Anyone Using Virtual Machines?

Someone was asking me about using virtual machines for production PeopleSoft servers, and he pointed out this article:

Support Position for Oracle Products Running on VMWare Virtualized Environments [ID 249212.1]

From what I can tell, Oracle does not support VMWare for production servers. From the article, it looks like you can do it, but you are taking a slight risk that you would have to prove VMWare wasn’t causing the problem when you open a ticket with Oracle. I didn’t confirm this, but I think Oracle supports their own virtualization products.

Is there anyone out there using virtualization for their server environments?

8 thoughts on “Anyone Using Virtual Machines?

  1. Not all virtualization is done by VMWare or Oracle’s own products. Aix LPARs in p6 and p7 processors works quite well and is running our Peoplesoft services quite efficiently.

  2. I have development and test systems that are running on vmware, xen and kvm. I’m trying to switch everything to KVM, but the conversion of windows images from vmware is not going well at the moment. I have customers who run their whole environments on VMWare.
    Virtualization costs a little overhead, but the flexibility is fabulous.

  3. Oracle support the database in VMWare, but does not certified it. It means it is not tested, but Oracle will help you on known issues. For the unknown issues, you may have to prove that the virtualization software is not the root cause by reproduce it on a bare-metal OS or on Oracle VM.
    Find out more in that very interesting pdf doc :
    http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/db-virtualization-support-133757.pdf

    Nicolas.

  4. Thanks for the comments, guys.

    Noons, that is a great point. There is also the Microsoft Virtualization product. Do you have any idea what Oracle’s support is like on Aix LPARs? I mean has that ever been an issue for you in opening any tickets?

    Nicolas, do you have any kind of idea as to the risk you would take using VMWare? I mean, like you said, they support their products but they just haven’t tested it on top of VMWare. I have had issues with customizations that were unrelated to my problem interfering with our support ticket. What is the chance that VMWare would be blamed when the problem is really the Oracle product?

  5. I cannot say. What kind of customizations ? What kind of program ? Unless the issue is coming from some external specific OS calls, this is a vaste debate subject but I think the chances to blame virtualization are really small. However, depending of the sensitivity of the database you are working on, I’d not recommand to use non-certified tool.

  6. Uncle Bill, sorry I missed your comment earlier. I hadn’t seen KVM yet. Unfortunately, my laptop doesn’t have hardware virtualization, so it looks like it is out for me until I get a new laptop.

    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM/Installation

    Nicolas, the customizations were workflow-related. We had to try get the scenario setup in Demo in order to prove that it wasn’t the customization that was the problem.

    This is a vaste debate, and I am excited about the comments that I have had so far on it. It’s a good way to learn from the community. My big thing is that it sounds like a very small risk, but it is a lot of money and a lot of critical processes. I was curious how others see it.

  7. I run a variety of Oracle products under VMware, typically on RedHat Linux. I’ve *never* had Oracle require me to V2P (virtual to physical) an Oracle related system to prove that VMware wasn’t the issue, and I’ve opened numerous tickets with new bugs / issues.

    Oracle fully supports Oracle on VMware. Oracle doesn’t certify Oracle on VMware, nor does Oracle certify Oracle on Dell servers or Cisco switches.

    For the record, I run the following Oracle product families under VMware:

    Agile, WebCenter, UCM, SOA Suite, E Business Suite, User Productivity Kit, Hyperion, Governance Risk Compliance, Discoverer, WebLogic, Database Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition, OEM and I’m sure a few I’m forgetting.

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