Oracle VM Reviews

We use it for the integration part, as a jump host, or to create an ABS VM for lift and shift. That's what we use it for.

I'm just involved in providing VMs; application testing and development are handled by a different department.

The security is robust; it's encrypted. If you have a VM running on a private subnet, then it's highly secure, which is what everyone prefers with Oracle. 

If you want to access the VM from anywhere over the Internet, you put it in a public subnet. So, VMs are linked to that. The subnets are linked to it. So, it's perfectly secured if it's a private network. The security is set.

Integration capabilities are a little complicated. It could be made easier. Whether integrating with Azure or other platforms or integration with OIC itself, the integration part is a little complicated. The integration console could also be made a bit more user-friendly.

Sometimes, the API calls and procedures are a bit complicated. Not everyone is familiar with the systems and how to work with them, but a little easier steps would do better.

The console is clear, but the integration side of it, sometimes, the Oracle Cloud doesn't have an IDCS user. Normally, in the integration of Oracle Identity Cloud Service (IDCS), it is useless. But now there's no Oracle Identity and Access Management (IAM) IDCS because it's been compressed to domain-based. So, it's domain-based right now. There's no ID here. Everyone has access, depending on the policy and access. 

However, in specific environments, like GovCloud, there need to be more upgrades. Maybe it's because it's GovCloud; it's like that. However, the integration part becomes a little complicated in terms of the GovCloud log, where we have to make adjustments. There are no IDCS users, so we need to put in an IAM user and implement the policies. The integration of the VM agent and connectivity agent becomes a little complicated.

I have been using it for two years. 

It is stable. But in some cases, the connectivity to the service gateways is a little complicated to the SaaS cloud. We have that difficulty. Oracle is working on that.

It's highly scalable. You can scale up and scale down, both vertically and horizontally. So, those are good features. 

The customer service and support are good. 

Positive

I've been working with Azure recently, so I started learning it. It's just like creating a VM, creating users, and setting passwords for them.

Oracle is entirely on a Linux platform. Very rarely Windows is used unless it's a Jump host or for IDP sessions. But Azure is completely Windows-based. So, we need to switch over and switch on to using Linux commands. That's the major difference. 

The initial setup is complex. We need to configure the integration on the console. We need to install that connectivity agent to a VM. And the whole process is a little complicated. Where it could be made a little easier, the API could be a bit easier where  OAuth tokens and everything generated is a bit more straightforward.

The whole process from the beginning will take around two days. For deployment and maintenance, two people are enough.

The user will be charged accordingly as well—pay as you go. So, that's also a feature that comes with Oracle.

Basically, you get charged only for storage. If I stop a VM, then I'm not charged for the CPU usage. So, that's fine.

The pricing is cheap. The charge is around $20 to $ 30 per day for that.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The only recommendation is, in case you lose the keys for the VMs, that becomes a little complicated process to get through. There is a process, but unless the person is very technically sound, the keys cannot be exchanged or checked. They cannot be retrieved, but they can be changed.

That's the only point you need to remember.

We were curious and wanted to test the product since we were standardizing our virtualized environment. 

We knew that VMware was feature-rich, and we wanted to look as others as well to avoid vendor lock in.

I've been using it for one years.

It was complex.

We did it in-house.

We were not happy with the aggressive licensing model of Oracle and thought we would end-up in a similar situation to the Database where we have to pay the license fee for passive nodes as well.

We selected VMware and KVM.

The Red Hat KVM is better than the OVM in terms of performance and simple support.

I really appreciate the stability of the solution. It's quite reliable.

There's a lot of space to customize the solution if you need to. 

The solution needs more features and flexibility in terms of communicating with other platforms. If it had that, it would be the perfect product.

If there was an option that made customization easier, it would make for a better solution.

The solution needs to be more integration capabilities overall.

I've been using the solution for about one year. I don't have too much experience with the solution, personally.

The stability is quite good. It's reliable. There aren't glitches, nor are there bugs. It doesn't crash or freeze. It works well for us.

The solution is not very scalable. We are using Oracle CC, and it's not very flexible. It can't merge or communicate with other systems, which limits things quite a bit.

In our company, more than 100 people are currently using the solution.

We've reached out to technical support in the past and have been very satisfied with their level of response. We don't have a problem with them at all. We've had a good experience overall.

We had to switch from a different solution to Oracle. We're an Oracle partner in our country. We have a sister company, which is also a partner of Oracle. Previously, we were on Citrix. It is an open-source platform.

I didn't handle the implementation. I don't know if the initial setup was complex or straightforward. Other people on my team handled that part of the process.

I'm on the technical side of things, so I don't deal with the licensing part of the business. I'm not sure what the costs are. It doesn't concern my day-to-day.

We're partners with Oracle.

We are actually an IT service provider and an internet service provider. We have a lot of experience with VMware.

I'm not the person who updates the solution, so I'm not sure what version it is that we are on, but it is most likely the latest.

While the solution is okay, the flexibility is lacking. I would much rather recommend VMware over Oracle VM at this time due to the greater flexibility in that other system.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. If it offered much more flexibility or was closer to offering features that were closer to what VMware offers, I would rate it a bit higher.

I primarily use this for server virtualization. I also use it for application deployment. 

Oracle has a lot of templates for most of the enterprise application that they sell the market. So, it is easier to deploy those application using one Oracle VM template than actually setting up a server from scratch. Oracle VM is very handy in that a user can easily deploy the templates, pre-configures and does a few customizations within a short time-span.

Oracle VM is a solution that grows with your business. It can easily be scaled up, and it is a great storage platform. 

The Oracle VM template is the most valuable feature. 

I do not think this solution is as stable as other solutions in the market. But, Oracle has really been trying to update the solution with the most recent release, and I find it is less buggy than it had been.

In addition, I think Oracle VM should integrate its own backups rather than relying on other Oracle tools for virtual backups. 

This solution supports up to 254 virtual machine servers. So, this is a huge capability for scalability. Any company can start with whatever it has, and grow as its budget grows. 

Initially, the tech support was horrible. But, over time, the support engineers have improved. I find the tech support extremely helpful recently. They are currently giving very solid support. 

I have prior experience with VMware, Bhyve and FreeNAS. Bhyve and FreeNAS are open-source VM solutions.

It is very simple to setup and deploy. But, it should be noted that a systems architect or systems engineer must be at the helm of the deployment. The setup must be conducted by someone well-versed in Linux. 

Initially, when we setup we had to make sure we had a staff architect that was knowledgeable with storage skills and Linux. Those were our requirements for proper deployment. 

The cost of this solution is cheap. It is one of the reasons we chose Oracle VM. It is truly "pocket- friendly."

In regards to the licensing, Oracle VM is definitely a good choice for a customer that is already using Oracle solutions. 

Nothing is simple about virtualization software products anymore. They are becoming more complex by the day. Now, with the advent of containers, the complexity has increased. Nothing is simple. Users must be dedicated to understand these VM solutions. 

Although not necessarily a feature, but rather a capability of virtualization, is the possibiltles to have high consolidation density and to take new or legacy applications and put them on high-performance computing platforms.

The primary benefit is that it reduced CapEx by getting rid of old hardware and then consolidating them on a defined set of platforms. And while it's pretty well automated and if your IT department is well-versed in virtualization technology, it can reduce OpEx as well.

I think it needs a more simplified way of provisioning external storage networks. Those areas in performance, especially triaging performance at the hypervisor layer, need some improvement.

We've had no issues with deploying it.

It's come a long way. So, by the time you get to v3.3, it's a pretty stable platform. It's much easier to use than the previous versions and I'd say it's at a good place right now.

It scales well. I think a primary use case of this would be in the private cloud appliance, a PCA, which is where it really gets leveraged.

The primary benefit I see is that most of the people who are doing support for Oracle VM come from database and virtualization backgrounds, and they sit together. If you have a problem with a database, since it's virtualized, they'll know exactly how to triage it.

It's been a struggle. Over the years, it's gotten better and better. I think what's helped tremendously is the integration of OVM with PCA, and so all the setup has really been taken out of the hands of the administrator. It's really more of a deployment thing than it is a setup thing. That's helped a lot.

We looked at quite a few vendors and we support different vendors as well, too. We're not a one-vendor shop. We use quite different vendors and it's all-purpose for us. For Oracle-based technology, we use Oracle VM. For non-Oracle stuff, we use VMware.

The first thing I would suggest is that if you have a test environment, the best thing to do is learn. Get certified hardware and then play with it, test it. Make sure you're comfortable with the whole provisioning setup and configuration of it. Then use it on a much more wider scale.

Virtual machines are much cheaper than having physical machines. They are rolling out new machines very quick and fast. It saves time and saves cost, that’s how we feel; and also the systems are more reliable.

Saves time for procuring the new hardware. No more physical space sitting on the data centers.

It's stable. There are still ways you can break the system, but it's very minimal, compared to a physical system.

For real hardware, scalability is challenging. But with virtual, you can scale without affecting the software applications, you can still reconfigure the hardware. Whenever we ask them to increase the RAM or other things, they can do it, and never come back and say well, it's VM's role. But every two years, we need to update the VM build; that we know. After four years, our VMs get old, so we need to replace them.

So far the response is good. Our team never comes back and says Oracle is giving us a hard time.

It's a challenge for us to keep investing in it. We are a manufacturing company, not an IT company. Whenever Oracle comes, say every three to five years, and says everybody change the system, you need to find the budget for that. And in a year, it’s going to be outdated again, right? After four years, my system has become completely outdated.

I'm sure there is one product, Oracle Data Integrator for loading bulk data from one system to another. We just starting using it. It’s a very good product, but we haven’t used all the features. Once we explored all the features, we got feedback from the company. I know so far that it’s good.

I know that everything is on the cloud; but eventually, if you are a new startup company, go to the VM. You have control over what you have, while at the same time, not dependent on the hardware.

Quick provisioning is the most valuable feature. It comes bundled with Oracle Database Appliance and we use it for our PeopleSoft instances. You could basically create an instance for your dev environment, QA, UAT and production, and do it quicker than doing it from bare metal.

As I’ve mentioned, it’s all about speed, quickness; do it pretty quick. We also have customizations. If we have a base image, we can take that base image, apply customizations, take a snapshot, and then we can copy it with a cookie-cutter approach for other environments as well.

I like the idea of, snap, and everything's available to you. You can tweak it, make another image again and you can copy it.

We're using NFS, which I've been informed might not be the best file system to be using. However, with the latest version, apparently, there are supposed to be some updates that will help with the drivers to use NFS; it would make it more stable and better, performance-wise, as well.

It is stable. For the most part, it's the guys I work with who use it. I'm a project manager, but they're pretty happy with the technology.

We have not had to scale it that much.

The guys I work with are not too keen with the Oracle support. They tend to find their own solutions.

The reason we decided to invest in this new solution was all about cost. We were going with an n-tier architecture. We had 12 physical servers. Now, with the ODA, we have two chassis that run on a virtualized platform and it makes it a lot easier to manage.

Initial setup was pretty good. It was basically out of the box because the Oracle Database Appliance is being promoted as out of the box. You turn on a switch and a login script starts up the whole process; that worked out well. We had a few glitches in terms of learning how it all works together. We certainly overcame some of those challenges and we're really happy with the product.

Insert linkThere were no other vendors on the shortlist, because we're an Oracle shop.
Nonetheless, when I do think about working with a vendor like Oracle, I look for depth of knowledge, reliability and whether they have a pretty good clientele out there. It's always good to compare notes or see what other people are doing out there and help one another.

Look at what other people are doing, take notes and talk to your Oracle rep. They really come on board and help you out through the process.