Re: Hello some idea to include a contract clause to protect against virtual machines

How do you deal with customers who have put the database on an underpowered server or storage system?
In what way would such a situation be different from having a customer who has put it on a wrongly configured virtual machine?

Kind regards,

-- 
Freek D'Hooge
Exitas NV
Senior Oracle DBA
email: freek.dhooge_at_exitas.be
tel +32(03) 443 12 38
http://www.exitas.be 

On ma, 2014-11-24 at 18:15 -0400, Juan Carlos Reyes Pacheco wrote:


> Thank you Tim, the problem is if you don't do that then the customer,

> will expect you solve the problem that comes from the virtual

> misconfiguration, doing some kind of magic in the database.

> 

> 

> I was thinking something like 

> 

> 

> "In the case of the use of virtualization, the customer is aware it

> can affect the support from Oracle, and in the case of a failure of

> performance or bug, he accept he may need to move the production

> environment to an standalone server to verify the bug or the

> performance problem is not a problem in the virtual machine."

> 

> 

> 

> This keeps an open point, because in this moment that customer is

> expecting we solve something comes from the virtual server. Because we

> restarted the database, cleared the memory, etc. and only restarting

> the server the problem is solved. And is the only customer who has

> that problem, and other clients has identical software, and the

> database configuration is standard.

> 

> 

> 

> 2014-11-24 10:28 GMT-04:00 Tim Gorman <tim_at_evdbt.com>:

> 

>         Juan,

>         

>         There is an old saying that, "As soon as lawyers become

>         involved, the relationship is over", and this is certainly

>         true in a vendor-customer relationship. A lawyer will be glad

>         to be paid to pursue such a case, but I suspect it would only

>         irritate your customer and it is messy and expensive to amend

>         contracts after the fact.  Far easier to simply address the

>         technical problem, for that is what it is. That is how

>         "trusted advisors" are born.

>         

>         Virtual machines are usually allocated so as to "play nice" in

>         a cluster, which means that resources such as vCPU and vRAM

>         are shared back and forth, since each VM cannot always be

>         allocated their configured amount at all times. It is intended

>         for the total resource allocated in a virtualization cluster

>         to exceed the physical capacity, at least in non-production

>         environments.

>         

>         But over-subscribing virtual resources in a production

>         environment is neither a good idea nor recommended, and that

>         seems to be what has happened here, perhaps? So, it is not

>         that virtualization is inherently "bad" for production, but

>         badly administered.

>         

>         Think about it: demand for resources by the Oracle environment

>         are peaking when demand for resources by the other VMs are

>         also peaking, if they are supporting the same application.

>         Unless otherwise configured, the hyper-visor has no choice but

>         to *reduce* resource allocation across the board, due to the

>         peak in demand by all. If the virtualization admins likely

>         have graphs and reports showing this happening already.

>         

>         It might be a good idea to work with the virtualization

>         admin(s) to diagnose whether this is happening or not, and

>         decide whether to increase resource capacity in the cluster

>         (i.e. buy more hardware) or set reservations on a minimal

>         amount of vCPU or vRAM for the Oracle environment?  This will

>         permit the issue to be escalated as the simple technical issue

>         of resource sharing that it is.

>         

>         At this point, IT management can be presented with the choices

>         of A) increasing the capacity of the cluster and solving the

>         problem or B) imposing reservations on certain VMs and

>         micro-managing resource allocation.

>         

>         There is a further option "C" of tuning each of the critical

>         virtual machines to dampen the peaks in demand of course, and

>         this list can help with that.

>         

>         Hope this helps...

>         

>         -Tim

>         

>         

>         

>         

>         

>         On 11/24/14 6:46, Juan Carlos Reyes Pacheco wrote:

>         

>                 Hello, please

>                 does anybody includes in the contract something

>                 against the use of virtual machines to install Oracle.

>                 One of our customer has a virtual machine that

>                 degrades the performance, and is necessary to restart

>                 the server periodically.

>                 They expect we solve something we can't solve, because

>                 the problem is in the virtual machine, other customer

>                 with the same software doesn't have that problem.

>                 

>                 I was asking myself if there is a "standard" clause in

>                 the contracts for the customer to free from problem

>                 related to virtual machines.

>                 In example I read there is no support from oracle for

>                 vmware machines, if you have a bug you have to

>                 demostrate this same bug happens in a physical

>                 installation too.

>                 

>                 Thank you :)

>                 

>                 

>         

>         

>         

>         

>         --

>         http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l

>         

>         

> 

> 

> 



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