Oh glorious day!
A big victory was won today in the Oracle on VMware battle front. Most of the resistance has been around excluding RAC from any support stance, and overall [lack of] any official support stance. Before they just blanket didn’t support it. They’ve now changed that stance, and updated their stuff to show that they DO support all of their products, including RAC (*11.2.0.2 only*), running on VMware.
The highlight is they don’t CERTIFY. They DO support all products, but do not CERTIFY VMware as a hardware platform. And if a problem is found, they request you work with VMware on it, which is exactly what we’ve always wanted anyway! (i.e. We would call Sun for the v880’s hardware, not Oracle, etc.)
The last obstacle is updating the Enterprise Licensing model to promote soft-provisioning technologies other than their own, so that customers can actually increase their Oracle footprint, rather than being fear-mongered into decreasing it by licensing models that don't make sense in a virtual world.
Here’s the actual updated metalink article, released on Tuesday and announced today:
Support Position for Oracle Products Running on VMWare Virtualized Environments [ID 249212.1] | ||
Modified 08-NOV-2010 Type ANNOUNCEMENT Status PUBLISHED | ||
Purpose
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Explain to customers how Oracle supports our products when running on VMware
Scope & Application
----------------------
For Customers running Oracle products on VMware virtualized environments.
No limitation on use or distribution.
Support Status for VMware Virtualized Environments
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Oracle has not certified any of its products on VMware virtualized environments. Oracle Support will assist customers running Oracle products on VMware in the following manner: Oracle will only provide support for issues that either are known to occur on the native OS, or can be demonstrated not to be as a result of running on VMware.
If a problem is a known Oracle issue, Oracle support will recommend the appropriate solution on the native OS. If that solution does not work in the VMware virtualized environment, the customer will be referred to VMware for support. When the customer can demonstrate that the Oracle solution does not work when running on the native OS, Oracle will resume support, including logging a bug with Oracle Development for investigation if required.
If the problem is determined not to be a known Oracle issue, we will refer the customer to VMware for support. When the customer can demonstrate that the issue occurs when running on the native OS, Oracle will resume support, including logging a bug with Oracle Development for investigation if required.
NOTE: Oracle has not certified any of its products on VMware. For Oracle RAC, Oracle will onlyaccept Service Requests as described in this note on Oracle RAC 11.2.0.2 and later releases.
