Oracle VM Reviews

I am an Oracle Specialist and manage Oracle databases. Oracle VM is being used in test-based environments, dedicated services. Being a product expert and an engineer, I help customers work with Oracle. I have seen this solution in customer organizations that are in excess of 10,000 users.

The biggest advantage of Oracle VM is that you can separate your clusters to get your licenses agreement in scope.

Oracle VM has a bigger fence next to VMware in size, so when you install or migrate day-to-day services with Oracle-related applications, it will always look better, or be a better fit in an Oracle VM environment.

You will have a faster migration using Oracle VM because it is an Oracle product.

The performance could be better because I need to purchase a lot of CPUs to perform in the workbench.

I have been using Oracle VM for many years.

The scalable of Oracle VM is good if you have a good link.

Technical support at Oracle has been better in the past. Currently, you get first-level support so it takes you a long time to get the correct level of support. 

The initial setup of Oracle VM is as straightforward as it can be taking me 20 minutes.

My customers are all working with enterprise edition licenses with Oracle.

For Oracle-based environments, it is always better to use Oracle software because of the integration. 

I advise people when they are on their first visualization layers to go to Oracle first and see if that is performing. Otherwise, if you go to other virtualization layers your whole cloud stack will be licensed as well on one domain.

When you install Oracle VM in a VMware environment, it can have mismatches with libraries that are not correctly compiled. It is important to have a dedicated service or an Oracle VM to test if it is working and it's not the hypervisor that is causing the concern.

I rate Oracle VM an 8 out of 10.

The main use case of this solution is integration. The integration of the database and compatibility with the affiliate in terms of license management. This will reduce the cost of the license.

It is the same use case as vSan except that you can partition the applications and it forces you to license the processor, as opposed to the server.

I would like to simplify the processes to implement. When you want to implement Oracle, the steps that you perform could be simplified.

The usage could be easier, and more user-friendly.

I have been using Oracle VM for a few months, we started using it in November.

We are using version 3.4.

It's quite stable.

We have 10 users in our organization. It's a new product.

We are still in the testing phase. We are looking forward to observing its behavior. If it behaves well and there are no major incidents that give us or the support team issues, we will continue to plan ahead and implement it.

Technical support could be faster.

It is very difficult to implement.

It is not user-friendly, so you need a bit of skill to deploy it.

When compared to other solutions, it is quite complex. The complexity depends on the individual environment.

For the deployment, you need a consultant and an integrator. It is very difficult to deploy this solution. If you use the server storage, you need a consultant.

Oracle VM is inexpensive. It's open-source, but you pay for support.

Oracle is free of charge, although you have to have a subscription for the support.

Currently, they are trying to improve this solution database and technology. They are trying to upgrade it to make it a more customizable database.

I would certainly recommend this solution to other users who have Oracle applications. It has been customized to optimize this database.

I would rate Oracle VM a nine out of ten.

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.

Clients are typically running Linux on Oracle VM, and then they're running Oracle databases on top of that.

The solution helps manage a company's costs. I typically run into great resistance as most organizations already have an existing virtualization infrastructure or technology. If you're running someone else's virtualization, having a third party or a second virtualization technology tends not to be warmly received. Any place I've got VMware, I never get a large Oracle VM infrastructure. I get what's needed, however. It serves a purpose as it keeps the number of cores down. It works. It's reliable. It's stable. It does what it needs to do. I've got no technical complaints about it. 

Due to the fact that it doesn't have as many, let's just say, bells and whistles, it's less distracting. It's not that difficult to master. 

The documentation that the product has on offer is very good. 

Once you get it set up, you tend to set it and forget it, and there's not a lot that you have to do.

The biggest reason for using Oracle VM is the CPU fencing or licensing of CPU cores. Oracle makes the claim that if you run on VMware, you're getting value from the processors in the cluster over and above the processes that are associated with your particular VM. Due to that stance, companies wind up licensing basically the entire cluster for VMware. If all you're doing is running Oracle's database, and it's got a particular purpose and it's very focused, you can put Oracle's VMware or Oracle's VM on the server, create your virtual machine, and set the number of CPU cores that is going to use. Oracle finds that acceptable for licensing. That will control your costs, due to the fact that suddenly you don't have to license 24 cores when in fact you're only consuming four or eight. It is used at that level as a licensing mechanism, quite frankly.

Oracle is probably the best database technology out there. Arguably, it is. I've never found anything as complete in terms of feature and functionality and sophistication. You could make arguments with niche or smaller venues. DB2 is certainly a viable alternative. So is the SQL server. Nothing scales and nothing handles complexity like Oracle. 

That said, not everybody buys Oracle for the complexity. They buy it for a particular purpose, whether they're a state and local government, or whether they're in some particular industry vertical. I work with four or five different industries. I've seen it in very small companies, in which case it's almost part of the woodwork or the fabric, so to speak. You don't really pay attention to it. On the other hand, large organizations that use it have it as it's the only game in town for certain features.

I've found that using Oracle VM is like stepping back in time. It's not kept up with technology. The only reason anyone uses it is that they're afraid of Oracle's licensing. Oracle has a tremendously bad licensing approach.

VMware, in comparison, has got so many different features that you can use in ESXi for example. Oracle is a lot simpler with fewer features.

I find their VM backup features to be somewhat difficult. I wish it was a little easier to back up and clone.

It would be ideal if Oracle could grow to take on VMware directly, in order to foster more competition.

I've used Oracle for many years. It's been a long time. It's probably been about ten years on and off, depending on what the client needs.

The stability is quite good. You set and forget. It's not a fussy solution. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's great.

I didn't find scalability to be an issue, however, the difficulty is with any hardware refreshes done today. You're going to get more cores due to the fact that that's all Intel can do. Intel can't crank the clock speed much past five gigahertz, not without heroic amounts of cooling. It's just the laws of physics. All Intel can do, all AMD can do, is give you more cores. 

The problem is that Oracle's licensing model charges by the core. There's a formula to it and it depends on which features, etc., however, basically it's by the core that dictates the cost. At the end of the day, you're going to pay for the number of cores you're using.

Therefore, you've got to put it on a new machine without Oracle's virtualization technology to help you manage the licensing. You go from a basic 5,100 series Intel chip with four cores. to a new gold chip, or whatever it is, and it's got 18 cores. All of a sudden you owe Oracle a lot more money, as there are a lot more cores. 

That's not the kind of surprise that most companies appreciate. Your costs went up simply due to a newer chip. That's a hard sell. By using Oracle's virtualization technology, you can manage those licenses, allocate virtual CPUs to the level that you have an existing license, and control your costs while essentially getting a little bit more oomph. At least you're on a new, more reliable hardware platform. That's where virtualization really comes in.

It helps manage the licensing. Oracle should just fully embrace VMware as a viable licensable technology. It would make life a whole lot easier for a lot of companies, however, they're not going to. They had the same stance when Sun Microsystems had its own virtualization technology. In that case, Oracle acquired it, and all of a sudden Sun's virtualization technology was acceptable. It's a marketing game, to be perfectly frank, and we all know that. That said, Oracle gets to set the rules. 

I've used their technical support in the past and they are very, very good. I'd rate them at an eight or nine out of ten in terms of the service they provide.

Like a lot of environments, if you had a system down, that's a priority one issue, and they handle it well. I would put everything I own on their tech support. They have multiple support centers around the world, and you can follow the sun - which I have done to fix issues. That's outstanding.

If you have small questions, odd issues, it can take a while to get through tech support. That's typical, as your problem is not the default. Your problem is some complicated issue with an interaction between multiple pieces of software or multiple configurations, whatever it might be. Those kinds of issues are difficult to dissect and resolve. You'll go into this loop of, "Well, try this. Well, try this. Well, give us more information about this." I understand, however. That's just simply debugging. There's nothing to be done. It can just take a while. However, if it's a priority, if it's a P1, they're fantastic. They really do a good job.

I've used VMware quite often, and it's an outstanding solution. It's got lots of different options, and of course, you can do things like VMotion, which allows you to move a VM in the cluster. The reason for deploying Oracle's VM is to manage the licensing, however, as we would have had to buy 10 times the number of cores if it was in a VMware cluster. That would drive up the costs.

The initial setup takes a little bit of thinking, and a little bit of reading, however, it's not particularly difficult. If you have the rest of your hardware and everything in place, it installs within a day or two. By that I mean you need a day to install it and then another day or so to adjust and tweak, and I haven't found it to be that difficult to install.

On one hand, I like Oracle's licensing strategy in that they don't have license keys. You don't have to call and beg for another 30-day key and all the hassle that a lot of smaller companies do. Oracle does allow new users to understand what the value of their VM is for you. 

I see using this solution primarily as a way of maintaining or managing my costs. Anybody who's got any experience in another virtualization technology will pick it up fairly rapidly. It's not difficult to understand. It's not difficult to use. However, if you've got a set of standards and practices in your existing IT, it's another one to learn. It's another one to maintain. And most companies try to streamline.

Their licensing is based on the number of cores. Companies need to be careful about costs as they can rise rapidly.

We don't have a business relationship with Oracle. One of the things that's unusual about my company is we absolutely do not court or back any particular technology player as we're the trusted advisor helping companies understand and solve problems. How unbiased can I be if I'm getting marketing dollars from Oracle or from Microsoft or from somebody else? We stand on our own. That's not always easy, however, it's the right thing to do. When I make a recommendation, it is with 100% the customer's interests in mind.

I come in and work with companies that are in the process of migrating or updating off of older systems and into newer technologies, whether it be an on-prem hyper-converged type of infrastructure or into the cloud. I've got about 30 years' worth of experience with Oracle as an administrator and as a manager.

A lot of times the customers are not quite sure what they want to go with. VMware is the big player in the virtualization space. I'm involved with a customer right now doing a large virtualization project where they're moving from individual old servers to a virtualized Dell VxRail environment. Therefore, I don't work exclusively with Oracle.

Oracle has moved to KVM. Essentially they're trying to consolidate and trying to use KVM as it's slightly more popular and more robust virtualization technology. There are other ways of solving the problem, however, KVM has been around a while and Oracle's very tied to the Linux platform - although they do run on Windows and I've got clients running Oracle in Azure cloud. It really doesn't matter for virtualization.

In terms of the Oracle versions we would use, it was mostly the latest version that we could get our hands on. It's always best to go with the latest versions. Oracle has a support policy that they maintain the current version, one version back, and everything older than that tends to be somewhat difficult to get support on. Therefore, you don't want to linger. However, a lot of people use Oracle virtualization as what I'd call minimal infrastructure. We're running it due to the fact that we need to have virtualization based on Oracle licensing concerns. It works, however, it's not anywhere to the same level of sophistication or of tools that, say, a VMware would be. It's like stepping back about two or three generations of VMware.

I would advise others to understand what the value of this particular layer of the stack is going to provide for you. Oracle has a very good policy in terms of letting you download the software. There's really no license keys. You can play with it and try to understand it and make sure that it's going to work for you. You don't want to run this longer than necessary. Oracle's not going to let you use it for six months. However, you certainly can pull it down, install it, understand what it can and can't do for you, and then use it appropriately.

On a scale from one to ten, I would say it's a solid seven. It lacks some of the newer features that VMware and Microsoft virtualization technology have, however, that's not necessarily a showstopper for what it's used for. If you want all the flashiness, then you tend to rate it lower, yet it's quite functional and does the job.

We use Oracle VM for the ESX servers from NetApp. It's a product for development.

What I like the most is the failover and the quick restore of virtual machines.

The interface is quite user-friendly. They are easy to use.

Based on my experience, I don't do enough to actually dislike any of the features that I use.

When deploying machines, we had a couple of issues, where it took up two to three times before it ran with no issues.

Integration with cloud products would be beneficial. At the moment, a lot of companies actually have that available with on-premise. 

The security improvement around it, to integrate it with the cloud. It's something that every company is now focusing on. That would be the way to go.

I have been working with Oracle VM for more than ten years.

It's quite stable. It's very reliable. We run most of our servers as virtual machines. We pretty much run the entire company across it.

It's a scalable solution. Across the whole company, we have 2,500 users.

I personally have not contacted technical support, but the site support team has.

There were no complaints, it was more of a support call. We have a contract in place, when we have some issues, we just call for support.

In regards to pricing, a lot of that is dictated. The tools and technology that we use are dictated by a global engineering team based in the US. 

Because it's one shop fits all, for a big corporation, or a big company like us if they say we have to use VMware, then we've got global partners, and we approach our partners for pricing. 

With having a global contract, we get some discounts. we just move forward with it. 

We don't really have much of a say when it comes down to pricing, because it's all done at a global level.

Oracle has always been one of the best database software on the market, and that's from at a corporate level. 

We used to use SQL in the past, and we've moved away from SQL in a lot of ways. So, I would definitely recommend Oracle based on its stability, the support it provides and being reliable.

I wouldn't give it a 10 unless I knew exactly everything about it. There's a certain aspect of it that I don't use because it's done by our global engineering team. what I know of it, I think, eight is reasonable.

If I knew more about the product, having used all of the features that comes with it, and still didn't have an issue and find it still being stable and reliable and a great product to work with, I'll probably give it a 10. 

Because I don't use the extended features, I would rate Oracle VM an eight out of ten.

We are using the virtual machine to host our databases and other applications.

What I like best about this product is that it's free. It helps customers and end-users save money.

I would like to see better orchestration, as it would help in terms of setup. 

Better automation would help in terms of provisioning and configuring new VMs.

Oracle VM should be more feature-rich.

Using this product should come at no charge, regardless of the platform.

We have been using Oracle VM for two or three years. We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients.

I have not seen any issues with stability.

Scalability has not been a problem. One of our older clients has about 1,000 end-users and one that we are working on now is expected to have about 50,000.

We have support directly from Oracle and we haven't had any issues with it.

I also have experience with VMware. The setup for VMware is a little bit easier.

The initial setup is not as easy as VMware, but over time and with experience, it will become easier.

Oracle VM is free if you are running it on Oracle infrastructure hardware, otherwise, it is subscription-based.

My advice for anybody who is researching this solution is to consider the total cost of ownership. It does not make sense to try and save money on hardware if you are going to have really expensive software. Be sure to look at the entire ecosystem, rather than the itemized cost.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

If there are issues with the storage, then all the machines go down, even if I have a backup solution in place. So I have to restart the server, and then it starts working again. It has happened a few times, and it wasn't very comfortable. 

Apart from that, it's an okay solution for deploying VMs or switching them to another server if you have availability installed, and so on.

I'm not familiar with the latest version. There might be some new functionalities that we would like to have in our current solution. For example, having better backup options for virtual machines, such as online backup, would be cool to have.

This is something that I would like to see in our virtualization solution.

I have been working with Oracle VM for around ten years. So far, it has been working well. 

If you don't have any issues, it works perfectly. If you do encounter issues, there aren't many. But where there are some issues, it can be a little more challenging compared to other solutions I've worked with. However, I understand it better now as we are transitioning to the latest utilization from Oracle, which they use in their cloud.

I would rate the stability of Oracle VM a nine out of ten. We haven't encountered any issues while working in production. 

However, if there are any issues, it's important that the environment supports optimal utilization. Additionally, it's worth noting that we are using an older version of the Oracle server. We are currently in the process of installing it in a new data center.

It is a scalable solution. The new version is more scalable than the old one.

Overall, I am happy with Oracle's support.

Positive

I work with the paid version. We are moving to the latest Oracle virtualization solutions, so we are going to stick to this solution.

Overall, I would rate Oracle VM an eight out of ten. 

Feature-wise, the solution's high availability to most servers is good. The virtual sellers don't have a host. I think that one is the most valuable for me.

I know they moved from OVM, and I think right now, they are moving into KVM or something else. I don't have much to say about the improvement if they are already shifted to the KVM.

The configuration can be more flexible. It is a necessity.

I have been using Oracle VM since 2014. Also, I am not using the solution's latest version. I am using Oracle VM 3.4. I am a customer of the solution.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Right now, no one in my company uses the solution.

I rate the solution's technical support a ten out of ten. I have used their support, and it is good.

Positive

On a scale of one to ten, where one being difficult and ten being easy, I rate the setup a five because the vendor was supposed to have done the biggest part, and they actually don't configure everything.

The deployment was done in a week or two.

Three people, along with the vendor, were needed for deployment.

The solution's UI is good enough.

I rate the overall solution a ten out of ten.