To: mzito@xxxxxxxxxxx, Brandon.Allen@xxxxxxxxxxx, Sean.oneill@xxxxxxxxxx, "List, Oracle-l Freelists" <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 23:54:30 -0700 (PDT)
Matt Topper did a presentation and a good whitepaper covering VMWare uses in an
Oracle environment. You can get it at
http://www.matttopper.com/index.php?page_id=17
We also use VMWare internally for Oracle development systems, demos (we keep a
"shelf" of demos that we can start up, demo, then shut down), and for
additional desktops to support multiple VPN clients (since different VPNs don't
necessarily like each other much on Windows). As was mentioned here, we
wouldn't use it for production (and like Mark said--who really knows how to
license it properly), but love it for development.
Dan
----- Original Message ----
From: Matthew Zito <mzito@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Brandon.Allen@xxxxxxxxxxx; Sean.oneill@xxxxxxxxxx; "List, Oracle-l
Freelists" <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 11:01:04 AM
Subject: RE: vmware & Oracle
vmware & Oracle
It is a fair point that it adds an extra layer, but they've
invested a huge amount of effort in mitigating that. Also, it matters
*what* VMWare you're running. Both workstation and server run their
virtual machines as processes - so there is a huge userspace jump, and IO is
definitely impacted.
In VMWare ESX server, the OS of the physical machine is a
customized version of Linux with a custom kernel, and the virtual machines have
a much more direct IO path, as well as typically the VMWare filesystem on the
physical machine, as opposed to a standard ext3 filesystem for vmware
workstation, etc.
So, if you look at IO impact statistics from someone, make
sure they're comparing the version of VMWare you'd want to
run.
Matt
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Allen,
Brandon
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 12:52 PM
To:
Sean.oneill@xxxxxxxxxx; List, Oracle-l Freelists
Subject: RE: vmware
& Oracle
I have no experience with it, but this comment from the
list archives indicates that vmware slows down I/O by adding an extra
layer between Oracle and the disks:
http://www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/01-2007/msg00094.html
I'd be curious to see specific numbers from someone
running a fixed set of Oracle I/Os (e.g. a large table
scan & a large index range scan) against the same hardware with and
without VMWare. Anyone on the list done anything like that to get
precise timings?
