Oracle VM Reviews

• Diverse guest operating system support: 10/10
• Secure live VM migration: 8/10
• Storage live VM migration: 8/10
• High Availability: 10/10
• Advanced management for zero extra cost: 10/10
• Faster software deployment with Oracle VM templates: 10/10
• Virtual Appliance support: 10/10
• Rapid VM provisioning and cloning: 10/10
• Full Stack management: 10/10

It supports diverse guest operating systems: Oracle Linux, Oracle Solaris, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, CentOS, and Microsoft Windows.

Modern, low overhead architecture based on the Xen hypervisor for leading price/performance. The Xen hypervisor has been improved and included with Oracle VM Server.

Speeds application deployment with Oracle VM Templates and virtual appliances

Full Oracle VM Manager command-line interface (CLI) and Web Services API (WS-API) allow greater automation and interoperability

Advanced virtualization features including:

• Secure live migration
• Storage live migration
• VM high-availability (HA)
• Distributed Resource Scheduler(DRS)
• Distributed Power Management(DPM)
• Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) and Virtualto-Virtual (V2V) conversion
• Full Stack Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager
• Ready for OpenStack

The only improvement that I want to see is more flexibility in configuring and managing Oracle VM server with a CLI if there is no Oracle VM Manager. Oracle restricts you to managing the Oracle VM server via Oracle VM Manager and not through a CLI on Oracle VM Server.

I've been using it for three years. I've been implementing Oracle VM for x86 across various projects.

If I face any issues in Oracle VM deployment, with the help of Oracle support I can solve the issue.

The first release of Oracle VM had issues, but now it's stable.

9/10 - It offers high performance and scalability.

You should implement Oracle Database or Oracle Application over a virtualized environment. I recommend that you implement Oracle VM for this reason, but this doesn't mean that Oracle products are not supported over VMware or Hyper-V; it is supported but not certified. It means that if there is any problem with the Database or an application over VMware, Oracle will try to simulate the error on an Oracle VM not on a VMware one. If there is no issue on Oracle VM, they will ask you to contact VMware support.

It's the best support ever as you can open one SR across Oracle hardware, Oracle VM Server, Oracle Solaris or Linux, Oracle Database, and any Oracle Application.

It comes with zero license cost. Unlike VMware, Oracle VM is free to download, use, and distribute. All you need to pay for is support, and support fees are affordable.

As an Oracle pre-sales engineer, when you buy Oracle x86 server, the server cost includes one year support for the following items:

1. Oracle Solaris & Oracle Enterprise Linux
2. Oracle VM Server
3. Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c

We are a gold partner, and we use this product to compete with other virtualization products on the market like VMware and Hyper-V. Its features fit most of our customers.

You have to be familiar with hardware and Linux. From my experience in designing and architecting Oracle solutions, most customers implement an Oracle VM environment on Oracle X86 Servers with Oracle ZS3 NAS storage or Oracle FS1-2 flash storage.

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.

Oracle license compatibility was the deciding factor for us. It's the only way to fulfill the Oracle license policy if you want to virtualize in a x86 environment.

Also, Oracle VM performance is one of the best that I've experienced. And the pre-seeded images that Oracle puts at your disposal makes your life really ease, i.e. you can have an Oracle RAC up and running within two hours with the OVM images.

I work in a consultancy, so I've deployed several OVM environments always with great results and high customer satisfaction. We've achieved the goal of being in line with the Oracle license, providing customers with better usage of their resources at better cost.

The product needs to improve the backup and snapshot functionalities. This is the main disadvantage compared to other hypervisors on the market.

I've used it for at least eight years since version 2.1 was released.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

We've never found an instability problem with the hypervisor as it is simply rock solid.

On the other hand, the OVM Manager has had some problems and inconsistencies. The best option is to have the OMV Manager virtualized and to recreate it if there are issues as all the relevant info is stored in the hypervisor itself.

We have had no issues scaling it to our needs.

Oracle always works well in terms of support, and if you need extra assistance you can escalate your case, but at the moment I have never had to go so deep.

The hypervisor installation and setup is one of the most simple things that I have ever done. Just boot, select the proper installation method, configure (Linux-like), and you're done.

On the other hand, the Manager can be a little tricky, but the newer versions have become much easier. Just set up your OS and pre-requisites, database, and OVM Manager.

I've implemented in my own company for internal use and as consultant engineer, I've performed several implementations for clients.

You always can get faster result going with consultancy services as they provide expertise and background from many previous implementations of the product.

The ROI is very fast.

OVM has low impact and is licensed on a per-server basis. The cost is very affordable as you only have to pay support.

We evaluated VMware, Citrix, Hyper-V, and RHEV. The main feature was the "Oracle License Compliant" and after the wide library of images. The stability and efficiency of the hypervisor was always great therefore the previous mentioned factors comes to decide.

It's a great product and becomes better with every release. It is based on the rock solid Xen hypervisor.

It's an easy and great product. You can test it for free and you will have great flexibility in the x86 world. Go for it without doubt.

When deploying the Oracle database, you can license only the processors used for the database rather than all the processors on the box, as with VMWare. Plus, it’s free.

We are able to build large hosts (using Oracle Virtual Cloud Appliance, for example) and wait to license CPUs for our databases until we need them. That translates into more money up front for servers and salespeople.

I’d like to see an improvement in read latency and write bandwidth to meet or exceed VMware's performance, and also smooth out the variance in both. People are choosing VMware over OVM left and right despite the licensing issues. OVM needs to be faster than anyone else, especially with Oracle’s own products.

I've been using it for three years.

It’s a bit clunkier to deploy and manage than other systems, e.g. VMware.

We have had no stability issues.

Scalability has not been an issues.

Oracle is very good at supporting engineered systems, so if you’re using OVM on a PCA, you get good service. Otherwise, it’s pretty typical tier-one/tier-two tech support.

I have used VMware, Hyper-V, and AIX LPARs. I chose Oracle VM (when using x86) not only because it’s free, but because of the Oracle DB licensing benefits. Hyper-V is not really all there yet. VMware is awesome, but the Oracle licensing is a crippling problem.

I would say it’s less straightforward than you’d expect. I haven’t installed it recently, but my impression was that it was about 70% ready for prime-time. Once you have it installed and sorted out, it runs pretty smoothly. Getting it there is another issue entirely.

We mostly use a vendor to set up OVM, but occasionally we will do it in-house as well. My main advice is to practice it first, read all documentation, look at MOS documents, and review all blogs and community discussions you can find.

For our specific ROI, OVM allows us to buy larger systems to accommodate projected growth but not go broke on licensing. We can get new licenses on demand when we have a reason to buy them rather than all up front and hoping we expand into it. That means we can concentrate on selling new opportunities and buying the licenses after the sales are locked in. We don’t have money sitting out there idling.

The biggest benefit is being able to license Oracle products (especially the DB) based on the number of CPUs actually used rather than all the CPUs on the box as you have to do with VMware. This results in a lot more flexibility in the sizes of servers you can buy and how you plan for future growth. If you had to buy all Oracle licenses for every CPU, you might get a smaller server to start with and that doesn’t really help with expansion.

Properly sizing your equipment for growth often means buying equipment much larger than you need right away. The money you save with Oracle VM by not buying extra licenses means you can focus on preparing your hardware for the future rather than having to balance between licenses, hardware, and practicality.

Before speccing out your systems, it’s best to start figuring out how many CPUs you need now and in the future, then you’ll be able to decide what server/VM solution you need. If you’re looking at a small software footprint now, but in one to two years you expect to double or triple your transactions, you’ll definitely want to start with a big server and OVM to reduce software licensing costs.

My main advice is not to do your first install when sitting at the client building a production system. Practice it beforehand and make sure you work the bugs out. Once you install it the first time, it’ll be far easier to breeze through it on subsequent installs.

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.

It allows hard partitioning platforms, thus keeping the licenses intact.

We have two datacenters, holding less than 15 physical servers and still running over 300 virtual ones.

With v2.X it was possible to do everything in the CLI or the shell. Now, on v3.X everything must be done either in the GUI or CLI, and there's no option to use the shell. I am old school, so I hate GUI. CLI is working well and I wish it to be that in future.

We have been using it for the past seven years, and have created 10 different environments.

There have been no issues with the deployments.

There was nasty bug on DomU UEK3 kernel year ago, which wiped virtual machine disks if a certain combination was used. Now, it's fine.

We have had no issues scaling it as needed.

I've never had to contact them.

The initial setup is as easy as walking. After that, it gets a little complicated, but if one knows what one is doing, it is still easy.

In-house. If you know Linux and Xen, you are good to go. If you don't, get a partner to do this for you.

As it's Oracle, there was no need to evaluate anything else.

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.

It offers live migration. It is the best virtualization option for Oracle databases for Linux as Oracle recognizes hard partitions for their database licensing.

If you need to put an Oracle Database on Linux or Windows for any reason, and don't want to pay to license a whole VMware cluster, this is the next best option.

There are several VMware features missing. I haven't done an in-depth analysis to understand which exact ones they are.

I've been using it for three years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

Stability was great. There were no issues with instability.

I only deployed it to a small, three-node Oracle X5-2 cluster.

Never had to open an SR. It's pretty stable. I did create ask some fairly technical questions about it on the My Oracle Support Community and got some great help there.

We previously used VMware which we had to use for licensing reasons, and to be able to own the full stack (hardware/virtualization/OS). My team had minimal permissions on the VMware side.

It was fairly easy for an experienced Linux admin.

I did the implementation myself.

I never did an ROI calculation.

It's much cheaper than paying millions for Oracle DB in VMware. Support for Oracle VM and Oracle Linux are included when installed on Oracle hardware, which makes it a very cheap option. There is a free, unsupported version available too. That might be attractive to some.