Oracle VM Reviews

For most customers we have is the main reason avoiding license issues with Oracle. Most customers already have VMware vSphere running. Another reason is to have the complete stack from the same vendor, if any issues occur then only vendor has to be contacted for support to help fixing the issues.

It’s helped to decrease hardware and software license costs to use Oracle VM as most of our customers are running a lot of small applications and databases. They use Oracle VM to create small VMs to install Weblogic and the Databases on seperate servers. Also, to split the OTA database and application servers from the production databases and applications. Advantage: less hardware to buy, and most software licenses are CPU based, by using hard partitioning you can save on license costs.

Backup: It's possible to clone a VM (Virtual Machine) or make a template from it, but the option to create a snapshot backup from OVM Manager is missing. This option is available in VMware vSphere If you want to make snapshots using Oracle VM then it must be done by the storage product.

Jobs, the OVM manager handles only one job at the time. For a lot of actions, for example, starting or stopping a Virtual Machine, a job is created. If I start a couple of VM's at the same time I only see one job for starting the first VM. The other five jobs are in an invisible queue, after finishing the first job the second job starts and becomes visible at that moment. What to improve: make at least visible which jobs are in the queue and make it possible to run multiple jobs at the same time.

Security: there is no role based access control available in OVM Manager, if it’s needed then you have to use Oracle Enterprise Manager with the right plugin.

I've been using it for years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We've experienced no issues with performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

The product is good for the things we want to do with it, but there is room for improvement.

My primary use of this product is for a database. I use this solution because it can work together with our other Oracle solutions.

There is no memory over-subscription and CPU over-subscription. That has to be improved in terms of Oracle VM perspective. The other leading VM software solutions have this feature.

For me, the stability is fine. But, I only primarily use it for the database role. 

There is a huge gap that Oracle VM needs to tighten in order to be more scalable, as well as more competitive with other VM products currently on the market. 

The technical support is not perfect. 

I previously used VMware products. I have found VMware vs Oracle VM to be far superior in provisioning and deployment. Additionally, there is more storage availability with VMware products. 

It's slightly more complex to set up than other VM software. 

It reduces the licensing cost for other Oracle products, and because it's based on Xen, it has no performance problems.

We've been able to use it successfully for deployment of our online application.

It needs automatic migration that's similar to VMware vMotion. The DRS feature in VMware migrates virtual machines based on the load on the hosts. Oracle VM does not have this feature, and I don't want users complaining about the performance bottleneck due to the load on the host.

We've been using it for three years.

I deployed it within a week and didn't have any issues with it.

Thankfully, everything was stable in spite of my limited knowledge.

We had no issues scaling it for our needs.

The customer service was good.

We also use VMware products, which I personally prefer. VMware products are an administrator's dream. They have thought of everything, including DRS, HA, templates, and virtual machine deployment. It is very easy to do all these tasks.

The initial setup was a bit of both straightforward and complex, but it's easy if you know VMware.

I carried out the implementation.

It reduces the licensing cost for Oracle products, though I still prefer VMware.

Oracle VM was chosen mostly due to licensing issues and it is based on the stable KVM product of Red Hat.

VMware is the best, but for saving license costs for Oracle products, Oracle VM is good and stable.

We are a consulting company and one of the solutions that we assist our clients with is Oracle VM. I work with several different clients and they have different use cases.

My client using the Oracle VM says that it is working well.

I can use Oracle VM to manage my VMs and databases.

The interface on the newest version is good.

Oracle VM integrates well.

The network capabilities are good.

It is easy to migrate and clone VMs.

There have been some security issues in the past.

Having even more integration with other products would be an improvement.

The current version, 3.4.6, is usable. However, I had many problems with the Java console in previous versions, such as 3.2. It is easy to access now but prior to this, you had to install different versions of Java. The stability has improved over time.

This is a scalable solution. I can use many nodes inside of a cluster. Also, I can create one group and put several servers in it.

The Oracle technical support is very good.

I have also used KVM and it is a good tool.

VMware is another good tool but it is difficult to compare them. VMware has a better hypervisor but Oracle VM does many things, and it costs less.

Oracle VM is easy to set up. It can be deployed with one person.

We have five analysts for support and that work with it.

The price of the license is expensive.

Another one of the jobs that I do is assist my clients with migration to Oracle VM. For example, some migrate from VM to Oracle VM, and others migrate from Hyper-V to Oracle VM.

Overall, this Oracle VM works well for us. It is a good product, although Oracle is now recommending that we transition to Oracle KVM.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

• Scalability
• Administering/managing
• Simplified network/storage operations.

Having these features in place, a DBA admin can easily able to build VMs, migrate on the fly, assign network ports, and segregate the networks according to levels.

It's improved our licensing. When we migrate physical servers to virtual ones, it reduces the amount of licenses needed. Not only that, Oracle Linux on Oracle VM are certified to run, also UEL is tuned to provide fast performance compare to other Linux.

There are some minor bugs with the manual admin from Hyp versus GUI Admin.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

It's scaled for our needs.

I personally like working on Oracle VM rather than other virtualization, because of the simplified setup, and probably I am attached to Oracle products maybe, as being an Ex-Employee of Oracle Corp.

The most valuable feature of this product is the quick and easy way to deploy new virtual machines from Oracle VM templates and your own templates. That is very useful to deploy new virtual machines in a few minutes with different Oracle products already installed and configured. For example, we can deploy a new virtual machine with Oracle Database installed and another virtual machine with Oracle WebCenter installed.

It reduced the time to deploy new machines and reduced the cost of licensing.

It would be very nice to improve the way to get hot backup clones of virtual machines and to schedule this jobs from Oracle VM Manager.

We used it for three years and we stopped last year.

I encountered some issues with virtual networks and live migration feature in v3.2.

We had no issues with the stability.

We've had no issues scaling it.

7/10

7/10

The company where I was used VMware solutions for virtualization of environments, and we migrated all Oracle products to an Oracle VM infrastructure.

The initial setup was a little complex because no one in the company knew about this product as it was something new at the time. My team and I did a successful installation of our Oracle VM environment and migrated all Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic application servers to this new infrastructure, which are now in our production environment for client deliveries.

The implementation was done by a local team of the company with some issues but finally with success.

This aspect was done by another team in our company.

I think it is a good Oracle product, but it is necessary to have a dedicated team with the correct expertise for this task because it is different from other virtualization solutions. The team should include people who know about storage, networking, Oracle Linux OS, Xen Server, Oracle Database, etc.

It allows hard partitioning platforms, thus keeping the licenses intact.

We have two datacenters, holding less than 15 physical servers and still running over 300 virtual ones.

With v2.X it was possible to do everything in the CLI or the shell. Now, on v3.X everything must be done either in the GUI or CLI, and there's no option to use the shell. I am old school, so I hate GUI. CLI is working well and I wish it to be that in future.

We have been using it for the past seven years, and have created 10 different environments.

There have been no issues with the deployments.

There was nasty bug on DomU UEK3 kernel year ago, which wiped virtual machine disks if a certain combination was used. Now, it's fine.

We have had no issues scaling it as needed.

I've never had to contact them.

The initial setup is as easy as walking. After that, it gets a little complicated, but if one knows what one is doing, it is still easy.

In-house. If you know Linux and Xen, you are good to go. If you don't, get a partner to do this for you.

As it's Oracle, there was no need to evaluate anything else.

I primarily use this for demonstrations for customers. 

It is easy to use, and easy to start.

It is a stable product.

The scalability is good. For us, we do not have a need for a lot of servers, so it suits our needs. We have about 30 users of this solution.

The tech support is good. 

It was a complex setup. It was very difficult for me.

If you buy an Oracle server, this solution is free. You have to only pay for support.