Oracle VM Reviews

The solution is a suite of products so it depends on the needs of the client. 

Depending on which product specifically is being used for this solution there are different features. If we're running Oracle VM for SPARC, it has line migration capabilities, and performance, and can use hardware virtualization on network cards.

The solution is an outdated Xen-based application. They only perform maintenance support for it. The new version is Oracle Linux Virtualization, which is a re-skinned version of the over stack, basically the same as the one that Red Hat sells. They could harmonize management between their products better.

I have been working with Oracle's Virtualization for ten to fifteen years.

The stability is rock solid. We have a fairly large technical company running the solution on their production database which is used by the production machines to collect information. If the database is down, the production stops. There has not been a stop in the production for over three years.

The cloud appliance is easy to scale because it's built to scale. You just add a new machine into them and then it will automatically boot and install. The other solutions are easy to scale as long as they are set up correctly from the beginning. They require a shared file system, either NFS, the cluster file system, glossary, or something similar to that. That will allow you to scale your storage, and then scale the compute nodes. Basically, install Oracle Linux and a node then point the management to it and say, "This is your new compute node for you."

I have used the solutions customer service plenty of times. In most cases, the support is pretty good. They have knowledgeable people working for them.

Positive

It depends on if you are setting up a simple environment or a more complex one where you have to look at the Fiber Channel storage, high availability, and things like that. If you are looking at setting up a complex multi-site cluster of Oracle VM for SPARC, it is not easy. You have all of the clustering parts, multi-site parts, storage, and networking that come with the setup. It is still easier to set up these systems now compared to back when you had bare-bone systems and had to do everything yourself.

The implementation was done in-house.

The solution as a standalone product can not be purchased. When you purchase the hardware such as Oracle X36, and the support cost for the hardware, you get the support for the operating system and the virtualization stack included. It is part of either operating systemized on the Linux side or over on the slower side. I give the cost a seven out of ten.

I have evaluated several options such as Proxmox, Red Hat, and Overt. They all do the same things but in different ways. They all have similar feature sets. The interfaces have their own quirks. All of the options are fairly equal with some differences.

My personal favorite VM solution is Proxmox. It is a lower-cost solution, easy to install, and I also run it on my home system.

Stability has proven to be satisfactory. The deployment is simple, a lot of the configurations, particularly the network related ones, have been made much simpler and cleaner in the latest releases (3.3.2+), and the GUI has become more responsive. 

At the moment the discovery of hosts and configuration can be performed only via the GUI and not by a command line on the hosts. To resolve some other issues, we decided to install Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud 13c to add monitoring capabilities, which OVM Manager lacks completely.

Oracle claims "whatever you can do via manager, you can do via EC", but in my opinion that's not true because a lot of tasks are simply too slow via EC than via the manager.

My first attempt with Oracle VM was around two years ago. I was asked to set up a four-node cluster with 3.3.1 release on top of Fujitsu hardware (Fujitsu Primequest 1800E).

v3.3.1 was pretty much disappointing in terms of performance, especially when it came to migration. It took minutes for a VM with a lot of memory to migrate across different hosts. This led us to upgrade the environment to 3.3.2, and changing the underlying hardware. Fujitsu Primequest was dismissed in favor of Fujitsu RX 300 S8 due to a compatibility issue as Primequest were not certified on 3.3.2.

3.3.2 was a bit faster but it didn't take long for us to experience one of its major bugs - the migration of any VM with 64GB plus RAM failing with an OpenSSL error.
This was fixed in a short time with the help of Oracle support who suggested to upgrade the OpenSSL packet.

We only had a single crash on one host in more than two years as the kernel panicked. An SR was opened to Oracle, but it led to nowhere.

We've had no issues scaling it to our needs.

It's fairly straightforward.  All you have to do is to install via script the so-called "OVM Manager", which is basically a Java administration GUI run on a WebLogic server with MySQL underlying it as a metadata repository. At the time, Oracle Database was a choice too, but it's no longer the case because, as an Oracle guy revealed, the Database engine has a major bug which corrupts lob data which prevents the the manager from working properly.

While the software is still missing a lot of capabilities which its major competitor (VMware) has and a performance boost is highly recommended, it could still be a choice if you have to virtualize Oracle software.

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 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 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.

The valuable features are the cost and the convenience of the physical machines, meaning that you can have multiple virtual machines that you can use for many other different tools, not just Hyperion. We work with different Oracle products such as EBS, OBIEE, and Hyperion and they're all integrated so we don't have to have different physical servers located in our datacenter. What you can do is create different virtual machines in the same physical server and use that for any of our products.

For example, we are going to upgrade our Oracle BI product, so that needs to have more servers. What we are thinking to do is to create more VM's in the same physical server instead of buying more physical servers. It's just a matter of creating a new virtual machine, which is not a big task for the administration team. Probably within an hour they're able to build up a new server for us, so it's easy, faster and cheaper that way.

Initially, you did not have an option in Oracle VM to build an image and just restore into a different physical or virtual environment, but now the option is included. That's one thing I thought wasn't there and wanted to have, because we are planning to move our Essbase database server from physical to virtual, and I thought it's not going to be easier because you can't just export the physical server and just import everything into the virtual machine. Now the integration is there. You can export the physical server's configuration, their registries and everything, the databases and then just import them to virtual machines. That's the only lacking feature I thought was with VM, but they have included it. 

It still takes some time and the valuations have to be done by the admin, so it still is taking more time. That's, I think, one of the challenges that we recently had when we were talking to our administration team. The Windows and Linux admins took some time, like a couple of days, to build servers for us, which as far as I think being an IT person, it's a virtual machine. Once you have the image it should be easy enough to import it into the new virtual machine, built up like a snapshot. 

I think they could make the implementation faster. It's still taking some time, which should be eliminated in the future, I think, and it will be because I've seen a lot of improvement already.

If deployment could be more faster, that would good, but right now it's fine. It solved my problem of migrating from physical to virtual, so initially I had to reinstall Essbase and it's a big challenge in the Linux machine.

I haven't seen any big issue with the stability. There have been no issues with instability that I've seen.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

Within one day, we had migrated a physical to virtual server and then we had a database working, and it was like seamless transition. We just changed the alias of that machine to whatever the listing server alias name was, and the application picked up right away.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

I looked into vSphere and Hyper-V, and then decided that we could not go with any other non-Oracle virtual technology. It had to be Oracle VM, so that's one thing I wanted to make sure was that we had Oracle VM as a new server, otherwise Hyperion is not going to be supported on non-Oracle virtual servers.

For us, the biggest thing I think is the compatibility with all the other Oracle products. We have ERP and EPM and all these reporting tools like BI. The most important factor for us is when you talk about the compatibility of all these different products, it has to have compatibility with dependent operating systems, the servers, the database, Internet Explorer browsers, Java, and all those different tools that are integrated in our system.

If we go with any other virtual servers or virtual products, let's say VMware, it is compatible but it's not 100% guaranteed that we'll be supported by Oracle support. Let's say in the future if we have a problem, Oracle support might say we are not able to support because you are using third-party tools. That's the most important factor and advantage over other tools in the market available when we choose to go with Oracle.

We just did the upgrade of our Oracle Hyperion, so one thing I learned is we could not go with any other tool because we have all these Oracle products integrated tightly and we cannot just install them on some other non-Oracle products. I think we are also talking about to move from physical to virtual for one of our Essbase databases. Right now it's on Essbase, which is under Hyperion, on a physical server, so again, just to take advantage of the cost and the recovery and the disaster recovery and all those benefits that virtual machine has to offer.

Prepare for the development time and the allocation of resources. That's the key thing. When you're building an image or a Oracle VM server, how much resources are you allocating? Let's say for example, the storage and buffer memory and the processor speed for each of your instance for that physical server capable of 100 gigabyte of memory, and then you're trying to build 10 servers out of it that are virtual servers. You need to analyze and review, out of those 10 servers, which server needs more resource and more hard space based on your application growth. That is the key thing that I've seen. Some admins don't pay attention when they're building the package. It really depends on the factor of what tool is going to be implemented on what server. How much space and how much processor speed is it going to need?

For example, the Essbase database in Hyperion needs a lot of memory and processing speed. It needs more threads to calculate the data, so for that you need to allocate as much resources as you can as compared to maybe other tools which don't need that much of resources.

Planning to build your package for your client for the virtual machine on the physical server is the key thing.

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.