Fabrizio Bordacchini - PeerSpot reviewer
Oracle Systems Engineer at Cegeka
MSP
Top 10
Initial setup process is easy, but its backup recovery feature needs improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "Its technical support is quite good."
  • "Its database management features could be better."

What is our primary use case?

Our customers use the solution for database and service applications.

What is most valuable?

The solution's most valuable feature is live migration.

What needs improvement?

The solution's management, hardware, and backup recovery features could be better.

For how long have I used the solution?

Our customers have been using the solution for four years.

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Oracle VM
April 2024
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have ten solution users in our organization. They include system administrators.

How are customer service and support?

The solution's technical support is quite good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The solution's initial setup process is easy.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution's price is relatively low.

What other advice do I have?

I rate the solution a seven. I advise others to go for Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager, the next platform for Oracle based on KVM.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Computer Engineer at NITC: IT Agency of Government of Nepal
Real User
Top 10
A simple solution that is easy to use
Pros and Cons
  • "The product is simple and easy to use."
  • "The tool's price and stability could be better."

What is most valuable?

The product is simple and easy to use. 

What needs improvement?

The tool's price and stability could be better. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with the solution for four years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the solution's stability a seven out of ten. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have around 150 users for the solution. 

How was the initial setup?

The tool's deployment was straightforward. The deployment took around 10 minutes to complete. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We use the product's free version that is not licensed. 

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the product a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Oracle VM
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Oracle VM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
769,630 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Senior Oracle Database Administrator at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
Stable, open-source, and the integration is good
Pros and Cons
  • "It's quite stable."
  • "The usage could be easier, and more user-friendly."

What is our primary use case?

The main use case of this solution is integration. The integration of the database and compatibility with the affiliate in terms of license management. This will reduce the cost of the license.

It is the same use case as vSan except that you can partition the applications and it forces you to license the processor, as opposed to the server.

What needs improvement?

I would like to simplify the processes to implement. When you want to implement Oracle, the steps that you perform could be simplified.

The usage could be easier, and more user-friendly.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Oracle VM for a few months, we started using it in November.

We are using version 3.4.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's quite stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have 10 users in our organization. It's a new product.

We are still in the testing phase. We are looking forward to observing its behavior. If it behaves well and there are no major incidents that give us or the support team issues, we will continue to plan ahead and implement it.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support could be faster.

How was the initial setup?

It is very difficult to implement.

It is not user-friendly, so you need a bit of skill to deploy it.

When compared to other solutions, it is quite complex. The complexity depends on the individual environment.

What about the implementation team?

For the deployment, you need a consultant and an integrator. It is very difficult to deploy this solution. If you use the server storage, you need a consultant.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Oracle VM is inexpensive. It's open-source, but you pay for support.

Oracle is free of charge, although you have to have a subscription for the support.

What other advice do I have?

Currently, they are trying to improve this solution database and technology. They are trying to upgrade it to make it a more customizable database.

I would certainly recommend this solution to other users who have Oracle applications. It has been customized to optimize this database.

I would rate Oracle VM a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Founder and President at a training & coaching company with 1-10 employees
Real User
Separates your clusters to get your licenses agreement in scope
Pros and Cons
  • "The biggest advantage of Oracle VM is that you can separate your clusters to get your licenses agreement in scope."
  • "The performance could be better because I need to purchase a lot of CPUs to perform in the workbench."

What is our primary use case?

I am an Oracle Specialist and manage Oracle databases. Oracle VM is being used in test-based environments, dedicated services. Being a product expert and an engineer, I help customers work with Oracle. I have seen this solution in customer organizations that are in excess of 10,000 users.

What is most valuable?

The biggest advantage of Oracle VM is that you can separate your clusters to get your licenses agreement in scope.

Oracle VM has a bigger fence next to VMware in size, so when you install or migrate day-to-day services with Oracle-related applications, it will always look better, or be a better fit in an Oracle VM environment.

You will have a faster migration using Oracle VM because it is an Oracle product.

What needs improvement?

The performance could be better because I need to purchase a lot of CPUs to perform in the workbench.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Oracle VM for many years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalable of Oracle VM is good if you have a good link.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support at Oracle has been better in the past. Currently, you get first-level support so it takes you a long time to get the correct level of support. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Oracle VM is as straightforward as it can be taking me 20 minutes.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

My customers are all working with enterprise edition licenses with Oracle.

What other advice do I have?

For Oracle-based environments, it is always better to use Oracle software because of the integration. 

I advise people when they are on their first visualization layers to go to Oracle first and see if that is performing. Otherwise, if you go to other virtualization layers your whole cloud stack will be licensed as well on one domain.

When you install Oracle VM in a VMware environment, it can have mismatches with libraries that are not correctly compiled. It is important to have a dedicated service or an Oracle VM to test if it is working and it's not the hypervisor that is causing the concern.

I rate Oracle VM an 8 out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Manager, IT at a renewables & environment company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
The solution is easy to use with minimal cost when it is shut down
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution is easy to use. You can spin one up when you need to and then shut it down."
  • "I would like to be able to ship all of our logs. This feature could exist and I am just not aware of it."

What is our primary use case?

I manage the Oracle Cloud infrastructure, including all our VMs, firewalls and load balances.

What is most valuable?

The solution is easy to use. You can spin one up when you need to and then shut it down. When it is shut down the cost is minimal. It makes it very easy to do testing and training, including 'what-if'' situations.

What needs improvement?

I would like to be able to take all our logs and ship them to a corporate site. However, this feature could exist and I just haven't had the chance to explore that.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability is good, I would rate it an 8 out of 10 in this area.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is good.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price compares well with other solutions. Oracle has flexible payment and cost methods. We use an annual credit plan by committing to one year in the Oracle environment. By making this commitment they provide deep discounts for what we do. They also offer a pay as you go and monthly plans.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Oracle VM a 9 out of 10.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior System Administrator at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
A decent amount of features, however needs better integration and Snapshot capabilities
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution is very stable. I don't recall any bugs or glitches. It's reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze."
  • "If you do a gap analysis between VMware and Oracle VM, you can't do VM Snapshot. That's one thing you can't do. It's a sort of a snapshot, but it's not really Snapshot technology. It requires that you're running on CFS-2."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use this solution strictly for Oracle licensed products.

What is most valuable?

The solution has the exact features we need.

What needs improvement?

The solution lacks a lot of extra key features.

If you do a gap analysis between VMware and Oracle VM, you can't do VM Snapshot. That's one thing you can't do. It's a sort of a snapshot, but it's not really Snapshot technology. It requires that you're running on CFS-2.

There's an overall lack of integration with other software and there is also a lack of integration with backup solutions.

Oracle has stated that they intend to improve the solution. I'm not sure when this will happen, however. It may have been declared end of life, therefore, I can't imagine that they'll actually add to it at this point.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for a little over three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is very stable. I don't recall any bugs or glitches. It's reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of the solution is pretty good. If an organization needs to expand it, they can do so.

We don't plan to increase our usage, however. We plan to move off it in the near future.

How was the initial setup?

The solution was not necessarily complex. It was very straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

The initial installation was a combination of a hired individual that had had some experience, and ourselves. Mostly it was done by our team getting training as much as we could, due to the fact that they kept on canceling the classes. Mostly we handled the implementation on our own.

What other advice do I have?

We're simply customers. We don't have a business relationship with Oracle.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend this product, as we are moving off of it. I would suggest that other organizations go with a KVM-based product. It's my understanding that Oracle will not be continuing with the product, and therefore no more work will be done to add features or improve the product.

Overall, I'd rate the solution six out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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PeerSpot user
UNIX Engineer Advisor at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
If you need to put an Oracle Database on Linux or Windows and don't want to pay to license a whole VMware cluster, this is the next best option. There are several VMware features missing.

What is most valuable?

It offers live migration. It is the best virtualization option for Oracle databases for Linux as Oracle recognizes hard partitions for their database licensing.

How has it helped my organization?

If you need to put an Oracle Database on Linux or Windows for any reason, and don't want to pay to license a whole VMware cluster, this is the next best option.

What needs improvement?

There are several VMware features missing. I haven't done an in-depth analysis to understand which exact ones they are.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using it for three years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

There were no issues with the deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability was great. There were no issues with instability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I only deployed it to a small, three-node Oracle X5-2 cluster.

How are customer service and technical support?

Never had to open an SR. It's pretty stable. I did create ask some fairly technical questions about it on the My Oracle Support Community and got some great help there.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used VMware which we had to use for licensing reasons, and to be able to own the full stack (hardware/virtualization/OS). My team had minimal permissions on the VMware side.

How was the initial setup?

It was fairly easy for an experienced Linux admin.

What about the implementation team?

I did the implementation myself.

What was our ROI?

I never did an ROI calculation.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's much cheaper than paying millions for Oracle DB in VMware. Support for Oracle VM and Oracle Linux are included when installed on Oracle hardware, which makes it a very cheap option. There is a free, unsupported version available too. That might be attractive to some.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Oracle VM SME at OneNeck IT Services
Video Review
MSP
Complements the performance of the database but the monitoring side could be improved
Pros and Cons
  • "The virtualization product Oracle puts out just complements the performance of the database.​"
  • "I would say third-party plugins to other storage vendors. There are a lot of converged infrastructure setups; one that we have, multiple different hardware vendors. So that would be something we could definitely be looking for."

How has it helped my organization?

The cost of scalability. You pay for what you use. It's free to download, free to install, and the support side has been very helpful.

What is most valuable?

The way it plays with the Oracle Database; it's all about the Oracle Database. The way it plays with the Oracle Database; it's all about the Oracle Database. The virtualization product Oracle puts out just complements the performance of the database.

What needs improvement?

I would say third-party plugins to other storage vendors. There are a lot of converged infrastructure setups; one that we have, multiple different hardware vendors. So that would be something we could definitely be looking for.

Also, the monitoring aspect. Right now, there's a hook in to OEM, but I would like to see that part a little bit more mature so that it's a standalone.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's been pretty stable, especially with the new releases. The 3.4 major release has made a lot of significant performance gains and stability from the 3.29 days.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues at all. Adding hypervisors or server pools, even migrating to other instances across different disaster recovery sites, it's been pretty turnkey.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have a lot of customers out there that are running Oracle Database and, as we're virtualizing, there are other products out there that are not cost-efficient for the customer. Oracle VM is the logical choice there.

How was the initial setup?

That's the beautiful part. There's documentation out there and it's pretty straightforward, as long as you stick to the manual. It's pretty easy to set up. If you're installing an Oracle Database, you literally go to hours from what used to take days.

What other advice do I have?

When selecting a vendor what's important, obviously, is the reputation in the industry, the kind of support they provide, and the features of the product that we'll be using.

If you're going from a bare metal type of implementation, the expectation is going to be that the performance level will be there, and Oracle VM is definitely a product that gives you that.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Oracle VM Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: April 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Oracle VM Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.