The primary advantage is the added resiliency of virtualization. There aren’t
any real disadvantages that we have run into. When properly configured, the IO
is just as good as on a physical server.
Troubleshooting is pretty much identical, though you do have the added
instrumentation that is on VMware that you can look at.
We have found that you get a little more CPU advantage from using hugepages in
VMware than you do using hugepages on physical.
From: Sanjay Mishra [mailto:smishra_97@xxxxxxxxx] ;
Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2016 4:19 PM
To: andrew.kerber@xxxxxxxxx; dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; 'Oracle-l Digest
Users'
Subject: Re: Oracle RAC/non-RAC on Vmware vs Physical Server
Thanks Andrew
Yes one thing to be kept in mind is Oracle License that has to go against full
Physical Server
I am trying to see what are pros and cons of using VM vs physical server
especially for RAC. What kind of issue like IO etc been experienced and how to
troublshoot/experience for very high OLTP applications. There are around 250
Database on around 80-100 Physical servers. Some are Aix,Linux,Solaris and now
plan is to rearchitect to move them to Linux and hence plan is going to check
RAC or all non-RAC with VMWare to provide any added resilency.
Rgds
Sanjay
On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 4:56 PM, Andrew Kerber
<andrew.kerber@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have done this several times. It is pretty much identical to a physical
setup. I have never run into any real problems. There are quite a few
low-level pieces that need to be set up, for example setting the multi-writer
flag on the shared storage, turning on node affinity, etc. But we have done it
quite often and had very good results.
Our performance tests generally show performance to be just as good as a
physical server, but with the added resiliency of VMware.
There are a few gotchas that you need to watch for, eg. One time we had a
machine do an unplanned storage VMotion, and it copied the shared disks. That
was a really freaky thing to look at.
You will have to license the entire physical machine that it runs on, and make
sure you use hardware affinity so that the VM does not run on a physical server
you do not plan to license.
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Sanjay Mishra (Redacted sender "smishra_97" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2016 3:37 PM
To: Oracle-l Digest Users
Subject: Oracle RAC/non-RAC on Vmware vs Physical Server
Hi Experts
Can someone please share your experience with facts on using Oracle 11g/12c
RAC/non-RAC on Vmware based VM using Linux ? Need to create the doc to show the
pros and cons of the environment for consolidation project. I am sure many have
either created/worked on such project and really appreciate your comments.
TIA
Sanjay
