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Virtualization with
Oracle Virtual Machine
An approach toward cost saving with Oracle Database licenses
JANUARY 2013
Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 2
Hard Partitioning Concepts ...................................................................................................................... 2
Oracle Support of Virtualized Servers ...................................................................................................... 3
Oracle VM vs. VMware Comparison......................................................................................................... 4
Hard Partitioning with Oracle VM Server for x86 ..................................................................................... 6
Oracle Real Application Cluster on Oracle VM Server for x86 ................................................................... 6
What is RAC? ....................................................................................................................................... 6
Cost Advantages ...................................................................................................................................... 7
Solution #1 – Active-Passive Cluster Using VMware ............................................................................. 8
Conceptual Architecture .................................................................................................................. 8
Cost Analysis.................................................................................................................................... 9
Solution #2 – RAC Cluster with VMware............................................................................................. 10
Conceptual Architecture ................................................................................................................ 10
Cost Analysis.................................................................................................................................. 11
Solution #3 – RAC Cluster with OVM .................................................................................................. 12
Conceptual Architecture ................................................................................................................ 12
Cost Analysis.................................................................................................................................. 13
Summary ............................................................................................................................................... 14
Contact Dewpoint Today ....................................................................................................................... 14
While Oracle supports virtualization of its database, its support of these configurations is somewhat
limited on any virtualization platform that relies on the operating system to perform the resource
management. This soft partitioning concept allows a very flexible approach toward resource
management that can ultimately impact the overall database licensing for a particular server.
To account for this flexibility Oracle requires that a server be licensed in its entirety for the database,
even if only a small percentage of that server is allocated to a virtual machine running the database.
However, organizations are requiring that server resources be more leveraged to spread out the cost of
that server over multiple applications, thereby lowering the total cost of ownership of the application or
project.
In order to provide companies with the ability to use their assets in a more efficient manner while
maintaining the integrity of its licensing, Oracle has implemented a hard partitioning concept within its
virtualization software.
This white paper addresses the advantages and disadvantages of utilizing hard partitioning to control
database licensing costs, thereby lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the database
environment.
This hard partitioning concept has been very prevalent in the “big iron” Unix servers and has now been
implemented in servers that adhere to a much smaller form factor. Even in the smaller Unix server form
factors, the implementation of hard partitioning is dependent on purchasing a server from a specific
hardware vendor. For example, LDOMs and Dynamic System Domains are Solaris implementations
unique to servers created by Oracle. Likewise, Integrity VM, VPAR, nPAR and Secure Resource Partitions
1
http://www.ittoday.info/Articles/Server_Virtualization_Technologies/Server_Virtualization_Technologies.htm
Since commodity hardware continues to become more important in today’s data centers, a method of
virtualizing database servers that controls licensing costs is very much needed. Oracle Virtual Machine
provides a solution that will allow organizations to take advantage of virtualizing the Oracle database
while controlling licensing costs.
One area where VMware has not gained significant adoption is with the Oracle database. The lack of
traction for the database environment is related to a perceived lack of support by Oracle running its
database on VMware. In November 2010, Oracle published a formal policy in MyOracleSupport
Document ID# 249212.1. In summary, this policy states that while Oracle does not certify its products to
run in a VMware environment, they will assist customers running in a VMware environment with issues
that are “…either known to occur in the native OS, or can be demonstrated not to be the result of
running on VMware.”2
Oracle VM server for x86 is an enterprise class server virtualization solution that reflects Oracle’s
commitment to enabling Oracle products to be integrated into a cohesive stack. Oracle VM is built on a
concept of Application Driven Virtualization and is designed to make the entire hardware and software
stack easier to deploy, manage and support. This entire concept is business focused, enabling IT to be
more agile to the business. Oracle VM Server for x86 is the only x86 server virtualization solution fully
certified by Oracle to run the Oracle Database and other Oracle applications.
2
MyOracleSupport Note 249212.1
Lower Cost Unlike VMware, Oracle VM is free to download, use, and High cost of ownership
distribute
Very high license, support,
Affordable support fees and management costs
Scalability Oracle VM 3.0 is 4 times more scalable than VMware VMware vSphere 5 only
with support for 128 vCPUs per guest VM supports 32 vCPUs per
guest VM
Accelerating Oracle VM Templates offer pre-installed, pre-configured Virtual appliances are via a
Application virtual machines of enterprise software including CRM, community marketplace,
Deployment ERP, clustering, and management, enabling you to not vendor supported
deploy in minutes and hours as opposed to days and
weeks
3
http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/app-aware-346610.html
Architected for Architected for low overhead when moving from Architecture is prone to
Efficiency physical to virtual servers inefficiency
Integrated Support One call to Oracle; no finger pointing at another vendor Need to deal with
numerous vendors for the
Full stack is certified and supported complete stack and
Faster time to resolution management
Virtualization Built In addition to Oracle VM, Oracle offers virtualization Only offers x86
into the System built into its hardware and the Oracle Solaris operating virtualization
system
Comprehensive Oracle VM is available for both x86 and SPARC Only x86 platform is
Platform Support architectures supported
Oracle’s VM server for x86 is specifically recognized by Oracle as a valid hard partitioning virtualization
server that allows for licensing, a subset of CPU’s known as sub-capacity licensing.
Oracle has published a white paper entitled, “Hard Partitioning with Oracle VM Server for x86”4 that
describes the specific approach an implementer must follow to take advantage of Oracle’s sub-CPU
licensing scenario. While a full description of this approach is beyond the scope of this paper, a
summary, including limitations, are provided below.
Oracle VM Server for x86 utilizes CPU pinning to bind Virtual CPUs (vCPUs) to physical CPUs. This
prevents the vCPUs from running workloads on physical CPUs other than the ones specified.
Utilizing the hard partitioning features of Oracle VM Server for x86 does limit some of the functionality
that can be utilized on these pinned CPUs. Specifically, live migrations are prohibited and therefore
Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and Distributed Power Management (DPM) cannot be utilized for
server pools containing pinned CPUs.
Oracle overcomes the limitations inherent with server virtualization by clustering the database using
Oracle’ Real Application Cluster (RAC) and underlying technology such as Oracle Clusterware and Oracle
Automatic Storage Management (ASM). This combination of products running on a platform that is
using Oracle VM Server for x86 provides customers with a highly available and scalable architecture that
leverages all of the advantages of virtualization that is fully certified to work with the Oracle Database.
When properly configured, this architecture can also take advantage of hard partitioning.
What is RAC?5
A RAC database is a clustered database implemented on a series of independent servers architected to
work as a single system. A clustered database differs from a single instance database in a way that the
database can be accessed by multiple instances concurrently. Each instance runs on a separate server in
a cluster formed by Oracle Clusterware. When additional resources are required, additional nodes and
4
Hard Partitioning with Oracle VM Server for x86, an Oracle White Paper, June 2012
5
Oracle Real Application Clusters in Oracle VM Environments ,An Oracle Technical White Paper March 2012
Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) One Node is a new option to the Oracle Database 11g Release 2
Enterprise Edition. It improves upon many of the benefits of server virtualization and extends them to
databases running in physical server environments. It allows customers to virtualize database storage,
standardize their database environment and if required upgrade to a full RAC implementation without
downtime.
RAC One Node is fully compatible with Oracle VM Server, allowing customers to architect environments
that leverage the strengths of both RAC and server virtualization.
There are several reasons customers will want to run an Oracle RAC database in an Oracle VM
environment - one of the most important being the ability to use sub-capacity licensing. Other reasons
include consolidating workloads on under utilized servers, creating virtual clusters for test and
development, and rapidly provisioning new database instances.
Cost Advantages
Oracle’s favorable database licensing constraints combined with Oracle VM Server for x86, and a very
low cost for the hypervisor itself, in many instances Oracle delivers more value to customers than
VMware. To illustrate the cost advantages of an Oracle HA configuration compared to a standard
VMware configuration, the following scenario is presented:
In order to solve this scenario three solutions are presented for consideration:
In this solution two Sun Server X3-2s were purchased and built in a dedicated database cluster using
VMware and Oracle Enterprise Linux as the underlying operating systems/cluster solution. To properly
account for a failover condition, each server was sized with 16 cores to provide the required capacity for
the database workload, planned growth and unplanned growth.
DB Cores Total 32
DB Cores Licenses purchased 32
Core Factor 0.5
DB Cores Total 32
DB Cores Licenses purchased 32
Core Factor 0.5
In this solution, two Sun Server X3-2s were purchased and built in a database cluster using Oracle RAC,
Enterprise Linux and Oracle Virtual Machine as the underlying operating systems/cluster solution. In
order to properly account for a failover condition, each server was sized with 16 cores to provide the
required capacity for the database workload, planned growth and unplanned growth.
Since hard partitioning is deployed, Dynamic Resource Scheduler and Distributed Power Management
cannot be utilized for server pool Distributed Power Management (DPM). Therefore, an additional OVM
Server pool would need to be added specifically for the application failover.
To ensure that the comparison between a VMware and OVM-based active-active clusters was
consistent, an additional server pool was added to confirm that DRS and DPM were available to support
application failover.
DB Cores Total 32
DB Cores Licensed 12 6
Core Factor 0.5 0.5
Oracle Virtualization Machine is a robust virtualization solution that provides features similar to
VMware, but has been engineered to be application aware. This application aware concept provides
Oracle virtual machines with visibility into what is running inside the virtual machine and can provision
and manage applications, middleware, and databases. OVM—unlike VMware—is free to download and
use, resulting in an overall lower cost.
One of OVM’s more valuable features is its ability to implement hard partitioning in such a way that
supports Oracle’s sub-capacity licensing requirements.
Combining OVM with Oracle RAC for a database cluster can have a dramatic positive impact on a
database environment’s overall Total Cost of Ownership. The table below provides a summary of the
TCO for the 3 solutions:
In summary, Dewpoint understands that Oracle database licensing is a complicated and costly part of an
overall IT infrastructure. In order to limit costs while providing a highly available database environment,
the proper implementation of OVM with RAC can provide a significant cost savings over a three-year
period.
Dewpoint also understands that each company’s environment is different and unique. Therefore, we
have developed a process and proprietary application to that uses Total Cost of Ownership to help
customers understand the true costs associated with their database environment and to create
solutions that will allow them to limit that cost.