Oracle VM Reviews

I find the VM server features useful for moving VM’s while keeping the most important ones available.

With Oracle VM we can deliver new infrastructure much faster by deploying from templates and cloning it after customizing.

I would like to see a proper and stable client to access Oracle VM Manager. Installation documents should be improved regarding storage details and shared cluster disks.

I have used it for three years for many US, UK and European clients.

The issues I found were related to cluster disk shared on our SAN. It was about detailed storage configurations.

The issues I found were related to cluster disk shared on our SAN. It was about detailed storage configurations.

The issues I found were related to cluster disk shared on our SAN. It was about detailed storage configurations.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see the same level of expertise as I see regarding Oracle Databases. Oracle must improve their support skills and knowledge base to help clients with issues.

I also use VMware vSphere, but for Microsoft based solutions (Windows Servers, Sharepoint, MSSQL, etc). Oracle VM is a better choice and cheaper one when we are using Oracle Solutions.

The initial setup was very hard and required me to create a build doc to my company so anyone could do it again. The cluster documentation is not straightforward when we use 3rd party SAN hardware.

I implemented it for British and European clients using my own build document as there was not enough information for Hitachi SAN storages. I would advise you to create a proper POC and test all hardware pieces. Also, Oracle Linux is a must have on these kind of environments.

Well, this is the most important factor on Oracle VM as it is a free solution to implement, and very cheap to license. If you also use Oracle VM as operating system, then all makes sense regarding pricing, support and performance.

It still lacks a reliable Oracle VM Manager able to also report performance. Also, Oracle Support knowledge base is still growing. My advice is to have skilled people to implement it. Although it is cheap, it needs the correct skills for a proper cluster implementation and to resolve issues.

• Bare metal virtualization
• SR-IOV
• Live migration
• Hardware compliance

This product is directly related to hardware, so it is a complete technology with hardware, operating system, and virtualization software.

The following are attributes that have improved my organization -

• Robustness
• Security
• Scalability
• High performance

We have been using IBM POWER hardware, AIX and PowerVM. We were happy with the technology, but switched to Oracle because of cost issues. The new technology is as robust, secure, scalable as IBM. The performance is much better than IBM POWER7 but we did not have a chance to compare POWER8 with new SPARC technology. IBM POWER technologies came one and a half years after Oracle and thus IBM lost a big customer.

• The SR-IOV technology should be improved more as it only supports basic functions.
• It does not have a graphical maintenance screen. The OVM manager interface has so little functionality for managing control domains only. It is not a big problem if you have experienced administrators, but it would be nice to have a beautiful screen to use for everything which guides you into not making mistakes.
• Error handling takes the safest way, but safest way may cause business discontinuity. A few bad experiences occurred in this manner and should be fixed. For example, if you restart the server and resources assigned to virtual systems are more than available, it removes all virtual system definitions and resource assignments like WWNs. You have to redefine everything from backups. This takes time and the system is out of service in the meanwhile.
• Virtual WWNs were lost in one of the PDOMs while it was in maintenance mode. The system continued with other servers, but all disk access paths had to be re-defined from scratch for some LDOMs. It was so annoying because this was not accepted as a bug by Oracle.

We've used it for two years.

We had no issues with the deployment.

We had errors, but they were fixed. The hardware and software work perfectly with the new SPARC technology.

We had no issues with scaling it for our needs.

We have experienced resources and we made a checklist of what we did with IBM and how to do it in SPARC. After that, we did not need much service and support. Software downloading and bug fix is pretty good with Oracle. We have had quick responses for case tickets from the available time zones.

We used IBM PowerVM on AIX servers. The main driver was changing the hardware. Both technologies are hardware specific. So we migrated from POWER hardware, AIX, and PowerVM to SPARC hardware, and OVM for SPARC Solaris.

I can compare triple-to-triple and none has any serious disadvantage to the other. Changing the technology was not a technical decision, but we as technical people declared that they are functionally equal.

The initial setup was straightforward and no more complex than PowerVM.

Our main effort was using in-house resources. The vendor team only supported training.

We consolidated lots of databases onto two big iron servers and got benefits from our database licenses. Oracle charges double for IBM server cores if you are using the Oracle database. The government procurement process may not care about price competition, so we defined our requirements, and bidding was made by another organization. IBM and Oracle bidding brought lower prices for the initial procurement cost. Maintenance costs are directly related to the initial price.

RISC hardware may seem more expensive than Intel CISC, but TCO was cheaper with more robust hardware with double performance. So the hardware technology was the main issue. We also decided that engineered systems are not suitable for complex business scenarios.

• Plan everything at the beginning. Do not change plans after you start.
• You must know what you are doing. Never leave any responsibility to the vendor or a third-party contractor.
• Write what you do, do what you write. Never leave any detail undocumented.
• Do something, validate documentation, then delete everything and make someone else do the same thing with the documentation.
• Security becomes a big issue after setup. Plan your security requirements during design. The vendor does not care about it. It cannot be added later.
• Plan your disaster recovery requirements and make your designs accordingly.

It seemed to be a great and risky adventure to migrate from IBM Power to Oracle SPARC, but we did the migration in 15 minutes in a complex environment with Oracle databases, SAP application servers, and in-house Java applications. If you see that it brings advantages, do not get scared -- just do it, nothing happens, and it works. You get a new experience.

The most valuable features for us are the large number of available network configurations and its high degree of scalability.

We've improved a lot as I use it for creating VMs for software development purposes for our team. We can have one VM to share with the team that has all development tools set up so that when a new developer joins the team, they can be ready to work just by copying the VM. So it's saved lots of time for each developer to set up their development environment. Also, it keeps the team aligned with the different tools they use.

I would like to see more improvements in the synchronization between the host machine and the VM especially in Mac machines. Also, more features around folder sharing would be an improvement.

We've used it for six years.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

We have had no stability issues.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

Customer service is very good.

Technical support is very good.

I previously used VMware but switched because I got better support from Oracle.

It depends on how deep I want to go, but normally the initial setup is straightforward.

I used a mixed team of vendor and in-house personnel for the implementation.

I think the pricing is fair.

We were curious and wanted to test the product since we were standardizing our virtualized environment. 

We knew that VMware was feature-rich, and we wanted to look as others as well to avoid vendor lock in.

I've been using it for one years.

It was complex.

We did it in-house.

We were not happy with the aggressive licensing model of Oracle and thought we would end-up in a similar situation to the Database where we have to pay the license fee for passive nodes as well.

We selected VMware and KVM.

The Red Hat KVM is better than the OVM in terms of performance and simple support.

I manage the Oracle Cloud infrastructure, including all our VMs, firewalls and load balances.

The solution is easy to use. You can spin one up when you need to and then shut it down. When it is shut down the cost is minimal. It makes it very easy to do testing and training, including 'what-if'' situations.

I would like to be able to take all our logs and ship them to a corporate site. However, this feature could exist and I just haven't had the chance to explore that.

Stability is good, I would rate it an 8 out of 10 in this area.

Scalability is good.

The price compares well with other solutions. Oracle has flexible payment and cost methods. We use an annual credit plan by committing to one year in the Oracle environment. By making this commitment they provide deep discounts for what we do. They also offer a pay as you go and monthly plans.

I would rate Oracle VM a 9 out of 10.

We have a few servers, and I tag them to the storage. Through that, we create VMs by provisioning some RAM, CPU, and storage. The RAM and the CPU get adjusted when we buy more servers to add to the cluster. 

We are not using its latest version. We are yet to migrate to its latest version.

It has saved us millions of dollars by generating many VM's out of a simple server added to a server  pool which is highly available.

Its ease of management and simplicity are most valuable. It is free, and you can provision an unlimited number of VMs at no cost for clients. They also provide perfect support.

The user interface of the version that we have requires improvement. They have already improved the user interface by moving away from OVMM to OVM or KVM which uses the oVirt engine and has a completely new feel for the user interface, but we are yet to migrate to that. The new UI is much better and more intuitive.

I would like it to be simple. It is serving all of our needs, and I don't think it is necessary to keep adding. We are able to provision a VM in ten minutes, and provisioning it in five minutes will not have any added benefit.

Just keep it simple.

I have been using this solution for over ten years.

It is very stable. That's why I've used it for all my clients.

It is highly scalable. It can be scaled to any amount that you want. The RAM, CPU, and storage can be easily scaled.

It is suitable for big and small organizations. We have deployed it for financial institutions and banks with lots of users and VMs. They use it for all kinds of things.

We have their 24/7 support. The hardware that we're using is Oracle hardware, and it is mandatory that you have the HW support. We also have field delivery engineers for the hardware support and premium support for Oracle Linux and virtualization.

Their support is perfect and wonderful. They respond immediately, but it also depends on the severity.

We used a different solution which had license limitations but Oracle VM is free and unlimited VMs can be provisioned at any time if there is adequate compute power.

It is very simple and straightforward. You just need to connect a bunch of servers to the storage, and you're done. For installation, you just download the parts of the software and install them on the server. Once installed, you discover them through the management interface, and that's about it.

The software installation takes about 20 minutes, but it also depends on how many services you are attaching to the storage. Its maintenance involves just upgrades.

We are Oracle Field Engineers and have lots of Specialization around the product.

All other vendors are selling their licenses to use the VM, but Oracle isn't doing that, which is its biggest advantage. 

It is free. All you have to do is get the hardware. You can create an unlimited number of VMs for free. With VMware, you have to purchase licenses for the number of VMs that you want to create. You only pay for their premium support, and even that is optional. I am now learning this product, and we can even do without the support.

We considered the following below:

1. The physical memory supported by Oracle VM is higher

2. No of vCPU supported on guest(VM) is higher 

3. Product is free and this is the best part 

I would recommend this solution to others. I have recommended this to many different clients. It is for free, which is its biggest advantage. We are also Oracle partners, so we tend to go for Oracle.

I would rate Oracle VM a ten out of ten.

I really appreciate the stability of the solution. It's quite reliable.

There's a lot of space to customize the solution if you need to. 

The solution needs more features and flexibility in terms of communicating with other platforms. If it had that, it would be the perfect product.

If there was an option that made customization easier, it would make for a better solution.

The solution needs to be more integration capabilities overall.

I've been using the solution for about one year. I don't have too much experience with the solution, personally.

The stability is quite good. It's reliable. There aren't glitches, nor are there bugs. It doesn't crash or freeze. It works well for us.

The solution is not very scalable. We are using Oracle CC, and it's not very flexible. It can't merge or communicate with other systems, which limits things quite a bit.

In our company, more than 100 people are currently using the solution.

We've reached out to technical support in the past and have been very satisfied with their level of response. We don't have a problem with them at all. We've had a good experience overall.

We had to switch from a different solution to Oracle. We're an Oracle partner in our country. We have a sister company, which is also a partner of Oracle. Previously, we were on Citrix. It is an open-source platform.

I didn't handle the implementation. I don't know if the initial setup was complex or straightforward. Other people on my team handled that part of the process.

I'm on the technical side of things, so I don't deal with the licensing part of the business. I'm not sure what the costs are. It doesn't concern my day-to-day.

We're partners with Oracle.

We are actually an IT service provider and an internet service provider. We have a lot of experience with VMware.

I'm not the person who updates the solution, so I'm not sure what version it is that we are on, but it is most likely the latest.

While the solution is okay, the flexibility is lacking. I would much rather recommend VMware over Oracle VM at this time due to the greater flexibility in that other system.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. If it offered much more flexibility or was closer to offering features that were closer to what VMware offers, I would rate it a bit higher.