Re: just a question (virtual machines)

From: Michael Austin <maustin_at_firstdbasource.com>
Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 22:38:29 -0500
Message-ID: <_grOl.29123$yr3.11259_at_nlpi068.nbdc.sbc.com>



gs wrote:
> My workplace is seriously considering going to virtual machines for most
> of the servers, including database servers. We are a windows shop and
> have several VMware servers running test env's now. I am not in favour
> of running production db's on vm's, but I don't have the final say here.
>
> Having said that, I have had many test db's on vms for over two years
> now and they have been trouble free.. I'm recommending that we take a
> good look at Oracle's VM if we go this route, but I know I'll hit
> resistance here too.
>
> I haven't had a chance to download and play with Oracles vm yet, so I
> don't know a lot about it.
>
> If you were told you were going to all vm's for database servers, would
> you be comfortable with VMware or would you fight tooth & nail to go
> with Oracle's?

It really depends on the workload you are going to be asking the database server to accomplish. If you are expecting thousands of txn/s then VM may not have enough horsepower. (I worked in an environment where a 2-node Sun6900 (48CPU/96cores with 192GB/mem) cluster was barely enough for that particular application). In that case no VM solution would work for that. This is where doing a full transactional analysis for all applications and databases on these servers would be well worth the effort.

As others have stated, I would not trust the underlying OS to be Windows either. Received on Tue May 12 2009 - 22:38:29 CDT

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