Re: Oracle and Linux
Hi, From: "Avi Miller" <avi.miller@gmail.com>
On 5 Nov 2014, at 12:42 pm, Peter Ross <Petros.Listig@fdrive.com.au> wrote:
I have to admit not really to understand the "support this or that virtualisation"
I misused some words and apologise: In the case of Oracle in particular, there is a difference between "supported" and "certified" - we support Oracle products on any platform to the best of our ability, but if we can't reproduce the issue internally, we may need to engage the HW/virtualisation vendor.
Thanks for clarification. I think I did not differentiate the two words as well.
And I have not read: "Product XY only works on Dell T610 and HP ML 150".I can install it on a "no name box" as well. Why not on any VM?
We have hardware certification[1], just like we have virtualisation certification.
Oh, I did not know that.
(BTW: Is Oracle DB supported in a Oracle VirtualBox?)
Yes, for development and test purposes. Not for production use, AFAIK. Then again, the performance you'd get in VirtualBox probably doesn't meet your production needs anyway.
That could be right. But I am actually not that sure how much it matters. As I was "toying" with Oracle VM I moved a Zimbra Server running on Ubuntu. From FreeBSD/VirtualBox to Oracle VM (Linux/Xen) I did not "feel" a difference. Maybe a benchmark question: Which benchmarks would you run to compare the two in various ways? If I have a bit time I like to try it. I find it difficult to compare them in "normal usage" if you do not migrate all VMs from one solution to another (on the same hardware) because the overall load of a system has an impact on a VM as well. I also tend to have a bit of "space" on the servers to avoid bottlenecks. Usually I do not over-allocate (sorry, there is a better word I just cannot remember just now) or at least not much. The space is also used as a buffer if I have to migrate VMs/services suddenly (e.g. caused by a failing machine) The result may differ on different hardware as well. E.g. I could imagine to have different results if I try the two stacks on a 32GB modern hardware - or on a 5 years old machine with 8 GB only. Depends where I find a bottleneck.
Hope that makes things a little clearer from our perspective.
Yes it does:-) Thanks Peter
Hi,
On 5 Nov 2014, at 2:15 pm, Peter Ross <Petros.Listig@fdrive.com.au> wrote:
Maybe a benchmark question: Which benchmarks would you run to compare the two in various ways?
Depends entirely on the workload you're running in the guest. :) For Oracle RDBMS for example, I'd run things like Swingbench, ORION, SLOB and other DB-specific benchmarks. I'm not sure what the most appropriate benchmark for a Zimbra box would be. Usually I do not over-allocate (sorry, there is a better word I just
cannot remember just now) or at least not much. The space is also used as a buffer if I have to migrate VMs/services suddenly (e.g. caused by a failing machine)
I suspect the phrase you're looking for is over-subscribe, though over-allocate makes perfect sense too. In the Oracle VM space, we always tell customers to have at least 1 server's worth of VM-allocated resources free. This can sometimes be challenging. If every server has 64GB of RAM, and you have a VM with 32GB of RAM, you need to have a server with over half its memory unallocated in order to migrate that VM. Another reason why more, smaller VMs are more agile. :)
The result may differ on different hardware as well. E.g. I could imagine to have different results if I try the two stacks on a 32GB modern hardware - or on a 5 years old machine with 8 GB only. Depends where I find a bottleneck.
Exactly. And these days, hyperthreading makes a difference too. Everyone things they want "double the processors", but depending on workload, NUMA architecture and hypervisor, hyperthreads can actually cause CPU spin bottlenecks. You should always benchmark your system with and without them enabled to see if it makes a difference for your particular workload. Cheers, Avi
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Avi Miller -
Peter Ross