Oracle Linux Reviews

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.

It is nice that it's ready made for deployment in OVM (Oracle VM for x86) with templates.

But, there's only some/limited vendor support when running on Oracle-branded hardware. There's no other reason I can think of to use Oracle Linux over any other Linux. If it were completely up to me, I'd be running the latest LTS version of Ubuntu Server.

We're able to deploy easily with the read-made templates for OVM.

From a product perspective, there needs to be more rapid upstreaming of security fixes released by Red Hat or Fedora.

Free vendor support? There's not much really. And Oracle Linux is feature-poor compared to other Linux distributions, and they're much slower than Red Hat, CentOS, or Amazon to release security patches and bug fixes

I've used it for five years or longer. I've also worked extensively with Solaris, OEL (5 and 6) and OVM for X86 and OVM for SPARC (LDOMs). I'd still recommend Solaris, but not OEL. I haven't used OEL for 9 months since leaving my previous job. Where I work now we use exclusively Debian Linux 7.x Stable, with a view to migrating our cloud platforms to Debian Jessie Stable.

There were vulnerabilities during deployment due to extended lead-time releasing security fixes (e.g. shellshock).

We have had no issues with the stability.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

The technical support was average, and support for other Oracle products (e.g. Solaris) deteriorated substantially after Oracle bought Sun Microsystems. I do not like Oracle's support model one bit, and I loathe having to use WebMethods, which looks and feels and behaves like something from the 1990's.

If I had to use an RPM-based distribution, I'd rather use CentOS or Amazon Linux.

The initial setup with the ready-made templates was nice.

We performed the deployment with our in-house team only. The only assistance from Oracle has been with Oracle hardware issues in OVM for x86, and installation of Oracle applications on OEL.

I'd only use it if I was forced to use Oracle x86 hardware. I'd opt for something else given the freedom to do so. OEL seems confining, restricted, and primitive.

Just don't do it, unless you're locked in by your vendor, or hardware, or project manager.

Oracle Enterprise Linux offers a cost effective solution, especially for customers who are currently supported on Red Hat. They find it extremely comfortable moving over to OEL, Oracle Enterprise Linux. It not only it cuts down the cost, but there is no code change, there is no technology challenge that they have to undergo. I find it extremely comfortable talking to clients and asking them to move over from Red Hat to Linux.

It's comfortable, kernel calls are very important. Lines, application codes, it's a lift and shift kind of a platform. The customers that I'm getting on there, they are very comfortable moving over to Linux. It not only ensures performance, it ensures cost effective solutions.

We are still naive, I would say. We need to see as we go there.

We have just transitioned about four customers as of now. We haven't faced any such challenges as of now.

That is what we are trying to do now. We have selected three or four as a pilot. Now we are trying to launch it on a big scale.

Support has been excellent. Support has been really excellent and for every account they work closely with us; right from getting the PO to closing the order, so extremely convenient.

I'm getting excellent support from Oracle as of now, the team dynamics are very good, my team finds it extremely comfortable working with the OEL team. We may have a lot more accounts in the next financial year.

Native support with Oracle database and these features:

• OCFS2 (Clustered File System): Open-source alternative to proprietary cluster file systems.
• Ksplice: Apply patches to the kernel without rebooting the system; zero downtime for critical security updates.
• Dtrace: Excellent diagnostic tool for analysis and troubleshooting ported from Sun Solaris.
• Docker containers: Full support, framework optimized and integrated with WebLogic Server Docker containers.
• Btrfs: Detects file system corruption and fixes it; improves backup operations and improves file system and storage capacity by reducing disk seeks and disk I/O operations.

Each month, my team makes a full update of the environment, including: Windows system, databases, Linux system and network systems. We reduced the downtime considerably on our Oracle databases by using Ksplice on our Linux systems.

Hardware vendors certified by Oracle for installing Oracle Linux are: Dell, HPE and Oracle. The product needs to be certified by more vendors to gain more clients and increase the size of market share.

I started using this solution four years ago.

I have not had any stability issues. My databases servers have been up since the last maintenance and there have been no issues during the business day.

I own a RAC cluster with two nodes. It is a medium-size environment supported by Oracle Linux. Scalability never was a problem in my scenario.

Technical support is technically good, but the response time is high. It can take up to weeks to actually solve the problem.

We used Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but licensing costs with Oracle VM decreased significantly, which motivated the change.

Setup was very complex, using cluster resources and fine tuning at the OS level to improve performance.

If possible, use Oracle VM; prices decrease absurdly!

I didn’t evaluate any other options, because we use Oracle Linux only for Oracle databases. And the Oracle database was in Red Hat and was supported only for two OSs available for my employer: Red Hat and Oracle Linux.

Study and learn about the Red Hat kernel and follow the news releases on the manufacturer site. Read the rich manual that Oracle offers.

I am using Oracle Linux for databases.

Oracle Linux's most valuable feature is flexibility.

Oracle Linux could improve by having better compatibility with other solutions. Some aspects of the configuration are difficult. I was using Oracle Linux on a Mac computer and it was very difficult to set up.

I have been using Oracle Linux for approximately five years.

I have found Oracle Linux to be stable. I'm not receiving any issues when I use it, when I connect it to the other parts with the setup, it has been stable.

Oracle Linux has good scalability.

The technical support is good. Whenever I'm having an issue that cannot be resolved, I get in contact with Oracle and then they resolve it fast.

The price of Oracle Linux could be less expensive for those who are running a small freelance company, such as I do. We use the solution fully but the income that you're receiving is slow.

I would advise others that are interested in implementing this solution to try it out. However, they need to know what they are doing first because if you don't know the solution well, you will not be able to implement it properly, and that will not yield correct results.

I rate Oracle Linux an eight out of ten.

I primarily use the solution for running personal and business applications. 

The performance is good and the solution has been stable. 

The interface is user-friendly.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. 

The solution could be less costly.

I've been using the solution for quite some time. It's been a few years at this point. 

The solution has been stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance is good and it's a reliable product.

We have roughly less than 50 people using the solution in our organization.

I've used technical support in the past. There's not much to say. The support has been fine. 

We did not use a different solution. We've been using the product for many years at this point. 

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

I was able to handle the implementation process on my own. I did not need outside assistance. 

We would prefer it if the licensing costs were lowered. 

We pay a yearly licensing fee.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. The product has been very reliable for me over the years. It has good capabilities. 

Would recommend the solution to other users and organizations.

Most people see Linux as just Linux. However, in Oracle Database shops, Oracle Linux tends to have a little bit higher level of trust among DBAs as the more reliable solution.

I'm at a big Oracle shop right now, and although we do run Oracle Linux, it's not to the exclusion of another Linux flavor. We're standardized on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server because it tends to be cheaper.

Oracle Linux tends to be a little buggy and sluggish at the virtualization layer. It's been my experience that probably about 85 to 90% of the time certain features are about three-quarters baked. I don't like that.

We've had no issues with deployment really, except for that bugginess and sluggishness at the virtualization layer.

There are those bugs at the virtualization layer, though it's overall generally stable.

I've not had to experience scaling it at that level because I don't do a lot of architecture work. I don't see an issue with scalability, though.

If you've got a problem with Oracle Linux, because it's an Oracle product, you log a ticket. I've never had to log a ticket, but it should be a straightforward process.

Compared with my many, many years of experience in the commercial UNIX world, if we had a problem or didn't know how to fix a particular issue, we called IBM. With SLES, we just referred to the many different resources available.

If they decide they want to have all the tools, if you have to have the support and if the DBA's are calling the shots that, you know, it's a big Oracle shop and they decide they want to have all Oracle Linux and maybe there was a deal cut and maybe they got a better deal from them than they got from Novell who own SLES.

We use this solution as an operating system to run Oracle databases through.

We have found that this solution significantly improves our ability to run test scenarios, and parallel queries, across massive databases.

We find the consolidated support for this solution and other same vendor systems to be an extremely valuable feature.  This allows for faster resolution of issues and consistency of support personnel.

We would like to see the cloud setup to be evolved, to allow for setting up of clusters of the operating system for this solution. 

We have been working with this solution for the last year and a half.

We have rarely encountered any issues with the stability of this solution, and when they do occur they are generally issues with storage and not the operating system.

We have found this to be an easily scalable solution.

The technical support for this solution is good, and they are usually able to resolve any issues we escalate to them.  However, it takes time for the engineers to contact us, and can take up to three days for an issue to be resolved completely.

As we only escalate high priority issues to them, that we cannot deal with in-house, the time delay can be a problem.

Neutral

We switched to this solution for the portability of operating system that it offered us.

The initial setup for this solution is fairly easy, and has the advantage of all the prerequisites being installed due to the operating system being in place. 

The total deployment took less than five hours to complete, and the majority of this time was taken up with restoring the data from one of our UAT environments.

The implementation, and deployment, of this solution was carried out in-house.

We have found the ROI for this solution to be from the consolidated support, and the time this saves.

The licensing for this solution is based on the number of calls running Oracle databases, and are purchased either annually, or every three years.

We would recommend this solution for new Oracle database deployment, particularly if the staff working with the solution are not very experienced or highly technical.

We would rate this solution an eight out of ten.