UPDATE May 20, 2009 – Oracle again revised its support policy for virtualization of its software on a non-Oracle hypervisor. Please refer to Chris Wolf’s follow up post on the topic for the complete details, but in sum Oracle slightly altered the text in its Metalink Note 794016.1 to remove mention of specific hypervisors that are “not explicitly certified, but supported” as a platform for Oracle products.
The bottom line however is that VMware ESX is still a supported Oracle platform. Oracle Metalink document 294212.1 still reigns supreme – it is still in effect, it has not been modified, and it still explicitly defines Oracle’s support policies for VMware virtualized environments. It is on the basis of this document that VMware customers continue to deploy Oracle on VMware with confidence.
May 8, 2009
I had to post a short pointer to a blog post by esteemed Burton Group analyst, Chris Wolf ,because it might contain information that could make life a lot easier for our the thousands of VMware customers that run Oracle applications in a VMware virtual environment.
Chris recently wrote on his on his personal blog, that with Oracle Metalink Note 794016.1, (which can be viewed with an Oracle Support account), “Oracle now offers best effort support for all of its E-Business Suite applications on any x86 hypervisor.”
…and of course VMware ESX is included in that group “any x86 hypervisor”
Chris then provides some quotes from the Metalink note, which I have pilfered recreated below:
This Metalink Note appears to say that 1) Hypervisors from VMware are officially supported platforms for Oracle E-Business Applications and 2) Organizations running Oracle applications in those environments are entitled to best effort support from Oracle.
So VMware customers, this sounds like great news! Oracle really DOES offer “best effort support” for VMware solutions! Virtualize On!
Read the news straight from Oracle on its E-Business Suite Technology Blog.
Hallo Chris,
I’m a little bit worried!!!
The title of the metalink document is as followed:
Subject: Hardware Vendor Virtualization Technologies on non
x86/x86-64 Architectures and Oracle E-Business Suite
Doc ID: 794016.1 Type: BULLETIN
Modified Date : 08-MAY-2009 Status: PUBLISHED
Hardware Vendor Virtualization Technologies on non
x86/x86-64 Architectures and Oracle E-Business Suite
So they don’t support VMware because it is a x86/x64 Hypervisor or do they?
Anyway there is a way to get ORACLE support – if you can proof that the installation of ORACLE was done before May 2008.
What’s the right answer?
Thanks a lot Carsten
I don’t see the section you posted in the Metalink doc. Any thoughts?
Charles – you are correct Oracle has since altered the language in their support document – please refer to Chris Wolf’s follow up blog post http://www.chriswolf.com/?p=365 I will update the Virtual Reality post to reflect this development.
I’m a little worried – no updates to this blog in quite a long time now. Any news?
I never try to use oracle as the back end of my database. I used sql. But im curious about oracle because big company’s are using oracle in creating Database.
Great post Chris. Thanks for updating us on Oracle’s ever-confusing support policies for virtualization.
I agree, it looks like Oracle is stalling on offering broad x86 hypervisor support because they want to perfect their own virtualization offering and corner Oracle customers into using it.
They seem to get away with sub-par virtualization support and high license fees because their users go along with it; I doubt anyone abandons Oracle databases because they don’t like the company’s virtualization licensing and support policy.
But I do know Oracle users are making noise about these issues and should continue to pressure the company for positive changes.
i like this post
Interesting stuff. But an update would have been great:-) – Ray K.