Virtualization for Oracle Solutions
My name is Chris Rimer and I’m a director in the VMware Alliances organization, responsible for our Oracle relationship. This new Oracle blog is a place where we can share with you – Oracle and VMware customers, partners, and other interested parties – what we’ve learned about virtualizing Oracle environments on VMware Infrastructure.
We’d like this blog to be an interactive space too. We’re starting off with a series of posts that give you our take on why now is the time to virtualize your Oracle environments, and we want you to tell us your experiences and concerns. So, without further ado:
Applications, middleware and even databases make excellent candidates for virtualization, particularly as customers see the time-to-value and risk/reward benefits for virtualizing mission-critical applications. Pre-production is a no-brainer, and even production deployments make sense given the degree to which risks are mitigated by present virtualization solutions from VMware. Frankly speaking: the technology works, customers know it, and they're starting to take advantage now -- word is spreading among CIOs who must justify why they're not virtualizing infrastructure to their CFOs and shareholders.
At VMware we see customers around the world virtualizing the full array of Oracle's family of developed and acquired products with VMware, and we expect that trend to accelerate. Some application administrators and DBAs still take a conservative view on virtualizing, and we hope to address those concerns in this blog. In the next post, I’ll address Oracle support for VMware.
Christopher Rimer
Posted by Christopher Rimer on September 11, 2008 | Permalink |
Thanks Chris, looking forward to the Oracle support entry :-)
Posted by: Andy | September 24, 2008 at 07:56 AM
Hi Chris,
I have found that Oracle products run just fine on VMware ESX. However, I have not been able to find any official statement from Oracle about the required licenses. The only thing I did find was that Oracle does recognise VMware partitioning as soft-partitioning. This means that all physical CPU's/cores of the underlying hardware will be influencial to the required number of licenses (eitehr per CPU or named users).
What is your statement on that?
Posted by: Bob Daamen | November 07, 2008 at 03:36 AM
Bob,
You have that right. Oracle's soft partition classification means that all CPUs/cores on a given box must be licensed. However, recognize that whether the box is physical or virtual, there is no difference in licenses in this case.
Furthermore, Oracle is generous in that once licensed, you are free to deploy as many instances of Oracle on that box as you wish; again, physical or virtual does not matter.
Of course, consult Oracle's licensing page as the final authority & be sure to interpret for yourself, as I am not an authorized authority on the matter :-)
Posted by: Christopher Rimer | November 21, 2008 at 11:14 AM
I'm thinking of deploying Oracle DB and AS on ESX too. But what about Oracle-Support if I need it. ESX is not certified for Oracle DB and/or AS. If there is a problem and Oracle says: "sorry, thats not supported. So we cant help you." My Boss will kill me, or so.
Regards
Thomas
Posted by: Thomas Draband | December 27, 2008 at 06:20 AM
Hi Chris,
I also have a questions about Oracle's formal statement about Vmware. We're looking to deploy Oracle Hyperion and Essbase on ESX and the formal statement we're getting is; "It's not supported on Vmware".
Can you confirm this statement?
Regards,
Vince
Posted by: Vince | February 02, 2009 at 04:40 AM
you can view metalink # 249212.1 for the "offical" statement.
Posted by: mark smith | September 01, 2009 at 03:04 PM