“We consistently see much
better resource utilization with
an average of three times less
overhead using Oracle VM.”
—Monica Kumar, Senior Director of
Open Source Product Marketing, Oracle
Monica Kumar, Oracle’s Senior Director of Open Source Product Marketing
alization technologies were robust enough to handle mission-critical applications and database workloads. Oracle VM
emerged out of that exercise. It fully complements our grid
computing solutions portfolio.
Oracle has a history of enabling our customers to exploit
low-cost hardware through grid computing. With Oracle VM,
Oracle now provides customers integrated clustering, virtualization, storage, and management for grid computing, as well
as unified, full-stack support for virtualization, Linux, database, middleware, and application products.
PROFIT: Take us under the hood: what is Oracle VM?
KUMAR: Oracle VM consists of open source server software
and an integrated Web browser–based management console.
It includes an easy-to-use graphical interface for creating and
managing virtual server pools, running on x86- and x86-64-
based systems, across an enterprise with support for Linux
and Windows guest operating systems.
PROFIT: How do customers benefit from Oracle VM?
KUMAR: Oracle VM enables faster and more-efficient server
consolidation and optimization throughout the enterprise. It
helps lower costs related to power, space, cooling, and hardware. At the same time, it eases the deployment of applications in a grid environment. Oracle VM is a free product so
there is no licensing cost, and with simple and affordable
enterprise-class, 24/7 support, Oracle VM provides even more
cost savings to customers.
Oracle VM allows customers to grow or shrink the physical
server resources dedicated to an application without downtime
through Oracle VM live migration. And Oracle VM
is three times more efficient than the competing
server virtualization product.
PROFIT: Three times more efficient?
KUMAR: Oracle has run many performance benchmarks comparing Oracle products running with
Oracle VM against the existing leading x86 server
virtualization products. We’ve also compared it to
Oracle products on nonvirtualized operating systems
on x86 and x86-64. And we consistently see much
better resource utilization with an average of three
times less overhead using Oracle VM.
PROFIT: How are Oracle customers currently using
Oracle VM?
KUMAR: As I alluded to earlier, we are deploying
Oracle VM in our data center to support Oracle On
Demand Managed Services Grid, which provides a portfolio
of applications on a subscription or managed basis. This will
allow Oracle to better optimize each On Demand customer’s
configuration, more fully harness server capabilities, maintain operational enhancements deployed over the last several
years, and introduce new benefits—not to mention significant
savings in terms of space, power, and cooling.
PROFIT: How much does support for Oracle VM cost?
KUMAR: Oracle VM software is free for download. And for
customers who want support, its pricing is on a per-system
basis, with 24/7 support for a system with up to two CPUs
priced at [US]$499 per year per system and a system with
unlimited CPUs priced at [US]$999 per year per system. With
a complete solution from Oracle, not only do customers save
on support costs; they also have a single point of enterprise-class support for their entire virtualization environments,
including the Linux operating system, Oracle Database, Oracle
Fusion Middleware, and Oracle Applications software—all of
which are certified with Oracle VM. <>
RICH SCHWERIN is the Linux, virtualization, and open source product marketing
manager with Oracle technology marketing.
>> FOR MORE INFORMATION
Oracle Database 11g
oracle.com/database
Oracle VM
oracle.com/virtualization
