Oracle VM Reviews

• Scalability
• Administering/managing
• Simplified network/storage operations.

Having these features in place, a DBA admin can easily able to build VMs, migrate on the fly, assign network ports, and segregate the networks according to levels.

It's improved our licensing. When we migrate physical servers to virtual ones, it reduces the amount of licenses needed. Not only that, Oracle Linux on Oracle VM are certified to run, also UEL is tuned to provide fast performance compare to other Linux.

There are some minor bugs with the manual admin from Hyp versus GUI Admin.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

It's scaled for our needs.

I personally like working on Oracle VM rather than other virtualization, because of the simplified setup, and probably I am attached to Oracle products maybe, as being an Ex-Employee of Oracle Corp.

With Oracle VM, the most valuable feature is the virtualization of the hardware, making it easier to maintain and support than actual OS's and networks resources. 

We can run software on a host separate from other hardware resources, which is important when we need to take a snapshot and restore it later on another VM.

But it also comes down to the fact that it's a product by Oracle, the industry leader. We know we can rely on it and that it'll be supported by an established company.

The fact that it cannot do a hot snapshot is a problem for us, but we work around it. We need to have good backups, while the system is up, which don't don't right now with Oracle VM. Our workarounds are fine for now, but we'd prefer to be able to just do hot snapshots when we need to.

We've had no issues deploying it.

I think it's fine, there are no issue there. We haven't had any big issues with it being unstable.

The scalability has been there for us as well. We've been able to scale as needed.

It's implemented just fine. The setup was pretty easy and straightforward. It was a combination of an easy product to install and technical expertise as well.

We implemented it ourselves with our in-house team.

We didn't really evaluate other products because we already run a lot of other Oracle solutions. Obviously, Oracle VM is supported by Oracle, which makes things easier than if we had used, for example, vSphere or Hyper-V.

Study ahead of time so you know what you're working with. Also, plan your implementation.

Although not necessarily a feature, but rather a capability of virtualization, is the possibiltles to have high consolidation density and to take new or legacy applications and put them on high-performance computing platforms.

The primary benefit is that it reduced CapEx by getting rid of old hardware and then consolidating them on a defined set of platforms. And while it's pretty well automated and if your IT department is well-versed in virtualization technology, it can reduce OpEx as well.

I think it needs a more simplified way of provisioning external storage networks. Those areas in performance, especially triaging performance at the hypervisor layer, need some improvement.

We've had no issues with deploying it.

It's come a long way. So, by the time you get to v3.3, it's a pretty stable platform. It's much easier to use than the previous versions and I'd say it's at a good place right now.

It scales well. I think a primary use case of this would be in the private cloud appliance, a PCA, which is where it really gets leveraged.

The primary benefit I see is that most of the people who are doing support for Oracle VM come from database and virtualization backgrounds, and they sit together. If you have a problem with a database, since it's virtualized, they'll know exactly how to triage it.

It's been a struggle. Over the years, it's gotten better and better. I think what's helped tremendously is the integration of OVM with PCA, and so all the setup has really been taken out of the hands of the administrator. It's really more of a deployment thing than it is a setup thing. That's helped a lot.

We looked at quite a few vendors and we support different vendors as well, too. We're not a one-vendor shop. We use quite different vendors and it's all-purpose for us. For Oracle-based technology, we use Oracle VM. For non-Oracle stuff, we use VMware.

The first thing I would suggest is that if you have a test environment, the best thing to do is learn. Get certified hardware and then play with it, test it. Make sure you're comfortable with the whole provisioning setup and configuration of it. Then use it on a much more wider scale.

Live migrations work as advertised and, if set right, it moves VMs around to balance out the resources.

Development of the product seems slow, but then again, I do not want a rushed product. Oracle states that this is their solution for their products, but Windows is fully supported. It may not have all the features of VMware, but those features come at a cost (monetarily and performance-wise). I want a rock solid foundation, and I don't want a bunch of hooks into the foundation of my Windows infrastructure.

The system we set up has two nodes (hosts) and one manager. We are using an HP DL 380 for the manager and 385s for the hosts, which, at the time, were not on the compatibility list, but it still works.

We have most of our Windows domain on OVM. One host has one domain controller, the other host has another domain controller. So just in case we lose a host, we do not loose an authentication server.

We had problems with the PV drivers setting CPUs above eight, but this limitation is noted in the ReadMe file.

Once the system was up and running, the VMs ran great! We have Windows 2003, 2008 and 2008R2 servers. At the time, in July 2013, 2012 was not supported.

We've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

I was using Oracle OEM and Dell Foglight on virtual machines that were already on the market. When Oracle came with its own VM product that was better suited to an Oracle environment and easy to use with Oracle builds, we switched.

I set up the manager first. Since this is an Oracle installation, I chose to install the manager software on Oracle Linux 6.1. Nothing fancy needed, but I installed the desktop to make things easier for me. I have two NICs set up, one to connect to my network, and the other to connect to the hosts (for management, VM live migrations, and the heartbeat). I then installed the manager software and you just need to click Next>Next>Next. Be sure to write the password down, as this is the password needed to gain access to the management console (via web).

The hosts were a snap. We do not have any hard drives in the host, but do have a flash card to boot from. So I chose the "minimal" install for the flash card install, and you need to set a root password and a discover password. Make note of them as you will need the discover password to make the connection in the manager. Keep the discover password the same for all hosts to make it easier. Once in the manager, before you discover all the hosts you need to manage, you will need to set what the VLANs are, bonds to the network, how many virtual NICs you will need, etc. After you discover the nodes, you will need to set up a pool repository that keeps all the info on the VMs. This repository should go on the SAN. Another repository should be set up for all your ISOs and other VM volumes if you chose not to use raw LUNs. Connect all the storage you will use (we have HP P4300s). We use all raw iSCSI LUNS for our VMs. We lose some functionality in OVM, but gain others via the SAN (snapshots, etc).

You get enterprise features for no cost or low cost if you chose to purchase support.

Do not attempt to run OVM on old hardware as it only runs on 64-bit systems. Check with the hardware compatibility guide for more details.

This is a great solution and, in my opinion, it's a rare jewel that more Windows shops should be looking at.

We use Oracle VM in our datacenter, which helps us run some hard core stuff. It's essentially Xen technology that runs on Oracle VM Server for SPARC, all of which runs on a base supported by Oracle, which is great.

Xen running on Oracle VM differs greatly depending on whether you're using version 2 or version 3 in terms of directories, images, etc. So it takes some getting used to because they weren't release with consistent interfaces.

I've been using it since v2.x when it really went into production grade.

We've had no issues with deployment.

Xen technology running on Oracle VM is rock solid. Again, versions 2 and version 3 are completely different, and it takes some time to get used to. But for users, it's still a rock solid product and works perfectly.

So far, we've been able to scale it. We haven't had any issues with scalability.

The initial setup wasn't complex.

We implemented it ourselves with our in-house team.

I find the VM server features useful for moving VM’s while keeping the most important ones available.

With Oracle VM we can deliver new infrastructure much faster by deploying from templates and cloning it after customizing.

I would like to see a proper and stable client to access Oracle VM Manager. Installation documents should be improved regarding storage details and shared cluster disks.

I have used it for three years for many US, UK and European clients.

The issues I found were related to cluster disk shared on our SAN. It was about detailed storage configurations.

The issues I found were related to cluster disk shared on our SAN. It was about detailed storage configurations.

The issues I found were related to cluster disk shared on our SAN. It was about detailed storage configurations.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see the same level of expertise as I see regarding Oracle Databases. Oracle must improve their support skills and knowledge base to help clients with issues.

I also use VMware vSphere, but for Microsoft based solutions (Windows Servers, Sharepoint, MSSQL, etc). Oracle VM is a better choice and cheaper one when we are using Oracle Solutions.

The initial setup was very hard and required me to create a build doc to my company so anyone could do it again. The cluster documentation is not straightforward when we use 3rd party SAN hardware.

I implemented it for British and European clients using my own build document as there was not enough information for Hitachi SAN storages. I would advise you to create a proper POC and test all hardware pieces. Also, Oracle Linux is a must have on these kind of environments.

Well, this is the most important factor on Oracle VM as it is a free solution to implement, and very cheap to license. If you also use Oracle VM as operating system, then all makes sense regarding pricing, support and performance.

It still lacks a reliable Oracle VM Manager able to also report performance. Also, Oracle Support knowledge base is still growing. My advice is to have skilled people to implement it. Although it is cheap, it needs the correct skills for a proper cluster implementation and to resolve issues.

• Bare metal virtualization
• SR-IOV
• Live migration
• Hardware compliance

This product is directly related to hardware, so it is a complete technology with hardware, operating system, and virtualization software.

The following are attributes that have improved my organization -

• Robustness
• Security
• Scalability
• High performance

We have been using IBM POWER hardware, AIX and PowerVM. We were happy with the technology, but switched to Oracle because of cost issues. The new technology is as robust, secure, scalable as IBM. The performance is much better than IBM POWER7 but we did not have a chance to compare POWER8 with new SPARC technology. IBM POWER technologies came one and a half years after Oracle and thus IBM lost a big customer.

• The SR-IOV technology should be improved more as it only supports basic functions.
• It does not have a graphical maintenance screen. The OVM manager interface has so little functionality for managing control domains only. It is not a big problem if you have experienced administrators, but it would be nice to have a beautiful screen to use for everything which guides you into not making mistakes.
• Error handling takes the safest way, but safest way may cause business discontinuity. A few bad experiences occurred in this manner and should be fixed. For example, if you restart the server and resources assigned to virtual systems are more than available, it removes all virtual system definitions and resource assignments like WWNs. You have to redefine everything from backups. This takes time and the system is out of service in the meanwhile.
• Virtual WWNs were lost in one of the PDOMs while it was in maintenance mode. The system continued with other servers, but all disk access paths had to be re-defined from scratch for some LDOMs. It was so annoying because this was not accepted as a bug by Oracle.

We've used it for two years.

We had no issues with the deployment.

We had errors, but they were fixed. The hardware and software work perfectly with the new SPARC technology.

We had no issues with scaling it for our needs.

We have experienced resources and we made a checklist of what we did with IBM and how to do it in SPARC. After that, we did not need much service and support. Software downloading and bug fix is pretty good with Oracle. We have had quick responses for case tickets from the available time zones.

We used IBM PowerVM on AIX servers. The main driver was changing the hardware. Both technologies are hardware specific. So we migrated from POWER hardware, AIX, and PowerVM to SPARC hardware, and OVM for SPARC Solaris.

I can compare triple-to-triple and none has any serious disadvantage to the other. Changing the technology was not a technical decision, but we as technical people declared that they are functionally equal.

The initial setup was straightforward and no more complex than PowerVM.

Our main effort was using in-house resources. The vendor team only supported training.

We consolidated lots of databases onto two big iron servers and got benefits from our database licenses. Oracle charges double for IBM server cores if you are using the Oracle database. The government procurement process may not care about price competition, so we defined our requirements, and bidding was made by another organization. IBM and Oracle bidding brought lower prices for the initial procurement cost. Maintenance costs are directly related to the initial price.

RISC hardware may seem more expensive than Intel CISC, but TCO was cheaper with more robust hardware with double performance. So the hardware technology was the main issue. We also decided that engineered systems are not suitable for complex business scenarios.

• Plan everything at the beginning. Do not change plans after you start.
• You must know what you are doing. Never leave any responsibility to the vendor or a third-party contractor.
• Write what you do, do what you write. Never leave any detail undocumented.
• Do something, validate documentation, then delete everything and make someone else do the same thing with the documentation.
• Security becomes a big issue after setup. Plan your security requirements during design. The vendor does not care about it. It cannot be added later.
• Plan your disaster recovery requirements and make your designs accordingly.

It seemed to be a great and risky adventure to migrate from IBM Power to Oracle SPARC, but we did the migration in 15 minutes in a complex environment with Oracle databases, SAP application servers, and in-house Java applications. If you see that it brings advantages, do not get scared -- just do it, nothing happens, and it works. You get a new experience.

The most valuable feature of this product is the quick and easy way to deploy new virtual machines from Oracle VM templates and your own templates. That is very useful to deploy new virtual machines in a few minutes with different Oracle products already installed and configured. For example, we can deploy a new virtual machine with Oracle Database installed and another virtual machine with Oracle WebCenter installed.

It reduced the time to deploy new machines and reduced the cost of licensing.

It would be very nice to improve the way to get hot backup clones of virtual machines and to schedule this jobs from Oracle VM Manager.

We used it for three years and we stopped last year.

I encountered some issues with virtual networks and live migration feature in v3.2.

We had no issues with the stability.

We've had no issues scaling it.

7/10

7/10

The company where I was used VMware solutions for virtualization of environments, and we migrated all Oracle products to an Oracle VM infrastructure.

The initial setup was a little complex because no one in the company knew about this product as it was something new at the time. My team and I did a successful installation of our Oracle VM environment and migrated all Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic application servers to this new infrastructure, which are now in our production environment for client deliveries.

The implementation was done by a local team of the company with some issues but finally with success.

This aspect was done by another team in our company.

I think it is a good Oracle product, but it is necessary to have a dedicated team with the correct expertise for this task because it is different from other virtualization solutions. The team should include people who know about storage, networking, Oracle Linux OS, Xen Server, Oracle Database, etc.