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RE: Oracle VM ?

From: Freeman, Donald <dofreeman_at_state.pa.us>
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:53:42 -0500
Message-ID: <51327ABA927BEF4B96590554CEA7832C0C2144B5@enhbgpri05.backup>


Well, don't have much choice about Solaris. We are completely Windows 2003 server here at the Department of Health. I want to go with the best technology. Our VM guy is touting VM as a HA/DR solution. I'm not so sure about that. I will be getting with him to hear about failover. VM doesn't do load balancing either. I'm not saying that VM and RAC are the same, I'm saying that there is/maybe some overlap. The VM guy is using the terms HA and DR as do we. I want to see if we mean the same things.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ted Coyle [mailto:oracle-l_at_webthere.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 10:48 AM To: dofreeman_at_state.pa.us; info_at_go-faster.co.uk; nilosegura_at_gmail.com; 'Oracle-L Freelists'
Subject: RE: Oracle VM ?

I don't think Oracle's VM will catch on. Has their Linux os? Maybe it will, but Oracle is starting to look like it is going to collapse under its own weight. One company owning every single layer can't be good.
Big has its advantages, but it is hard to maneuver.

I'd run VMWare's VM on Solaris. You can use D-Trace to see through the abstractions.

Check out how http://joyent.com/about/ does it.

I'd suggest really reading up on VM scalability before making an either/or decision.

VM abstracts the App, OS, or hardware. There is no reason that RAC couldn't be run in a VM environment. It's not RAC or VM, they aren't synonymous.

The database world as many know it will be going away...Virtual environments are here to stay. :)

Dr Gunther's Guerrilla Capacity Planning http://tinyurl.com/2kvqxa Chapter 7 is all about VM performance models.

Ted

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org]
On Behalf Of Freeman, Donald
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 8:02 AM To: info_at_go-faster.co.uk; nilosegura_at_gmail.com; Oracle-L Freelists Subject: RE: Oracle VM ?

I just had a big fight over this yesterday and noticed that Oracle had just announced their own VM offering. I was surprised at a meeting when the application manager for one of our major apps leaned past me to speak to the server manager about buying new database servers and asked him if we were going to put it on VM. I got in the middle of dat. We have a number of smaller development databases on VMs and also have one Oracle RAC system on dedicated servers. I just got this promotion to DBA manager from a datawarehouse position two weeks ago and haven't even located all the servers and databases yet.

We have bad architecture for both our Oracle and SQL areas. We have one Oracle RAC system and for all others our availability and DR options are to move a production backup to a test or development server and bring it up. Most of our production SQL databases were moved to VM's the last week that the guy I replaced was here. I'd like to get everything on to RAC or SQL Clusters. I can't really argue effectively because I don't know much about VM's. Our VM guy is a wizard as far as I can tell but he's not knowledgeable about RAC or clusters to compare them.

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?

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of David Kurtz Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 4:55 AM To: nilosegura_at_gmail.com; 'Oracle-L Freelists' Subject: RE: Oracle VM ?

I think we are going to see more of this, and not just for development systems.

I am working with a large telco at the moment, and they are going to love this kind of thing for smaller applications. We can't get a new server commissioned without going to the 'space board', and even then it can take months. They don't just allocate physical rack space in data centres, but they also consider power consumption. We already have Windows ESX VM servers (and we have no idea how many Windows VMs with which we are sharing). There is a real push to squeeze as many VMs as possible onto a single machine. Quite often it used for webservers and lightweight things like that.

I remember someone from a big bank giving a presentation, around the time RAC was just appearing, saying 'People ask for a database when they mean a schema'. He was pushing the concept of a linux-RAC cluster as a standard unit of corporate database allocation. This addresses the same question. I doubt anyone is going to put a big ERP or DW system on one of these, but I think we are going to see this for lightweight database applications without he complexities of RAC and the compromises of sharing instances - which is very much the same target market as Raw Iron.

regards



David Kurtz

>-----Original Message-----
>From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
>[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Nilo Segura
>Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 11:39 PM
>To: Oracle-L Freelists
>Subject: Oracle VM ?
>
>Hello,
>
>Now that Oracle has announced the "existence" of the Oracle VM "thing",

>do people think that this is actually useful to run your DBs on ?
>
>Personally I only see this as convenient way to run test/experimental
>environments, but I do not see it in a fully critical production
>environment. Should we see this as an alternative to Oracle Resource
>Manager perhaps ?
>
>Any remarks/thoughts on this ? I did miss the announcement so I ignore
>if they already gave some scenerarios where this could be used.
>
>Any remarks/thoughts ?
>
>p.s OpenWorld is really far too big, I miss the days when it was justs
>the RDBMS and associated development tools...
>-
>Nilo Segura
>Oracle Support - IT/DES
>CERN - Geneva
>Switzerland
>--
>http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
>
>

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Received on Wed Nov 14 2007 - 09:53:42 CST

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