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I am looking for information pertaining to an Oracle install on Virtual
Server. Most of what I find is referring to VMware. Currently we have
10g running on virtual server and I just have a few questions. Is this
a good place to ask? Can someone point me to some info on performance,
maintenance, etc?


Thank you very much,

Doug Jones

Doug Jones wrote:
> I am looking for information pertaining to an Oracle install on Virtual
> Server. Most of what I find is referring to VMware. Currently we have
> 10g running on virtual server and I just have a few questions. Is this
> a good place to ask? Can someone point me to some info on performance,
> maintenance, etc?
>
>
> Thank you very much,
>
> Doug Jones
>

I have installed both Oracle 9i and 10g on Windows 2003's Virtual
Server. It works quite nicely for testing. You do not need any
additional documentation, because for all intents and purposes, you are
just installing Oracle on Windows. It does not make a difference that it
is a VM.

You will need sufficient resources for the VM. But this is no different
than installing Oracle on a server. Your VM needs sufficient memory and
disk and CPU. Not having sufficient resources can lead to poor performance.

Additionally, I would never recommend a VM for Oracle in production. I
have only used this for a test platform and I would recommend the same.
I wouldn't even use this for development, only for test.



HTH,
Brian

--
================================================== =================

Brian Peasland
dba@nospam.peasland.net
http://www.peasland.net

Remove the "nospam." from the email address to email me.


"I can give it to you cheap, quick, and good.
Now pick two out of the three" - Unknown

Brian Peasland wrote:
> Doug Jones wrote:
>
>> I am looking for information pertaining to an Oracle install on Virtual
>> Server. Most of what I find is referring to VMware. Currently we have
>> 10g running on virtual server and I just have a few questions. Is this
>> a good place to ask? Can someone point me to some info on performance,
>> maintenance, etc?
>>
>> Thank you very much,
>>
>> Doug Jones
>>
>
> I have installed both Oracle 9i and 10g on Windows 2003's Virtual
> Server. It works quite nicely for testing. You do not need any
> additional documentation, because for all intents and purposes, you are
> just installing Oracle on Windows. It does not make a difference that it
> is a VM.
>
> You will need sufficient resources for the VM. But this is no different
> than installing Oracle on a server. Your VM needs sufficient memory and
> disk and CPU. Not having sufficient resources can lead to poor performance.
>
> Additionally, I would never recommend a VM for Oracle in production. I
> have only used this for a test platform and I would recommend the same.
> I wouldn't even use this for development, only for test.
>
>
>
> HTH,
> Brian
>

Interesting

I am getting pressured from our network/server admins to move some of
the smaller Oracle DB's on to virtual machines. I have so far refused
but did capitulate somewhat and have my OID (using for names
resolution)running on a VM. We are using VMware running on Linux with
Windows 2003 server as virtual machines. I do have test and dev
instances on VM's, and Oracle's reply to me when asked about support for
production databases on virtual machines is that they will support it,
with tha caveat that any problems must be reproduceable on non VM
machines(fair enough)

Our network/server admins are going the VM route as much as they can,
trying to leave only the hardest used servers on their own hardware.
This is also prodding the "lets switch to SQL Server then" mentality, as
it (supposedly) is supported on VM platforms.

Glen wrote:
> Brian Peasland wrote:
>> Doug Jones wrote:
>>
>>> I am looking for information pertaining to an Oracle install on Virtual
>>> Server. Most of what I find is referring to VMware. Currently we have
>>> 10g running on virtual server and I just have a few questions. Is this
>>> a good place to ask? Can someone point me to some info on performance,
>>> maintenance, etc?
>>>
>>> Thank you very much,
>>>
>>> Doug Jones
>>>
>>
>> I have installed both Oracle 9i and 10g on Windows 2003's Virtual
>> Server. It works quite nicely for testing. You do not need any
>> additional documentation, because for all intents and purposes, you
>> are just installing Oracle on Windows. It does not make a difference
>> that it is a VM.
>>
>> You will need sufficient resources for the VM. But this is no
>> different than installing Oracle on a server. Your VM needs sufficient
>> memory and disk and CPU. Not having sufficient resources can lead to
>> poor performance.
>>
>> Additionally, I would never recommend a VM for Oracle in production. I
>> have only used this for a test platform and I would recommend the
>> same. I wouldn't even use this for development, only for test.
>>
>>
>>
>> HTH,
>> Brian
>>
>
> Interesting
>
> I am getting pressured from our network/server admins to move some of
> the smaller Oracle DB's on to virtual machines. I have so far refused
> but did capitulate somewhat and have my OID (using for names
> resolution)running on a VM. We are using VMware running on Linux with
> Windows 2003 server as virtual machines. I do have test and dev
> instances on VM's, and Oracle's reply to me when asked about support for
> production databases on virtual machines is that they will support it,
> with tha caveat that any problems must be reproduceable on non VM
> machines(fair enough)
>
> Our network/server admins are going the VM route as much as they can,
> trying to leave only the hardest used servers on their own hardware.
> This is also prodding the "lets switch to SQL Server then" mentality, as
> it (supposedly) is supported on VM platforms.
>
>

What is the benefit of moving your production databases to VM's?

To me, there are more downsides to this configuration (be it Oracle or
SQL Server). One, you have added more complexity to your production
environment. Two, you require many more resources to run multiple VM's
on the same server when compared to just the OS of the server itself.
Three,

The upsides include: One, software running in one VM won't interact with
software in another VM. Two, software running in a VM is insulated from
the server's OS.

Personally, with Oracle, I don't see a reason to implement the upsides.
And the downsides concern me enough to not use the VM for production.
The question I ask myself is "will adding X to my production environment
give me more plusses than minuses"? In the case of VM, I would say No.
Maybe that's just my opinion.

Cheers,
Brian

--
================================================== =================

Brian Peasland
dba@nospam.peasland.net
http://www.peasland.net

Remove the "nospam." from the email address to email me.


"I can give it to you cheap, quick, and good.
Now pick two out of the three" - Unknown

On 18.09.2006 17:34, Brian Peasland wrote:
> The upsides include: One, software running in one VM won't interact with
> software in another VM. Two, software running in a VM is insulated from
> the server's OS.

Three, you can get failover and high availability. VMWare offers a
product which lets you cluster servers and if one of the machines goes
down other machines can take over the VM's of the crashed instance.
Probably doesn't make much sense with Oracle's own clustering though.

Kind regards

robert

On Mon, 18 Sep 2006 18:49:02 +0200, Robert Klemme
<shortcutter@googlemail.com> wrote:

>Three, you can get failover and high availability. VMWare offers a
>product which lets you cluster servers and if one of the machines goes
>down other machines can take over the VM's of the crashed instance.
>Probably doesn't make much sense with Oracle's own clustering though.
>
>Kind regards
>
> robert

Four, Oracle requests you reproduce a problem perceived in a Vmware
environment in a *non* Vmware environment.

--
Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA

Doug Jones wrote:
> I am looking for information pertaining to an Oracle install on Virtual
> Server. Most of what I find is referring to VMware. Currently we have
> 10g running on virtual server and I just have a few questions. Is this
> a good place to ask? Can someone point me to some info on performance,
> maintenance, etc?
>
>
> Thank you very much,
>
> Doug Jones

Hopefully you are not considering this for production. If you are I
would suggest starting with metalink and seeing if your configuration
is supported.
--
Daniel Morgan
University of Washington
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group

On 18.09.2006 19:35, Sybrand Bakker wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Sep 2006 18:49:02 +0200, Robert Klemme
> <shortcutter@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> Three, you can get failover and high availability. VMWare offers a
>> product which lets you cluster servers and if one of the machines goes
>> down other machines can take over the VM's of the crashed instance.
>> Probably doesn't make much sense with Oracle's own clustering though.

> Four, Oracle requests you reproduce a problem perceived in a Vmware
> environment in a *non* Vmware environment.

You mean like in "Oh my gosh, I have this single CPU machine with 5 VMs
and Oracle is just /so/ slow!"? :-)

Cheers

robert

Actually, yes, this is supposed to go production. This server was
purchased and virtual server was installed for the sole purpose of
moving all servers to VMs.

I would like to say that this isn't at all my idea . I am low (as low
as you can get) on the pecking order.

The server is a dual core 2.8ghz xeon, 5 gigs of RAM, and a network
storage of 1TB.

The only responsibility of this server (like how I say only?) will be a
webserver, network installs, and Oracle 10g.

>From what I have read so far, I should expect about 66% of the
performance of the host PC on the VM.

What should be taken into consideration before this goes production?
(In other words what technical information can I give the powers that
be stop the forward movement of this plan?

I want to know what the IO performance is of MS's Vserver.

We have the production DB on an old compaq server. We have migrated the
database to a test VM. As of right now, the database on the VM is about
5 times faster.


Thank you for all the input. Since I am totally in the dark, don't be
affraid to speak your mind. I am not biased at all in this topic. I
just want to better understand.

One other question. What size workload will oracle put on a PC? If it
is a database accessed by 100 people. The size of one of the backups
was 6 gbs.

Thanks again.


Doug Jones

Doug Jones wrote:
> Actually, yes, this is supposed to go production. This server was
> purchased and virtual server was installed for the sole purpose of
> moving all servers to VMs.

Personally I wouldn't touch it without an explicit statement from
Oracle that when things go terribly wrong, and they will, that you
will be supported. My guess is that their first response will be to
tell you to go to a supported environment.
--
Daniel Morgan
University of Washington
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group