Oracle Linux Reviews

Docker containers allow you to deploy a lot of workloads at scale. If you can think of the old batch jobs, what they do is allow us to deploy that into the cloud so we can elastically expand or contract and only pay for what we use. I think that's part of it.

You have high availability, so you can run your containers in multiple availability zones. They're very cost-effective, much more cost-effective than writing your own scripts. And they're layered so they're very lightweight; they don't consume quite as many resources as how we would traditionally deploy this.

I would really like to see more frequent releases and I would like to see a very lightweight kernel for embedded systems. I'm really anticipating the new Oracle Database XE as it relates to Oracle Linux because now I can run that in production, and that was just announced as well.

It's young, so I think it's fair that they have some work to do. A little bit more variability, the ability to expand, take advantage of bare metal. I think that that's really going to be a key as they grow.

The Oracle container engine is actually built on the Enterprise Linux kernel. So I think it's extremely stable and secure. I think it's one of the most stable and secure Linux variants in the world. When we actually build our Docker containers we utilize Oracle Linux as a basis for those as well.

I think what's great about it is if you're a small customer you can install Oracle Linux, just pull it down off of the site, update it. And if you're a large customer you can go with the unbreakable kernel. You can run that on on-premise, and when you go to the cloud which, of course, is scaled out to literally millions of nodes, it's the basis for all of Oracle's cloud.

What's great is having the Oracle Linux, also having Oracle products. You've really goy one vendor to call. Some people like to say one neck to choke but I say one hand to high-five.

You might have a development team that kind of runs off and goes rogue and installs several different operating systems. Or they've assembled a Docker container and deployed it in the Cloud under the guise of microservices. The first time you have a hiccup with that, or the credit card doesn't process and you don't know where to find the code or the developer, I think at that point you really need to put some controls in place.

When it comes to important criteria when selecting a vendor, I think experience is there, but they really have to care. They have to own the problems; I think owning your client's problems is the number one thing.

Oracle Enterprise Linux offers a cost effective solution, especially for customers who are currently supported on Red Hat. They find it extremely comfortable moving over to OEL, Oracle Enterprise Linux. It not only it cuts down the cost, but there is no code change, there is no technology challenge that they have to undergo. I find it extremely comfortable talking to clients and asking them to move over from Red Hat to Linux.

It's comfortable, kernel calls are very important. Lines, application codes, it's a lift and shift kind of a platform. The customers that I'm getting on there, they are very comfortable moving over to Linux. It not only ensures performance, it ensures cost effective solutions.

We are still naive, I would say. We need to see as we go there.

We have just transitioned about four customers as of now. We haven't faced any such challenges as of now.

That is what we are trying to do now. We have selected three or four as a pilot. Now we are trying to launch it on a big scale.

Support has been excellent. Support has been really excellent and for every account they work closely with us; right from getting the PO to closing the order, so extremely convenient.

I'm getting excellent support from Oracle as of now, the team dynamics are very good, my team finds it extremely comfortable working with the OEL team. We may have a lot more accounts in the next financial year.

I think it is very specially tuned for the performance of Oracle Stack, and therefore all of the things that Oracle Stack works on work really well on Oracle Linux.

In terms of improvement, I think actually it is the other way around. Oracle Linux is specially tuned for Oracle Stack, and therefore it works better with the Oracle Stack.

Very stable. I think it's a very mature system, so I think it is, in general, quite stable and in a high performing state.

Most of the Linux systems are designed for high scalability, so it should not be an issue.

It's as easy as any other operating systems, so there is no issue.

It is not only the Oracle operating system, but also the support that goes with it, and also the reliability and the backing of a large company. That is most important.

I think one of the most valuable features, I can see is Enterprise Linux. and it has been universally supported. There are some enterprise features which Oracxle added, which I don't see in any other Linux. So we recommend it to a lot of our large customers who are running their mission critical applications on Linux.

I think one of the biggest criteria I see is that customers don't have to have any downtime if they have to do patching. Patching is important because customers are running their critical applications, but there is nothing called "planned down-time" for patching. You can literally run your mission critical application, keep on doing patching in the background and I think that's the biggest feature Oracle Linux has which I don't find anywhere else. 

One of the major benefits I have seen is that a lot of customers have unsupported Linux in their datacenters. With Oracle Linux, you have the chance to standardize entirely on one Linux platform. 

The second thing is that if you're running a lot of Oracle workloads on Oracle Linux, you get universal support, you get support 24/7 from the same company -  right from your operating system to the application - and it has enterprise features. I think these are major advantages.

They added a lot of features on Oracle Linux. As a consulting company, and as somebody who's working with customers, obviously the demands from the customers are plenty.

I think they should market it more aggressively now because a lot of people think, "If I have to move from Red Hat Linux to Oracle Linux, it's a migration," when it is not. I call it a movement. You literally can move your large Red Hat Linux to Oracle Linux very simply, there's no migration involved in that. I think they should market these features more aggressively.

One of the things which customers have been asking about is what are the security features that Oracle is going to add. We do a lot of OS hardening, Linux hardening for customers, but I think there should be some tools within Linux where the hardening can be done pretty fast. Now, in this open world Larry Ellison announced, autonomous and self-secured databases, I'm sure those features will come to Linux, and we're looking forward to that.

Linux is an extremely stable platform. You implement it and you can forget it. On top of it, Oracle has added a lot of features which has made it extremely stable. We have been doing this since 2003, I have not faced any major outage at any of my customers or of any mission critical application on Oracle Linux.

The fundamental approach Oracle took in early 2000 is horizontal scaling, and Linux became an extremely important part for the horizontal scaling. We have seen large implementations on Oracle Linux which have been scaled horizontally. 

I think if a customer needs to look into a larger customer, they should look at Oracle. Oracle, themselves, must be the largest user of Oracle. The entire Oracle cloud now works on Oracle Linux so you have thousands of customers running their applications on Oracle Linux. Extremely scalable.

You have to see support from a different angle. Definitely support is good because Oracle is known for that, providing 24/7 support. But the biggest advantage you get here is that, because it's one company supporting you over the entire platform, you can actually get help from them to identify the problem, whether the problem is at the Linux level or the problem is at the database level. You don't get that when you have Linux with some different vendor and the database from a different vendor. We have not faced any problems.

We are a system integrator from Slovenia and we work extensively with OVM and Linux products.

Definitely price. And when it comes to OVM, apart from License benefits, we see that it's possible to monitor all Oracle products across the Oracle infrastructure with one product, Oracle Enterprise Manager, in combination with OVM Manager. To have a single source of truth, that is really, really valuable for us.

I think there is always room for improvement. We would like to see new features, we would like to see lots of enhancements, especially in OVM, because Linux is already stable enough and for us it does the job.

In OVM, I think it's hot cloning. I think it's also more analytical capabilities, reporting could be significantly improved, and also SLI dashboards, so that we can follow and monitor SLI more precisely and more profoundly.

Linux is stable. OVM could be better but it's still stable enough to do day-to-day operations.

Yes it's scalable, but we don't have a big installation. We only have four physical servers with two OVM server pools, so it's not really a very extensive installation. We don't see any projects on the horizon that will extend this to a large scale but, so far so good, we are happy with it.

Support is good, we have OVM support and Linux support. OVM support, especially, has proved to be very valuable because they provide us with code and scripts that are already developed for other customers. Otherwise, it would take a couple of days or even a week to develop on our own. In this way, we share the knowledge that was acquired by Oracle at other customers' sites and that's really great, it cuts the time needed to do the job.

Linux is a 10 out of 10. I would say that it's very affordable, that it's very stable, it has a great community behind it, and it's also very scalable and it performs really, really well. Up-time could be two to three years, which is unbelievable compared to the Windows world, for example.

What is most valuable is that it's supported by Oracle. It's performing, we are not facing any performance problems. Of course, it's open source, so we are saving on the licensing costs that we have when using with other proprietary license software.

At the end of the day, we are getting Oracle performance in the optimal manner with a Linux operating system, which we had before, but in a different flavor.

I think the biggest benefit that we have is cost savings. That's what the company is looking for at this point. We don't have to spend a high amount of licensing costs on the previous solution that we were using with the HPE operating system. Now, we are on the Linux flavor, which is open source, as I said, and it saves us a lot of money on licensing.

It is fully supported by Oracle. If we look at the certification matrix on the Oracle MOS (My Oracle Support) site, Oracle is supporting it, all the features are supported. We are using Linux HugePages with it, which saves us a lot of money for memory. We are defining our memory using Linux HugePages for growing our system in global areas, which is helpful for performance. Those are the few features I can think of off top of my head at this point.

It's pretty stable. We haven't seen any major problems so far. If we have issues, then we have to open an open source ticket with Red Hat. And they do resolve those, with solutions, but so far we haven't seen any roadblocks.

The set up is basically Linux servers, and we have Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 running there. Non-RAC, but a Data Guard environment, where we have a primary instance set up, and that application is done on the standby. The primary and the standby are running on Oracle Red Hat Linux, actually.

I would say, from my experience, that you need to make sure that all the features you are using are compatible with the OS version, the Oracle version that you are going for.

So far, we haven't seen any problems, it is fully certified with Oracle, and all the features are working without any issues, it is very performant. You can go for it as long as all your features are supported with this operating system.

We are very happy.

It's stable, you have flexibility and dynamics, and it's easy to work with.

Linux is very stable.

Scales well as well.

It works quite well, if there's a problem you can open a ticket and the support works quite well.

It depends on the complexity of the environment, but you can download images and there are all kinds of tools nowadays, so it's quite easy.

I always liked Linux and Unix and Nix operating systems, so I always favor them before anything else. Always recommend them.

My company is based out of Virginia. I do a lot of work with the federal government.

I absolutely love how I can go out, get Oracle Linux, develop something with the Identity and Access Management, and be able to deploy, it and test it, and work on it very, very quickly. That's absolutely what I love, how portable it is and how much it relates. 

If the enterprise I work for has licenses for Red Hat, I don't have to go get a license from Red Hat to start working on my Oracle product. But, once it's developed in Oracle Linux, I can easily take it, and adapt it, and move it onto Red Hat, and it works seamlessly. 

Benefits: If you start with Oracle Linux, you can adapt to any of the Oracle products a little bit easier than any other OS. 

The kernel could be expanded, a little bit more maximized to work with Kubernetes and the like. That's probably where they are going to go, a little bit more orchestration, system maintenance management.

The ability to do self-diagnostics. Run one command and it runs top head memory, tell me what's going on. The ability for the OS to regulate itself, to do self-diagnostics, so you could take out the UNIX admins and the UNIX supports. Tell me what's really wrong, right now in the OS, what does it look like right now?

Stability, scalability, like I said, it compares directly with Red Hat. In some things, the packages, the ability to reach out to the Oracle yum packages, and do automatic updates, it gives you the ability to scale. 

Patching, there's quarterly patches. I actually think they may even do bi-weekly patches now for Oracle Linux. 

The scalability, as long as you have someone to manage it, you're good to go and it's right up there in reliability with the Red Hat stuff.

I can't tell you any experience about the Oracle Linux. But Oracle Support in general, I have to put in tickets for Identity Management all the time. They usually come back, depending on the severity of the problem, within a reasonable amount of time, and I always get what I need. 

At an organizational level, I would love to see them going more Oracle Linux, actually adapting that, getting rid of a little bit of the Red Hat, the notion that Red Hat is the best. I want to see Oracle Linux, it's expanding. 

I think all the stuff that they are doing with analytics and all this work with the autonomous database, it's only going to get to the point where you're going to have autonomous OS's and Linux is going to be autonomous. Why not move to Oracle Linux now? It'll be easier than to move off in the future.

If you don't know Linux, then go learn some Linux. But relatively, if you want to set up a virtual box, set up the Oracle Linux stuff, it's pretty much drag, drop, click, click, click.

I wish my enterprise would adapt it, so I give it a 10 out of 10 in my book. But I guess we'll have to give it a seven and eight out of 10 from an enterprise level, just because they haven't bought in yet.

If you're going to go into the Oracle industry, learn Oracle Linux, learn the ins and outs, and it'll help you out. Like I said, with the whole cloud infrastructure, the whole cloud architecture, I think Oracle Linux is the way to go.