RE: Oracle VM ?
- From: "Freeman, Donald" <dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <rjoralist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Freeman, Donald" <dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 09:48:35 -0500
At the meeting the VM guy basically bragged about VM's high
availibility. All the DB storage is on a SAN. He seemed to feel that
he could replicate a VM partition to another server and basically
provide both HA and DR. He didn't feel the need to mention rack space,
heat, power or any of that other stuff. The servers cost a fraction of
the cost of software so that's not a plus. He thinks his solution is as
good as or better than RAC for HA and DR. I know the devil is in the
details. After I gather a few rocks to throw here and other places I'll
meet with him and throw down : ).
-----Original Message-----
From: Rich Jesse [mailto:rjoralist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 9:29 AM
To: dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Oracle-L Freelists
Subject: RE: Oracle VM ?
I think there's a fundamental difference between VM and clustering. To
me, the benefit of VM is in the consolidation of many disparate servers
onto a single physical server, with the savings in rack space, power,
cooling, annual hardware maintenance and potentially software licensing
(OK, the last one's a stretch). Contrast that to RAC, where the
hardware is multiplied for performance, HA, DR, etc.
The benefit for us to use VM is to be able to consolidate smaller
independant servers onto a single (yet redundant) server. The obvious
drawback/consideration with a move like this is HA/DR. Now, 5 or 6 VMs
will be tied to the same physical server. In our case, the idea is to
greatly reduce the management needs of aging hardware and Windows
foibles (e.g.
regular rebooting *needed* to solve issues). Instead of replacing 5
aging servers with 5 new ones where each new server's capabilities will
be well over the need for it's hosted app, we can buy one quad-core (or
dual*2) with redundant components and host all the previous apps in
their own virtual server. The savings for us should be substantial over
the life of the server.
This topic is enough for a week's worth of long, drawn-out meetings.
As with most everything, YMMV with VM.
Rich
Disclaimer: Ohhhhhhh, I thought you said "BM". Completely different.
;)
[snip]
> The way I see it VM is a competing technology with RAC and clusters.
> What I am thinking if we put these databases on VM's then as DBA's we
> lose some visibility into performance issues because we (me) don't
> have a VM appliance and can't really see through the VM abstraction.
> Also, it seems like a lot of the responsibility for availability and
> recovery shift to the server administrators. I have not been able to
> find a side-by-side comparison between DB clustering technology and VM
> technology. Can somebody point to something or comment?
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