RAC on VMware
There is an interesting article by Tarry Singh about Installing Oracle 10gR2 RAC on VMware. With VMware Server are being offered for free, I believe there will be more and more instances of Oracle running on VMware. But do we really want to have RAC on VMware? Perhaps I will use it for demo and learning purposes, but not in production system.
To me, nothing beats the real stuff. VMware will consume (often times) precious resources. We have the OS, the VMware, the OS within the VMware, and finally the Oracle DB. Just imagine how you will keep them all up-to-date with the patches, etc. Moreover, RAC is about high availability. Are you going to have 2 VMwares running 2 RAC's on a single BIG physical machine? One power failure, host OS crash and you lose all the connectivity. RAC is really about availability on the cheap commodity hardwares.
Moreover, the Oracle does not support RAC on VMware (Metalink Note:249212.1), at this time. So you are really on your own if there is any problems...
posted by Wijaya Kusumo at 2/23/2006 12:40:00 PM
4 Comments:
Hi Wijaya,
Indeed I would push RAC on VMware server in production myself but have you heard of their bare metal product called ESX server?
Virtualization is just beginning to unfold. OS performance and the new product from VMware ESX 3.0 (now in beta) is moving fast towards adopting mission critical apps like RAC in production.
And as time moves ahead many companies will realize that VMware is not just a *build an appliance cos it's neat for demos* vendor but also a serious player in productions.
I'm also working on RAC with ESX 3.0 for production readiness, so stay tuned.
My prediction is by 2008 with a product ESX 4.0 (VMware Enterprise Suite 2008 - like I call it fondly) and a very mature HW support for virtualization (where performance would be 100% at par with the HW)all the *do it all with cables etc* will be passe.
Also check out this interview from Diane Greene with The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/31/vmware_qand_a/
Cheers
Tarry
Ooops correction ;)
Indeed I would'nt push RAC on VMware server in production myself...
I do believe there are good uses of virtualization beyond demo, development, and testing. But there is just a tipping point where it becomes counter productive eventually.
Placing RAC on VMWare in a production environment, in my opinion, is just a u-turn of why having RAC in the first place. We'll need bigger processing power, more memory, more maintenance & upgrade complexity, and yet still having a single point of failure (which is the host OS).
On the other hand, if all we need is a single standard database (non-RAC), then having it on VMWare may be an acceptable scenario.
I would like to endorse The RAC on VMware from my side but if i was there i would go and purchase it advanced version. Though it is a little costly as compared to this one but performance wise it is great.
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