Oracle Linux Reviews

I would say it is more in the "soft" part. Lots of people love Oracle Linux and it gives a lot of stability to our platforms.

It's the skill, I can leverage the skill because it's known by the majority of the people in my organization. It's not a constraint, the fact that I need resources. And it's the stability and the tuning of the system.

I would say better logging of the bugs. Recently we had an issue and it was extremely painful to find out what the issue was on our platform. Only after three weeks of deep analysis did we find out it was a bug in the kernel of Linux. Maybe something that can help to provide better information on the issue itself.

The stability I found is extremely good.

We are pretty good in planning, no issues. Every now and then we face some problem but given the fact that we have really qualified and skilled people we can solve it pretty fast, and the support is good.

It's good when you reach the people, the people with the skill that can support you. Sometimes it's difficult to find the right people and get the right attention. When you have the right people and the right attention, things go smoothly.

I would say straightforward with a little bit of complication. Complication depending, possibly, on the hardware or other stuff related to the platform where it’s running. But overall, straightforward. 

I would suggest start to get some knowledge on your own, know what it is about. Then, when you approach the expert, you know what to ask. Make a dichotomic approach, the right questions.

Basic training is always recommended. I would not go too deep in unnecessary training; do basic training and then start working on it.

I think the most valuable feature for me, as a database professional, is an operating system that has been modified to have more stability in terms of drivers, in terms of the kernel. We have found a lot of problems using other equivalent systems when upgrading the kernel. Using the unbreakable kernel, we have been able to stabilize many systems.

As an organization I would say that having the same company that provides support for Linux, for the operating system, and also the software on top of it -  in my case it's Oracle database - I think that it's closer to having better support, a faster response from support and, of course, better solutions.

I think that the only improvement is staying up with the pace of the technology evolution. As long as Oracle Linux supports all the recent technologies, there are really no more innovations it will need. If the technology itself evolves, as long as Oracle Linux supports it, it's the perfect product.

You start it and you shut it down only when you need to, really, but it never crashes. I have not experienced the crash of Oracle Linux recently.

Well, depending on what you mean by "scaling," in vertical scaling we have systems at my customers that go up to 700 gigabytes. I don't know if it's the most scaling, but definitely it's more than enough to have good database consolidation on the server.

I think it's good. It's not really necessary, too often, to need support for Oracle Linux. Sometimes it depends on hardware drivers, if there is the necessity to have something special. But in general, my impression is that it's stable and we don't need much support.

Again, I have to mention that I am an Oracle database professional, so I'm really focused on this technology. Of course, other operating systems often have many more problems in configuration, in stability, they need much more fine tuning. I don't want to mention them but I will say that many customers are trying to switch from, for example, legacy Unix systems to Linux.

We use, of course, a configuration management tool like Chef Puppet nowadays, or Ansible, so it's really easy to maintain the system. But, even installing for just one server, by hand, now is straightforward. It's not a whole day of installing Linux, that's not the case any more.

We use Oracle Linux with multiple clients for multiple applications.

Over a period of time, feature-wise, functionality wise, the reliability is important for us. 

First of all it is a zero-dollar value, it is free. We only have to pay for support. So it brings down the overall cost. And it is providing the same functionality as any other Linux system that is out there in the market.

Some customers feel about Oracle licensing, while it is free, they are not able to understand the support model for it. They feel the price is high for support. 

I have seen running production systems on it, there is no issue at all, because of the operating system.

I have no experience with scaling, but I believe scalability is as part of it as any other Unix based operating system that is out there in the market.

It is world-class.

It is straightforward and well documented. If people have basic Unix knowledge, they can jump on it. But I would definitely recommend going through the documentation before implementing any operating system in an enterprise environment.

Regarding criteria when selecting a vendor, if I am working in an Oracle world, I would what's important is being "family." If you are using Oracle as a database, using Oracle Linux is a good choice, because you are in the same family. Support is coming from the same vendor. The chances of vendor conflict - for example, being able to pull in people from different vendors; if I'm using Red Hat Linux I would be pulling people from Red Hat Linux, I would be pulling people from Oracle databases - that kind of scenario would not be there. Support would be seamless.

In terms of advice I would say, know your needs first, and if you know your needs, compare Oracle Linux with other operating systems. If you are running Oracle systems, Oracle databases, Oracle Linux is certified by Oracle. I believe all of Oracle is using it internally when building the system. For example, when they're developing Oracle databases or when they're developing Oracle EBS, they're running it on Oracle Linux.

Go for it. Evaluate it, know your needs first, and then see what solution is addressing your need.

We're quite heavy Linux users. We do high performance computing on Linux so we like a Linux which is compatible with several platforms, so we don't have to cross-compile for too many Linux editions.

We like that Oracle Linux is Red Hat compatible, it makes things very easy for us. We can move between platforms very easily. 

Oracle Linux has helped us to use some of the Oracle cloud platforms, it's made that quite easy. Really, access to that is why we use Oracle Linux.

Just keeping up to date with the latest releases, so Red Hat Enterprise having Linux 7 compatibility would be useful. Other than that, the tools that we need are there, we use the GCC compilers and those tool chains.

We've had absolutely no problems at all, we've never had any stability issues with Oracle Linux.

We run, as I said, high performance computing, so we run across several nodes at any one time. We've scaled up to 30 Oracle Linux instances talking to each other, with no problems at all.

Luckily, I haven't had to use it yet. Obviously we use some of the Oracle online documentation, that's always been useful. And any time we've had any contact with Oracle it's been fairly positive. So what little contact we've had has been good.

We didn't feel much of an investment because we use the cloud platforms, then it's an option to us there. The actual investment of just trying Oracle Linux out was very little, it was just one of the choices on the cloud platform, and it turned out to be one of the best.

It was relatively straightforward. Again, the compatibility with other Linux distros makes it quite straightforward, so we've had no issues really. It was very simple.

In terms of important criteria when selecting a vendor: support, and stability of the product as well. Obviously having the packages certified by Oracle, a known stable platform, makes it easy. We don't have to worry about doing an update and then breaking things. That's probably one of the key things for us.

I'd say try it out, it's simple to get running, get it onto a CIN and then just give it a go.

By far, the most valuable feature of Oracle Linux is the fact that the unbreakable UEK kernel is optimized to run Oracle databases. Basically out of the box, the kernel parameters are automatically set up for I/O, for memory, and for performance.

Benefits of Oracle Linux for a lot of customers include things like Ksplice, for example, the ability to perform online kernel patches with zero downtime. In fact, a lot of the other vendors like Red Hat and SUSE are starting to embrace that technology, but they’re years behind.

Overall, Oracle Linux is full of great features and functionality. Because it is an Oracle product, what would be nice is if there better integration between the Linux operating system and Oracle ASM and things like ASMLib and the integration with Oracle RAC.

From a stability perspective, Linux has been around for decades, and Oracle Linux is going to be around for a long, long time, and it’s going to be a dominant player.

It is a derivative of Red Hat, but for all practical purposes, it’s immensely scalable, especially as you're talking about doing multi-node clusters with Oracle Linux. There are numerous customers who are leveraging Oracle RAC on Oracle Linux, that’s a very common platform for a lot for customers today. 

A lot of customers who are on Red Hat, for example - it’s all pricing. Again, this is another key benefit of being on Oracle Linux. If you buy Oracle hardware, for example, be it x86 or ODA or even Exadata, all those platforms will run on Oracle Linux, but because you're paying annual support for the hardware, you will automatically get free support on Oracle Linux. That’s by far, probably, the biggest benefit of going on Oracle Linux. 

If you compare also from cost of support of Red Hat versus Oracle Linux, Oracle Linux is going to be a lot cheaper overall.

When selecting a vendor, the cool thing about Oracle Linux is that the customers are going to be running an Oracle database on it. At the same time, if they’re going to be running Oracle databases on top of Oracle Linux, you have one vendor to call for support, you have one vendor to choke at the end of the day if things go wrong.

It's a 10 out of 10. You are going to get great support from Oracle Linux. The portal that you would log into for support for Oracle Linux is going to be the same portal that you would log into to get your database support. It will be the same portal that you log into to get your Exadata and ODA if you're running those hardware appliances as well.

The ones I really appreciate are things like the fact that, from a costing perspective, it is only the support cost. That's the only thing you have to pay for.

There are the little hidden things like Kubernetes of packaging, OpenStack, it's all built in to the subscription as part of Oracle Linux. When you get Oracle Linux, you get OpenStack and Kubernetes which, is coming down the path.

Ksplice is a huge piece for us for supportability as well.

Pre-validated configuration is a huge benefit for us, because we're doing database installation all the time. 

I think the biggest benefits you'll see are things like rapid deployment, things like templates. Again, like I mentioned before about validated configuration. You don't have to set individual parameters, and set up settings. DBAs just run this RPM and, boom, you have an environment that's already pre-configured, pre-set for Oracle configurations.

Kubernetes, as I mentioned before, that's coming down soon. 

Stability and scalability, we don't have any issues. We're running it on PCA, we're running on bare metal, we're running on different cloud configurations, OVM. For us, UEK versions 2 and 3 have been very stable and very scalable. We run RAC on it as well.

That's interesting because I came from Oracle support, it's near and dear to my heart. One of the beauties of Oracle support is the fact that the guys who are in Oracle support actually came from Oracle database support. So when you make a call to Oracle support, if you're calling about a web or app server, especially a database server, they know exactly what you're talking about, because they came from that world. You don't have to explain to them what a database is, what a process is. They totally get it.

Very straightforward. Setting up Linux, we usually use templates, ISO images. We use Spacewalk, which is part of the subscription model, it's free; so we use Spacewalk quite a bit.

I always tell them, if you're running Oracle workloads like database, that's a natural fit for Oracle Linux. Because, like I said, It's pre-configured, you get to validate configuration, you get Spacewalk, support. It's a nice little bundle.

When selecting a vendor, the things we focus on are high availability, scalability, and business requirements. All those things come together. We figure out whether it's a RAC solution, OVM solution, virtualize, a middle-tier stack that all fit in together.

I would say it's a nine out of 10. Start using it. If you're familiar with Red Hat, you're going to be familiar with Oracle Linux. It's pretty much the same thing, so start investing time and testing it in-house.

When you look at Oracle Linux over the years, you've got to go back to the beginning of Linux. Nobody would accept it in the community because it was open source. A guy by the name of Larry Ellison said, "Let's put Linux on every app server we have in the company because I believe this is what's coming next." When I look at Oracle Linux, Larry really drove Linux, to some degree, into the market. 

But when I look at Linux and some of the value of it, you look at privacy, security, it's much more secure, much more private than other operating systems. It's very easy to install and a lot of people use it. It's very common.

I've been using Linux since it came out, a very long time.

Is Linux scalable? Let's see. It's on the fastest machines on planet Earth, which is Exadata. Does it scale? Yes. Proven in many clients out there, Exadata is the highest selling and best product that Oracle has ever put out in their history.

When I'm comparing Linux, I look at the things like Windows - and a lot of people call it "Windoze," d-o-z-e, like they're dozing off because it's so slow. Linux is extremely fast and that's why it took the entire market. It's why it's the standard right now. Oracle Linux, when I look at it, it's very fast, it's really not comparable to anything else. It's very good.

The setup of the solution is very common for people who are familiar with installing Linux. I don't see any issues there. Also, with Linux, they have patches that come out when there's any issue. That's why you get a lot of good security. The after-support, never really had an issue. Linux is pretty simple to where you set It up and it's done.

I recommend Oracle Linux regularly because it's a standard that works well with the Oracle Database, it works well with all the different needs. When you look at the topology in a general IT department, it fits very well. In the cloud, Linux runs the cloud. 

Linux is a 10 out of 10. Windows, not so much; maybe down at two or three, especially on the privacy side and security, in my opinion.

KSPlice feature that allows you to install kernel updates within a live environment without downtime.

Less downtime during updates installations.

The documentation of the product can be improved. It often lacks a lot of documentation, but so do a lot of Oracle solutions.

I am not the end customer, but I have been supporting the product for a year now.

No issues encountered during deployment. Very smooth deployment

There were a few stability issues because of the hardware that we used. For the most part, it is a very stable solution.

There were no scalability issues.

I do the technical support with the help of Oracle.

The setup was a straightforward implementation.

The product is a part of an Oracle Enterprise Solution. You only pay for support to use the product. It is a free product.

We wanted to implement a virtualized environment under the Oracle VM for x86. This was the right product for that, so we did not look at any other products.

It is a great product to have. It is even better to run it on Oracle hardware.