Oracle VM is ending, KVM is the way to go

Recently I attended a webinar about Oracle virtualization, given by Oracle Linux – product management.

A few highlights of this webinar:

• KVM is included in Oracle Linux 7 with UEK R5 (Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel release 5)
• There’s a separate Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager (OLVM) developed, based on Open Source oVirt, available on yum.oracle.com with premier support.
• OLVM 4.2.8 (where does this version number come from….) has the same features as OracleVM 3.4 including snapshot-functionality
• Covered under the Hard Partitioning Policy – that means you can ‘pin’ on cores (but no overfailing allowed in that case), same as OracleVM.
• Integrated in Oracle Enterprise Manager 13.4 (not released yet as I recall).
• OracleVM 3.x Premier Support ends on March 2021, followed by lifetime sustaining support. No mentioning of a next version.
• There are migration paths and tools.
• Advice from Oracle: for existing users, continue to use OracleVM, for new workloads consider Oracle Linux VM.
• Install by using YUM – should be under 10 minutes:
• • yum install https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL7/ovirt42/x86_64/ovirt-release42.rpm
  • yum install ovirt-engine
  • Run the engine setup command
  • Answer 15 question

Below also some slides. For specific questions regarding OracleVM on engineered systems (e.g. ODA) Oracle advised us to contact the engineered systems product-group.

The switch to KVM is quite understandable, and it means less effort for Oracle to maintain a separate product like OracleVM- except perhaps for the Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager. For customers it means unfortunately another change in their Oracle environment.

Resources:

– Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager:  http://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL7/ovirt42/x86_64/index.html

– Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager:  http://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL7/ovirt42/extras/x86_64/index.html

– RPM: https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL7/ovirt42/x86_64/ovirt-release42.rpm