Yann Neuhaus Blog

All around High Availability (Open Source and Oracle)

x86 platforms, why continue to pay for unsupported virtualization technologies ? : "Oracle VM vs VMware Server"

This small blog post provides a status of the tests we are currently performing with Oracle VM Clusters (Management and Availability purposes). We manage our OracleVM cluster infrastructure with Grid Control, since the release 10.2.0.5 (and patch 8244731) includes virtualization administration. However only Oracle VM 2.1.5 is currently supported, we wait for 2.2.0 support.

Our cluster is composed of two servers connected to an iSCSI shared storage on which OCFS2 has been installed.

The following features have been successfully tested :

 

  • Guest machine live migration
  • Template creation and deployment
  • Tests of High Availability features while stopping/crashing a Guest

 

These first results look quite interesting. Considering the low price of the Oracle VM support, see (https://shop.oracle.com/pls/ostore/product?p1=Virtualization&sc=ocomlink_buynow_virtualiztion). We can consider that Oracle VM managed through Grid Control offers a competitive integrated management and monitoring framework compared to VMware. Another fact must be considered : Oracle VM is fully supported by Oracle for productive database servers, in addition if a Guest Server has been created with a limited amount of Virtual CPUs, only these CPUs must be licensed. Keep in mind that in an ESX cluster, all the processors of the cluster must be licensed as soon as a Guest VM is running Oracle within the cluster.

Oracle VM seems to become a right serious virtualization alternative ...


Posted: Dez 15 2009, 12:52 von Yann Neuhaus | mit 4 comment(s)

Kommentare

Niall Litchfield sagte:

be careful when you say that "Oracle VM is fully supported by Oracle for productive database servers" with the implication that VMWare isn't. With the exception of RAC - for no good public reason - Oracle on VMWare is fully supported. What it isn't is certified, but that essentially is the same situation that you have with physical hardware. Oracle on HP DL585s also isn't certified for example. It doesn't mean Oracle won't support you if you have a problem and a support contract. They absolutely will.

You are of course correct about the licensing situation, and frankly that just sucks, as well as smelling suspiciously anti-competitive.    

# Dezember 15, 2009 5:52

Herve Schweitzer sagte:

Why you used OCFS2 for your cluster setup and not ASM ?

# Dezember 16, 2009 11:10

Twitted by Trivadis sagte:

Ping Antwort von  Twitted by Trivadis

# Dezember 16, 2009 1:57

Micke sagte:

@Herve

OCFS2 is used as the filesystem for the actual (physical) VM-servers to be able to migrate guests between VM-servers. What you use in your guests is a different question.

/M

# Dezember 26, 2009 12:12
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