RE: Oracle on Virtual Machines

  • From: "Freeman, Donald" <dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "'jifjif@xxxxxxxxx'" <jifjif@xxxxxxxxx>, "tony_vanlingen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <tony_vanlingen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:55:14 -0400

That is true.  When discussing this with the VM team they got a distinctly sour 
look on their face.  Oracle is simply making life difficult.  The server 
administrators have no benefit from operating multiple clusters or having to 
actually disable or defeat VM features just in order to satisfy the DBA groups 
silly licensing problem.   They also don't want to operate two different types 
of incompatible VM's.   Since we have committed to VMWare and have an 
Enterprise license and our state is 90% Microsoft there won't be any growth in 
the Oracle portion of the database market here.

Donald Freeman
Database Administrator II
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Department of Health
Bureau of Information Technology
2150 Herr Street
Harrisburg, PA 17103
dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx>



________________________________
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of ~Jeff~
Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 2:07 AM
To: tony_vanlingen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Oracle on Virtual Machines

We were evaluating this for a ct (in NZ, Oz) and they were looking at having to 
license every core (or CPU) in the VM cluster that Oracle runs in , leading to 
the conclusion that Oracle would need it's own VM cluster(s) for licensing 
reasons, rather than sharing a cluster with all the  app/web  servers and other 
rif-raf ;)
HTH -
Jeff

2009/6/11 Tony van Lingen 
<tony_vanlingen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:tony_vanlingen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
Mmmm, that's interesting. We had a discussion here last week about this very 
topic. It appears that (at least here in Oz) one would have to licence every 
core for every installed virtual machine (with Oracle on it), so if you would 
install 2 VMs on a 4-core machine, you'd have to licence 16 cores..

Has anyone a definitive answer?

Cheers,
Tony

Freeman, Donald wrote:

Yes, my understanding is that you would have to buy 8 CPU's worth of licenses 
for the 4 quad cores and you could create however many VM's the host could 
handle. I am not very familiar with Oracle VM to speak to it's features.  We 
(Commonwealth of PA) plunged an bought an Enterprise license for VMWare so 
that's all we have. I don't know if Oracle has an equivalent to Vmotion but if 
you've only got one VM host what are you going to use it for?  You don't start 
getting the full benefit of a VM until you have a cluster and can failover to 
another physical machine.

You haven't escaped any of the organizational problems that you would normally 
experience mixing production and development tiers. We have a production VM 
cluster/SAN and a development VM cluster/SAN.  Just from an administrative 
point of view in the event of a failure it's not good practice to cripple both 
your developers and users with one issue.

Donald Freeman
Database Administrator II
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Department of Health
Bureau of Information Technology
2150 Herr Street
Harrisburg, PA 17103
dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx>


-----Original Message-----
From: Subbiah, Nagarajan [mailto:Nagarajan.Subbiah@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 10:15 AM
To: Freeman, Donald; Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: Oracle on Virtual Machines

Hi Donald, Thanks. If we have the 4 Quad Core VM Host on Intel x86 platform, 
once you purchase the 8 CPU license using Oracle Licensing Metric multiplier 
(0.5/core for Intel) then we can have any number of VM with the any number 
virtual CPUs. OR for every VM's virtual CPU, you need to buy the license for.

Oracle VM is similar to VMWare? Does it have all the features of VMWare 
(especially Vmotion)?

Though the SQL server is out of the scope for discussion, Any cons you have 
found of using SQL Server VMs combining both development,test and production in 
a single physical server assuming enough hardware resources are in place. We 
are looking at the options for SQL Server as well to consolidate 10s of SQL 
Servers.

Raja.

-----Original Message-----
From: Freeman, Donald [mailto:dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 8:58 AM
To: Subbiah, Nagarajan; Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: Oracle on Virtual Machines

There should be a long discussion on Oracle on VM in the May archives.
Oracle discourages the use of VMWare through licensing restrictions which it 
does not apply to itself if using Oracle VM.  You have to buy a license for 
every CPU on the VM host whether or not you are using it. I think the Oracle VM 
uses a config file to set the number of CPU's that Oracle uses.  We don't have 
any production Oracle VM's but have some
development on VM clusters.   We have a lot of production SQL Server
VM's.


Donald Freeman
Database Administrator II
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Department of Health
Bureau of Information Technology
2150 Herr Street
Harrisburg, PA 17103
dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx>


-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Subbiah, Nagarajan
Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 7:20 AM
To: Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Oracle on Virtual Machines

Hi List,

Does Oracle support running the Oracle databases on VMs using SAN?
Oracle also has something called Oracle VM. How does it different from Vmware 
solutions?.

Also, Looking to move the hardware from HP  PA RISC architecture to x86 using 
Linux. What is the equivalent of 4 Dual Core PA8900 processeors compared to the 
HP Machines especially DL-G Series.

Any one has any experience of running production and development on same VM 
host; Assuming enough hardware resources in place any pros/cons of sharing the 
prod and dev on the same VM host?

Thanks in Advance.
Raja.

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