Oracle VM Reviews

A disclaimer: Though I have been working with various flavours of Linux since Slackware 1.2 in 1996, and I more recently focus in more enterprise computing and Oracle Database, my opinions tend to be colored with those use cases. We use this Virtualization platform to host our internal development training and PoC environments. Though Oracel HAs increasingly been adding support for a KVM based solution in recent years many of their signature virtualization platforms like the private cloud appliance are OVM based.

• Oracle has now made it available as a hypervisor on Oracle cloud to be deployed on Bare metal servers.
• Ability to patch with no downtime.
• Ability to ensure all prerequisites are satisfied without manual intervention saves time, effort, and makes the systems that we deploy for our clients more secure. 
• Licensing costs are less for Oracle Linux and for clients moving to the Oracle Cloud, as it is included in the price of the subscription.

The ability to live migrate VMs on the fly from one hypervisor to another has been very useful.The ability to pin cores to reduce licensing costs for our clients runnning core based oracel producs is also invaluable.One important factor to note is that to use live migration its important to create specifc pools devoted to certain products for exampel a pool for weblogic and a separate server pool for database. live migration is not permitted when using cpu pinnning to reduce license costs.

• ability to use live migration and cpu pinning together would be very useful. for example reserving certain physical cpus on the target system prior tothe live migration for example.

More than five years.

Initially, we had some teething troubles that we found were due to use of an unsupported storage solution. We switched to an Oracle ZFS appliance, and since then, we have had no issues.

We did not encounter scalability issues. However, we are constrained by our hardware since this is a development setup.

We have found support personnel of the EMEA region with whom we have interacted to be very knowledgeable. They were very supportive and had a very good grasp of both Linux and the product.

We have used Vmware in the past be faced challenges with supportability , compatibiollity with oracle products and licensing costs and complexity.

The initial setup was quite simple. We also were able to upgrade to various newer versions with minimum handholding.

We implemented in-house.

We are certified implementors of this technology now.

We were able to deploy our solution at near zero cost compared to other vendors since the licenses come with our Oracle hardware. Therefore, it is difficult to calculate ROI, as it is a very large number.

If you choose Oracle hardware, then this virtualization software is included along with support. Licensing of various oracle applications is one of the more expensive components of any implementation, the ability to hard partition it is a major advantage which outweighs any other disadvantage for various x86-based solutions.

We evaluated using Oracle VirtualBox, but it was more for desktop virtualization and did not fit with server virtualization. We also tried KVM, but the complexities in migration from one host to another deterred us, and the management was not as seamless for multiple hypervisors.

Given Oracle VM's favorable licensing policy allowing hard partitioning using virtualization, we found this to the the most optimal method to recommend to clients.

There are compelling reasons why one might prefer Oracle Linux to Red Hat Linux. Some of the major factors are:

1. One throat to choke. It is very useful to have one vendor on the pointy end of the stick. No finger pointing, and all buck passing is internal. Also, given the dev team is often using the same OS flavor, it can be a benefit in the first place. 
2. Optimised for databases. Many of the options: RPMs and settings which are best used to run a database are packaged into a single RPM that can be automatically deployed on Oracle Linux, but must be painfully and manually setup on RHEL. 
3. Ksplice: The ability to patch all aspects of a running Linux system, including the kernel with zero downtime is something that no other Linux provides. The UEK is enough of a differentiator to get the nod.

I recommend this for any customer wanting to reduce their licensing costs for packaged applications.

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.

My primary use of this product is for a database. I use this solution because it can work together with our other Oracle solutions.

There is no memory over-subscription and CPU over-subscription. That has to be improved in terms of Oracle VM perspective. The other leading VM software solutions have this feature.

For me, the stability is fine. But, I only primarily use it for the database role. 

There is a huge gap that Oracle VM needs to tighten in order to be more scalable, as well as more competitive with other VM products currently on the market. 

The technical support is not perfect. 

I previously used VMware products. I have found VMware vs Oracle VM to be far superior in provisioning and deployment. Additionally, there is more storage availability with VMware products. 

It's slightly more complex to set up than other VM software. 

I primarily use this for server virtualization. I also use it for application deployment. 

Oracle has a lot of templates for most of the enterprise application that they sell the market. So, it is easier to deploy those application using one Oracle VM template than actually setting up a server from scratch. Oracle VM is very handy in that a user can easily deploy the templates, pre-configures and does a few customizations within a short time-span.

Oracle VM is a solution that grows with your business. It can easily be scaled up, and it is a great storage platform. 

The Oracle VM template is the most valuable feature. 

I do not think this solution is as stable as other solutions in the market. But, Oracle has really been trying to update the solution with the most recent release, and I find it is less buggy than it had been.

In addition, I think Oracle VM should integrate its own backups rather than relying on other Oracle tools for virtual backups. 

This solution supports up to 254 virtual machine servers. So, this is a huge capability for scalability. Any company can start with whatever it has, and grow as its budget grows. 

Initially, the tech support was horrible. But, over time, the support engineers have improved. I find the tech support extremely helpful recently. They are currently giving very solid support. 

I have prior experience with VMware, Bhyve and FreeNAS. Bhyve and FreeNAS are open-source VM solutions.

It is very simple to setup and deploy. But, it should be noted that a systems architect or systems engineer must be at the helm of the deployment. The setup must be conducted by someone well-versed in Linux. 

Initially, when we setup we had to make sure we had a staff architect that was knowledgeable with storage skills and Linux. Those were our requirements for proper deployment. 

The cost of this solution is cheap. It is one of the reasons we chose Oracle VM. It is truly "pocket- friendly."

In regards to the licensing, Oracle VM is definitely a good choice for a customer that is already using Oracle solutions. 

Nothing is simple about virtualization software products anymore. They are becoming more complex by the day. Now, with the advent of containers, the complexity has increased. Nothing is simple. Users must be dedicated to understand these VM solutions. 

It is cloud-based, so I can access the management consoles from anywhere within or outside my organization if I have VPN access. Its a very light pool so its quite fast in nature, the hypervisor itself is very small its around one and half gig in size so its very light, and boots very fast. It consumes no overhead. For example, if there is a physical server of say 128 gigs and 4 core CPU, all of these 4 cores and 128 gigs are available to you.

In addition, on the network card you can do WLAN tagging, you can do non WLAN tagging, you can do IP based multi-passing and you can do storage level multi-passing.

I think the most valuable features are:

• Excellent support team
  
• Compatibility with: Linux, Windows, Ubuntu and Solaris

The management can be improved more, and become more agile. It would be nice for it to become more rich in terms of UI. In addition, the replication to disaster recovery needs improvement.

This product upgrades or updates comes in two flavors, one is a community update and one is subscription based updates. For the subscription based updates you have to pay Oracle, its a very small amount of money for the subscription. In contrast, the community support is free. You can choose whichever way you want.

Again, it is extremely scalable. Notes can be added on the fly, but it needs to do better form work before it is a true virtualization software. 

If you compare Oracle VM vs VMware or Oracle VM vs Hyper-V, there is a definite difference in GUI. The GUI of Hyper-V and VMware are phenomenal. The GUI of Oracle VM is not that great, it is sluggish in nature, but it does everything that it is supposed to do. So, you have command line access, you have the GUI based access too, so my recommendation is to make the GUI better. It has improved in the past couple of years, and it should continue to do so.

It is simple and straightforward, and it will only require you one system integrator to do the job. If you can read the English directions on the screen, then you can do it.

It is a cheap solution for a company's VM needs. It is simple to use, and has a great support system. It appears to be a win-win for any organization.

Pricing and licensing is one of the main decision making reasons for going to Oracle VM because it was cost-effective.

I primarily use this for demonstrations for customers. 

It is easy to use, and easy to start.

It is a stable product.

The scalability is good. For us, we do not have a need for a lot of servers, so it suits our needs. We have about 30 users of this solution.

The tech support is good. 

It was a complex setup. It was very difficult for me.

If you buy an Oracle server, this solution is free. You have to only pay for support.

We use this solution for project management.

It is very useful for the project management of our company.

Integrating with the internal system is not very easy.

We reached out to tech support via email, and they responded to our inquiries.

It was very easy to setup. We used the wizard to automatically setup the master data and the initial data.

The price of this product is high. 

We are building a private cloud with Oracle VM. We want to implement Oracle RAC with Clusterware releases 12.2 and 18c, and with Oracle Database releases 11.2.0.4 to 18c.

We will implement a full dev/test environment with Oracle RAC and standalone databases. We will be able to fully use our ULA license agreement with Oracle and provide flexibility to our development teams.

Oracle virtual machine templates for rapid deployment are very useful. This allows us to deploy already-implemented and optimized virtual machines.

Snapshotting could be easier. And there could be more intuitive ways for cloning of virtual machines.