Oracle VM Reviews

Clients who have two or more servers and want to virtualize their processes can deploy Oracle VM, the Virtual Machine. It's comparable with something called hard partitioning so that they can comply with Oracle's licensing policies.

There are other products in the market from other vendors, however, those virtualization technologies are not certified with Oracle regarding their licensing policies. Oracle VM comes with something specific called hard partitioning, which has to physically update the CPU core to virtual machines. This is very important. It allows virtual machines to comply with Oracle licensing policies. Otherwise, we can have big issues regarding product licensing.

Oracle VM as a product is very complete. All the features that come with Oracle VM are available within a single subscription. There are no hidden costs. Every feature that you want to use can be used without any hesitation. For example, if there are other products in the market, other virtualization products, they start selling only the basic module, then, if you want some feature they tell you, "No, you have to purchase another module for this feature". In Oracle VM, that is not the case. There is one subscription, one product, and it's everything you need. 

One of the features that we like in Oracle VM is live virtual machine migration. A virtual machine is either running on one physical server and can be moved from that physical server to another physical server live without shutting it down. That is the best part for us.

Apart from that, the graphical process that happens in the Oracle VM environment is also a great feature.

It's a very mature product.

The setup process is easy.

We find the solution to be stable. 

The pricing of the product is great.

Technical support is always helpful and responsive. 

The solution is at its end of life and is about to be discontinued. Whatever it is there today, version 3.4.7, that's the last version that will be issued. They are now done with it completely.

The stability on offer is very good. There are no bugs or glitches. it doesn't crash or freeze. It's very mature.

It is the best virtualization platform hypervisor that is out there. Oracle itself has used Oracle VM in all its engineer systems, as well as in the past generation of Oracle Cloud. It's very stable and very robust.

It's a highly scalable product. They have deployed a server form of 1,000 servers with Oracle VM. 

It's totally scalable. For example, today you have some generation like Intel generation processor, and after three, four, five years, you want to add new servers to the same Oracle VM environment. However, you now have the next generation, like maybe Intel servers, Intel processors, Generation 10, whatever it is. You can still mix different Intel generation processors in the same Oracle VM consideration. From that point of view, it is totally scalable. It allows different CPU generations.

At this time, we have more than 100 to 200 clients that have installed Oracle VM. The solution likely has millions of clients. 

Regarding the support from Oracle, it's the topmost quality and leading the market of VM products. It's always very good. We've been very happy with their capabilities and support.

The implementation process is very straightforward. It is very user-friendly and it is very well-documented. 

The deployment process can be handled by one or two people. It's a total single product. It's a single product that needs to be installed on the physical servers. On the station side, just you have to install Oracle VM Manager, and that's it. 

Clients who use the solution pay for a subscription. Oracle VM and Oracle Linux, they're not sold as a license. However, they have support subscription. It is so cheap. It's almost 3% cheaper than any other virtualization product that is there in the market. There are many clients who use it exclusively for virtualization; they have converted their existing virtualization solution to Oracle VM.

We're a partner, a reseller, of Oracle VM.

Oracle VM is basically an infrastructure product. It needs to be installed on-premise. For the cloud, Oracle VM is not applicable as Oracle itself virtualizes everything and provides for the clients. With Oracle VM, we have deployed it to our client infrastructure on-premise in all instances.

This product now is more than 12 to 15 years old. It has been in the market for a long time. Oracle has announced the end of life of this product. Soon, it is going to be finished. Next year, they're not going to launch any more versions of Oracle VM.

Right now, there is no advice that I can give as the product is at the end of life. If a company has Oracle VM in their environment, it is good to have an Oracle VM patch to the latest version and to keep it stable, and that's it. It's not going to be distributed anymore after next year.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

We are building a private cloud with Oracle VM. We want to implement Oracle RAC with Clusterware releases 12.2 and 18c, and with Oracle Database releases 11.2.0.4 to 18c.

We will implement a full dev/test environment with Oracle RAC and standalone databases. We will be able to fully use our ULA license agreement with Oracle and provide flexibility to our development teams.

Oracle virtual machine templates for rapid deployment are very useful. This allows us to deploy already-implemented and optimized virtual machines.

Snapshotting could be easier. And there could be more intuitive ways for cloning of virtual machines.

Our clients primarily use Oracle VM for test databases, web, and application services. It serves as a versatile tool in our top solutions.

The platform's most valuable feature is that it is free of charge. It is a stable product that has been reliable for several years. Its remote solution, live migration of VMs, and integration capabilities are also noteworthy.

The product could improve network virtualization and hardware utilization functionalities.

We have been using Oracle VM for about two years.

The solution is stable, but there can be performance issues, particularly with network cards and device registration. Expanding storage can also be problematic. However, these issues can be managed effectively with proper knowledge and maintenance.

The solution is scalable. You can add servers to the cluster and integrate them into the existing system without major issues. The process is straightforward if you are familiar with the system.

We use the free version of Oracle VM, which does not include direct support. However, it provides sufficient documentation and resources on its website. It has adequately maintained our systems since our use is not critical.

Previously, we used VM from Red Hat, but we switched to Oracle VM because it is a newer type of virtualization OEM and is quite stable. It is a free product, which is a significant advantage for us. While it may not be as suitable for critical systems, it is useful for non-critical applications.

The initial setup is easy. The installation guide and knowledge base provided by Oracle are useful. We can find all the necessary information for deployment if we do not require support. 

The deployment time depends on the complexity of the setup. A standard deployment involving one machine and one storage unit takes about one day. We require two engineers: one for initial equipment setup and another for system deployment and configuration.

Oracle VM offers features such as live migration of VMs, remote solutions, online memory expansion, and integration with various systems. Despite some issues with network virtualization and hardware performance, these functionalities make it a good solution for many use cases.

I rate it a seven out of ten. 

We primarily use it in our PCI industry solutions and for Oracle middleware, which connects applications to Oracle databases and provides web services.

The product's most valuable feature is the ability to run multiple instances of the same product in testing environments before moving them to production.

The product's user interface could be more intuitive for less experienced users. Improved monitoring and reporting on storage usage would benefit better resource management.

I have been using Oracle VM for two years. 

The product has been stable with minimal downtime. I rate the stability a nine. 

Besides administrators, we have developers and testers using Oracle VM for application testing and development. It scales well to meet our increasing demands. We don't plan significant increases as our current usage meets our business needs.

I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. 

Around five administrators handle various aspects like database, network, and system administration in terms of product maintenance. 

The pricing for the platform is aligned with other enterprise virtualization solutions.

The platform's networking and database support are crucial for us. We also utilize Oracle Cloud for both production and testing environments. It provides reliable virtualization that supports our operational needs without significant performance issues. We can manage virtual machines remotely, which is essential for our data center operations.

It's a good choice if you're already invested in Oracle software, but other virtualization solutions might be preferable if you're not.

I rate it a nine out of ten. 

We primarily use it for ERP in virtual environments.

The solution is very scalable. It's easy to adjust the size up and down.

It's stable. 

It's a great tool for complex organizations.

The pricing could be cheaper. It is very pricey.

This tool isn't for every company. It's very complex. 

I've been working with the solution for nine years, more or less.

The stability has been great. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It has been reliable. I would rate the scalability at an eight out of ten. We have external partners and an internal technical team that constantly works to stabilize everything. 

The scalability is very good. You can adjust it up and down. The scalability I would rate at a ten out of ten. It's great.

We have 250 users on the solution right now. Their job titles vary from senior to middle management. It's pretty static. We do not have plans to increase usage.

We've worked with technical support. We supplement it with our technical expertise. 

We did not previously use a different solution. 

The setup is pretty straightforward. It doesn't require any maintenance once it is up and running. 

It took about three weeks to set up the VM itself, however, Oracle in general takes a long time to implement - maybe six months.

I wasn't directly involved in the deployment process and cannot speak to how it was done. 

We have 36 technical staff that help handle the deployment and maintenance. 

We had an integrator install the solution for us. 

There may be an ROI, however, it may not be a lot. It's a very expensive tool.

We currently pay yearly licensing for the solution. 

it is an expensive solution. 

We currently are in the decision-making process of whether we're going to remain with Oracle or whether we're going to look at a different ERP.

We use an older version of the solution. While the solution started as an on-premises deployment, we've since moved to a private cloud. We did that in the last 18 months. 

This is a very complex system for complex organizations. It is not something I would recommend to everyone. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

We are using Oracle VM as the platform for running our Oracle databases. The templates that are available for provisioning database nodes are very helpful. Using these pre-configured templates makes the deployment process quick and efficient.

By virtualizing our database tier on generic x86 hardware, it lowered hardware costs, improved performance, scalability and maintainability. We now have more redundancy than we had with proprietary hardware.

Ease of upgrades is certainly a strong candidate for improvement. I started looking at an Oracle 12 template and I have to say I liked the Oracle 11 template better, not from a database perspective but from an OS perspective.

We initially implemented version 2.2.1 in 2010 but never took it in to production. We had issues with stability that were ultimately traced to how the LUNs were presented to the guests. We went live with version 3.0 in 2011. We're currently on version 3.2.1.

We've had no issues with deployment.

The stability was a major issue initially and it was traced to how the LUNs were presented to the guests. Once that was resolved, the system was pretty solid.

I did have an issue with the guests running out of swap space and located a procedure to expand swap space without having to disrupt the LUN numbering convention.

It was initially subpar.

It was initially subpar. The issue with LUN presentation was discovered by us and not by tech support. I would think tech support would have been able to at least point us in that direction. Lately, it has been difficult to route issues to the correct group. Once there, however, support has been adequate.

For our database tier, we used proprietary hardware that worked well but we were limited to that type of hardware and it was reaching end-of-life. At the time, Oracle was adamant about their hypervisor being the only one that was license-compliant, so that took us in the direction of Oracle VM. I understand Oracle has backed away from that stance for other hypervisors, but at the time we didn’t want to double or quadruple or database licensing costs.

Unfortunately, I used my VMware experience and applied it to the Oracle VM setup. Looking back, that was probably not the right approach as some things in Oracle VM are very different. The LUN presentation issue came down to poor documentation as there were two ways to present the LUNs and the documentation made it seem the improper method was the way to go.

We did it in-house, but ultimately had to get Oracle involved for the initial implementation. The version we are currently on is very stable. I should probably consider upgrading, but it’s a lower priority task right now.

The ROI was very low considering that the initial license was free.

Support costs are manageable.

As a hypervisor, it is effective, however the functionality is a step down from VMware. Upgrades are getting easier to do, but still not as easy as VMware.

The current versions seem much more stable than the earlier ones. The best advice I have is to understand the documentation and don’t take prior experience with other hypervisors in to account.

A typical database node-guest configuration:

The disks for the O/S and swap are configured as Virtual Disks while the LUNs for ASM are configured as Physical Disks.

The environment was configured primarily to host our PeopleSoft implementation as well as several smaller databases. However, PeopleSoft is being replaced with another ERP solution so this environment will be used for historical purposes. The future of the other databases is yet to be determined.

We are using Oracle VM for containers, developing testing, and Kubernetes.

Oracle VM helps us with the development of proposals.

The Foundation is the most valuable feature of Oracle VM.

The documentation for implementation could be improved because we were not able to find an easy way to implement our company's features due to a lack of understanding.

I am currently using Oracle VM.

Oracle VM is stable.

We previously used VMware. However, I did not have the ability to use VMware in my tech environment. Since we made a contract with Oracle for our database solution and cloud services, we thought that it would be a good idea to try Oracle VM.

The initial setup was straightforward. The deployment took one hour and required three people.

The implementation was completed in-house.

The solution is free but we have to pay for technical support.

We evaluated other solutions but they were all expensive.

I give Oracle VM an eight out of ten.

I suggest signing a contract for the technical support for Oracle VM because it lacks documentation and can be difficult to find information.

I'm usually working in the public sector or hospitals that have many critical systems, including the SKN information system or some emergency that are medical.

The main program to consider, from an improvement perspective for Oracle VM, is how to extract the existing VM or migrate it to Oracle KVM.

In the roadmap of Oracle, Oracle VM is finished, and this is the last year. Oracle KVM, which is Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager. In fact, I had to suppress my Oracle VM environment for Oracle KVM, which is Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager. I'm a certified partner for Oracle Database. Also, I'm certified in Oracle Exadata.

There are issues with the solution's stability since it crashes.

I have issues with its scalability since one cannot have many VMs. So, it reaches limits at an early rate. Hence, it's very difficult to scale. Also, you have a file system that is not supported. The file system is based on OCFS2, which is an open-source file system that is not very reliable. It is not a problem with Oracle KVM or XFS since you have many file systems, but this is not the case with Oracle VM.

The initial setup for Oracle VM is very difficult. The main problem is the stability and scalability of the solution. The drawbacks are the backup. There are no backup products certified with Oracle VM. This is not a problem with Oracle KVM. Another problem is when you patch your kernel, Xen is in the kernel, and Xen is not very reliable. In fact, you may have some crashes, so it's very difficult to maintain Oracle VM.

Oracle VM follows an annual subscription model. It's not a very expensive product. This is not the price of VMware.

I wouldn't recommend it to others since it is a final and old product. Also, the product is nearing its end.

Overall, I rate the solution a four out of five.