RE: Oracle RAC/non-RAC on Vmware vs Physical Server

From: Andrew Kerber <andrew.kerber_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2016 16:25:03 -0600
Message-ID: <00c401d169d2$0c8a1680$259e4380$_at_gmail.com>



The primary advantage is the added resiliency of virtualization. There aren’t any real disadvantages that we have run into. When properly configured, the IO is just as good as on a physical server.  

Troubleshooting is pretty much identical, though you do have the added instrumentation that is on VMware that you can look at.  

We have found that you get a little more CPU advantage from using hugepages in VMware than you do using hugepages on physical.  

From: Sanjay Mishra [mailto:smishra_97_at_yahoo.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2016 4:19 PM To: andrew.kerber_at_gmail.com; dmarc-noreply_at_freelists.org; 'Oracle-l Digest Users' Subject: Re: Oracle RAC/non-RAC on Vmware vs Physical Server  

Thanks Andrew  

Yes one thing to be kept in mind is Oracle License that has to go against full Physical Server  

I am trying to see what are pros and cons of using VM vs physical server especially for RAC. What kind of issue like IO etc been experienced and how to troublshoot/experience for very high OLTP applications. There are around 250 Database on around 80-100 Physical servers. Some are Aix,Linux,Solaris and now plan is to rearchitect to move them to Linux and hence plan is going to check RAC or all non-RAC with VMWare to provide any added resilency.  

Rgds

Sanjay  

On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 4:56 PM, Andrew Kerber <andrew.kerber_at_gmail.com> wrote:  

I have done this several times. It is pretty much identical to a physical setup. I have never run into any real problems. There are quite a few low-level pieces that need to be set up, for example setting the multi-writer flag on the shared storage, turning on node affinity, etc. But we have done it quite often and had very good results.  

Our performance tests generally show performance to be just as good as a physical server, but with the added resiliency of VMware.  

There are a few gotchas that you need to watch for, eg. One time we had a machine do an unplanned storage VMotion, and it copied the shared disks. That was a really freaky thing to look at.  

You will have to license the entire physical machine that it runs on, and make sure you use hardware affinity so that the VM does not run on a physical server you do not plan to license.    

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Sanjay Mishra (Redacted sender "smishra_97" for DMARC) Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2016 3:37 PM To: Oracle-l Digest Users
Subject: Oracle RAC/non-RAC on Vmware vs Physical Server  

Hi Experts  

Can someone please share your experience with facts on using Oracle 11g/12c RAC/non-RAC on Vmware based VM using Linux ? Need to create the doc to show the pros and cons of the environment for consolidation project. I am sure many have either created/worked on such project and really appreciate your comments.  

TIA Sanjay  

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Received on Wed Feb 17 2016 - 23:25:03 CET

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