Oracle VM Server Review

Oracle’s suite of technologies has long been a popular option in networking and virtualization software. In this article, we’ll review Oracle VM Server, which is part of Oracle’s popular suite of technologies for networking and virtualization. The most recent version of Oracle VM Server was release in June of 2020.

The Pros and Cons of Oracle VM Server

These pros and cons of Oracle VM Server will provide you with the bottom line of why you should, or should not, choose this virtualization solution.

Oracle VM Server Pros

• Potential buyers considering Oracle virtualization software should answer one question: are we an Oracle shop? If so, data center managers should look at this as their first option. And certainly Oracle, with its long legacy in enterprise IT, knows how to build a powerful virtualization platform.
• The price (free to Oracle users) is hard to beat. The product is an effort by Oracle to consolidate their hold on the data center, rather than a market-leading option.

Oracle VM Server Cons

• Feature limitations and low usability scores may lead some to consider VMware, Citrix, Red Hat, or an open source platform.
• Oracle VM Server lacks some of the flexibility offered by other options and users sometimes report issues with certain patches.

Oracle VM Server product description

Oracle VM Server for x86 is there to help Oracle platform and application users run VMs without having to go to another vendor such as VMware. It incorporates the open-source Xen hypervisor technology, and offers support for Windows, Linux, and Solaris guests. Oracle users can download it for free to achieve integrated enterprise management from disk to applications to the cloud. Rapid deployment is available via Oracle VM Templates.

Further benefits include Oracle VM Manager command-line interface (CLI) and Web Services API (WS-API), which allow greater automation and interoperability. Secure live migration of VMs and storage can be done with high availability. A Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and Distributed Power Management (DPM) are thrown in, too.

Its scalability is also impressive: support for up to 384 physical CPUs and 6 TB memory with each guest VM supporting up to 256 virtual CPUs and 2,000,000 MB of memory to accommodate the most demanding enterprise and cloud applications. It also supports Oracle VM Manager importing and exporting Open Virtualization Format (OVF) and Open Virtualization Archive (OVA) software appliances to accelerate application deployment.

While Oracle VM server was designed to primarily support organizations with an existing Oracle infrastructure, it can be used in non-Oracle environments as well. However, there are better options for non-Oracle infrastructures.

Servers/operating systems

Oracle VM Server supports Oracle Linux, Oracle Solaris, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, CentOS, Microsoft Windows.

Implementation

Oracle VM Server comes as a free download and offers rapid enterprise application deployment with Oracle VM Templates. Installation is made easy with Oracle VM Server’s intuitive management console. 

Users can download and import pre-configured virtual machines containing pre-installed Oracle enterprise applications or other software to get up and running in hours. However, building private clouds and implementing cloud automation with VM server can be complex and requires a lot of man-hours.

Oracle VM also provides instant cloning capabilities to create copy-on-write clones and that can be immediately started or modified.

Platform scalability

Oracle VM Server can support up to 384 physical CPUs and 6 TB memory with each guest VM supporting up to 256 virtual CPUs and 2,000,000 MB of memory. It can also scale with a large number of servers, both horizontally and vertically.

Management

The VM server fully integrates enterprise management from disk to applications to cloud and includes an integrated Web-based management console, Oracle VM Manager, for centralized, browser-based management of resource pools, VMs, storage and networking. A Web user interface includes event tracking and virtualized system health status. Oracle VM Manager Web Services API enables a higher level of automation, interoperability and integration.

Some users find the graphical user interface (GUI) to be uncomfortable to navigate. They also report that configuration and maintenance are not always as straight forward as other vendors, such as VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V.

Patching and backup

Users can install patches to VMs using Ksplice technology without experiencing an outage, ultimately reducing downtime. For backups, users have the option to use Oracle Secure Backup as well as a number of third-party options.

Migration

Users can migrate running VMs to other servers over secure SSL links, without interruption. Live migrations can also be performed on running virtual machines that have virtual disks on local storage.

Security

Oracle VM server takes security seriously. It offers: 

• Secure live migration 
• SSL encrypted communication 
• Password-based authentication

Key Markets

This VM server primarily caters to Oracle application users running x86 and SPARC.

Cost:

Oracle VM Server is free to Oracle users.