You know those searchXXXXXXXXXXX.com websites (searchoracle.techtarget.com, searchvmware.techtarget.com, searchvirtualization.techtarget.com etc)? There are some good articles, but I keep seeing alot of plainly inaccurate articles about virtualized Oracle, especially Oracle under VMware.

I keep seeing these FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) articles on searchXXXXXXXXXX.com that just bug the hell out of me.

Take this article about Oracle RAC on VMware . They start out with something reasonable and accurate

Oracle will not support customers running Oracle RAC on VMware, for reasons that many say are political and technically outdated.

and then say things that are just completely not true:

“In short, Oracle won’t support it unless the customer can prove that the problem wasn’t related to the virtual machine.

…

While getting support for single-instance Oracle on VMware is difficult…”

I run multiple Oracle databases and various Oracle products (Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Hyperion, Oracle Universal Content Manager, Oracle Hyperion, Oracle Agile, etc) and It is no different to get support for Oracle virtualized under VMware unless troubleshooting leads Oracle Support to suspect your issue is with VMware itself.

The rest of the article I pretty much agree with. I’ve met Dave Welch numerous times and find his outlook on Oracle on VMware similar to mine. Oracle’s stated “we do not support Oracle RAC on VMware” appears to be nothing more than Oracle’s whim with no current technical issues to back it up. As much as I don’t like it, that’s their choice. If / when VMware starts getting Fault Tolerance working with multiple CPUs in a VM, that’s going to mute the argument about needing to run Oracle RAC solely for uptime requirements. Sure, you’ll still have VMs that aren’t good candidates for virtualization (Oracle VM or VMware) but that’s not the bulk of installations out there.

Oracle uses VMware in its training classes – I attended an Oracle Hyperion installation and configuration class last year that utilized VMware Workstation running 3 or 4 VMs on each student’s machine. I’ve worked issues with Oracle Hyperion with Oracle Support and had the analyst not only notice my environment was under VMware, but state that roughly half their customers run Hyperion virtualized under VMware. With Oracle now having Oracle VM and Oracle Virtualbox, you’d think at least Oracle’s own training partners would be using Oracle products in their lab and you’d think if this support was such a big deal that I’d have Oracle’s support telling me about the benefits of Oracle VM when they noticed I was running VMware.

Here’s another article that bugged me, this time about how Oracle VM is not half bad . First line of the article:

“Oracle’s continued refusal to support its applications virtualized on something other than the Oracle VM hypervisor has forced the hands of some users, pushing them to try the Xen-based virtualization offering.”

Did you see what I did? ” Oracle’s continued refusal to support its applications virtualized on something other than the Oracle VM hypervisor..”. That’s simply and plainly wrong.

I’ll end this article quoting from the official stance of Oracle Support with regards to VMware, My Oracle Support (aka Metalink) note 249212.1

Support Status for VMware Virtualized Environments 
-------------------------------------------------- 
Oracle has not certified any of its products on VMware virtualized 
environments. Oracle Support will assist customers running Oracle products 
on VMware in the following manner: Oracle will only provide 
support for issues that either are known to occur on the native OS, or 
can be demonstrated not to be as a result of running on VMware. 

If a problem is a known Oracle issue, Oracle support will recommend the 
appropriate solution on the native OS.  If that solution does not work in 
the VMware virtualized environment, the customer will be referred to VMware 
for support.   When the customer can demonstrate that the Oracle solution 
does not work when running on the native OS, Oracle will resume support, 
including logging a bug with Oracle Development for investigation if required.

---

So I came across this article last week on Oracle VM and how companies are trying it and how it’s, and I’m quoting here “not half bad”

If I ever come out with my own Enterprise level software and have a couple of public releases under my belt and the best thing I can get in the press is “not half bad”, shoot me.  Seriously.  That’s embarrassing.  Even if you do offer it for free.

So let’s look past the headline and see what the article has to say, shall we?

First sentence “Oracle’s continued refusal to support its applications virtualized on something other than the Oracle VM hypervisor has forced the hands of some users, pushing them to try the Xen-based virtualization offering.”

It’s this sort of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) spreading that’s one of the things I dislike about our industry.  Let me be completely clear ORACLE FULLY SUPPORTS ITS APPLICATIONS VIRTUALIZED ON SOMETHING OTHER THAN ORACLE VM HYPERVISOR.  Don’t believe me?  Check out Metalink My Oracle Support note 249212.1 – Support Position for Oracle Products Running on VMWare Virtualized Environments. Here’s the first paragraph

Oracle has not certified any of its products on VMware virtualized
environments. Oracle Support will assist customers running Oracle products
on VMware in the following manner: Oracle will only provide
support for issues that either are known to occur on the native OS, or
can be demonstrated not to be as a result of running on VMware.

Did you know your Cisco switches aren’t certified by Oracle?  Your DELL servers aren’t certified by Oracle either.

Very very rarely does Oracle certify another vendor’s hardware products.  Certify != support.  Oracle support’s your installation of Oracle productions on VMware just fine.  They take the very reasonable point of view that they’ll help you until they come to believe the issue is VMware at which point they’ll refer you to VMware support.  Seems completely rational to me.

I’ve been an Oracle Apps DBA running Oracle products under VMware for about 4 years.  I have never had Oracle not help me because I run many of my environments under VMware. I’ve spoken with numerous other Oracle DBAs running Oracle products under VMware.  None of us have ever had an issue where Oracle wouldn’t support our environments because we were running under VMware.

I’ll address the rest of the article in another blog post shortly, but seeing this FUD still slung about makes me too annoyed to write coherently.