rate keeps fluctuating a lot. Many factors that are considered in ROI calculations are tied to the dollar, and our company is not doing good business as well. However, we typically aim for solutions that will be effective for three to five years. From Oracle's point of view, this solution is stable, reliable, and performs well. We also have the local expertise to manage it. Overall, we are achieving a medium level of ROI, and so far, I would say that it is an okay solution.

This solution is very cost-effective, as it is essentially free, with charges only for support purposes. From a cost perspective, I would rate it as very cheap on a scale of one to ten, and I believe that our company can easily afford it. In terms of profitability, I would rate it an eight out of ten. On a scale of one to ten, with one being the most cost-efficient and ten being the most expensive, I would rate this solution a two or three.

Currently, we do not use any of the blaze servers, only independent servers such as rack mount servers and HPE servers. From the software perspective, we use multiple software solutions, including Linux and Microsoft. In terms of hardware, most of our servers are HPE servers, with a few Dell servers also in use. However, we are planning to upgrade our hardware and are considering composite blaze servers, which will help us reduce our energy footprint and improve management. We are evaluating options from both Cisco and HPE Synergy too. Our use of Microsoft technologies is limited, and we currently have a Cisco firewall in place. Our internet is provided by Kaspersky, and most of our software runs on the Linux operating system. As for Linux, we are mainly interested in Oracle Linux. Endpoint is something that is for business use. Overall, I rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The product offers improved performance and it is easy to handle. 

It's very stable.

They offer an improved hypervisor based on KBM.

When we compare it to Oracle Virtual Manager, the IO definitely improved. The way it handles disaster recovery and high availability is great.

According Oracle's license restriction, so it's a good alternative to VMware.

The product can scale. 

There's always room for improvement in the product. 

They could introduce the same level of remote capabilities, which are available with VMware applications to build distant environments. There's still some room for improvement over there.

I've used the solution for two years. 

The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. 

This is a scalable option. It's in the same leave as VMware. it expands well and quite easily.

We didn't really need the help of technical support. We had our own people build it up. If we had a deep crisis, we could handle it. 

We switched when Oracle announced the end of Oracle Virtual Manager. We switched to Oracle Linux Virtual Manager and don't regret it.

I'm also familiar with VMware and would consider these both in the same category. However, this is a less expensive option. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult. 

We had a cluster of two times four machines and split it across two data center locations and it was quite easy.

We have witnessed a positive ROI. 

While I don't have the exact costs in front of me, it is much, much less than VMware. 

I'd advise anyone looking to implement the solution to just do it. 

If there's someone around dealing with Oracle and VMware, my advice is just to try it as it's really straightforward. With Oracle, you don't have to care about the nitty gritty things. There are ways of partitioning it or isolating machines so that you have costs related to specific machines very easily. It's a good way to save license costs and have good performance.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.