Migration R12.2 to new os

[satish]

Hi Erman,

Based on your current landscape:

EBS: R12.2.5
DB: 2 node Oracle RAC 19.17
App Tier: 2 nodes with shared APPL_TOP
OS: RHEL 7.9
Infrastructure: 4 physical servers

We are planning to migrate to fusion. After migration also, We want to continue existing R12.2 environment for 2 years to run some reports for very limited users.

All 4 servers reached end of life.

Now we want to migrate to a vm and use any free operating system instead of RHEL. can you please share your ideas/recommendations?

Thanks,
Satish

[ErmanArslansOracleBlog]

You can use Oracle Linux for hosting this.
You can also use Oracle Linux KVM for the virtualization.

Oracle Linux is free to use. If you need vendor support, you can purchase it, but if you don't need it, you can use Oracle Linux freely.

[satish]

Thanks for the update.

Why this oracle linux kvm is required?is it mandatory?in what cases do we need to use.

Because we dont have any available physical server. It seems oracle kvm require physical server. But we have only vmware.

Pls give us some idea

Thanks,
Satish

[ErmanArslansOracleBlog]

you told that you need a free OS and a virtual env to host/run Oracle, so KVM is the best choice.
You can use it freely, and you can use its oracle-license-friendly capabilities and align your compute resources with licenses.

But! now you are telling about the Vmware. Okay. If you want to run something inside VMware as a Vmware/virtual machine guest, then forget about KVM and you Oracle Linux instead.

So what you will use in this case is Oracle Linux. Go with that.

[satish]

Thaks for the supporr erman.

We need a dedicated physical server for KVM? Our existing VMware ESXi physical server cannot simultaneously act as the KVM host.

Physical Server → VMware ESXi → Oracle Linux VM → KVM → KVM guest VMs. This is not recommended?

Pls correct me.

[ErmanArslansOracleBlog]

KVM host requirement: KVM is a Type-1 hypervisor built into the Linux kernel — it needs direct access to CPU virtualization (VT-x/AMD-V) on a physical host (or a hypervisor with nested-virt enabled).
 Nested stack ESXi → OL VM → KVM → guest VMs:
    - Not recommended for production!
    - Double hypervisor overhead (CPU + I/O penalty)!
    - Not supported by Oracle for EBS!
    - Fragile snapshots / live migration / troubleshooting!
    - Better: run EBS VMs directly on ESXi (one hypervisor layer). If you want to drop VMware entirely, install KVM/Proxmox on bare metal — don't stack them.!!

Bottom line: new physical box → OL 7.9 + KVM (or Proxmox) → 2 slim VMs (1 DB + 1 apps). Skip nested virt.

[satish]

Thanks for the update erman.

Nested stack ESXi → OL VM → KVM → guest VMs --> This is not supported by oracle right?
Can you pls correct me.

Thanks,
Satisb

[ErmanArslansOracleBlog]

Oracle's official support for KVM = KVM on bare metal (Oracle Linux KVM, OLVM). Not KVM nested inside another hypervisor.

[ErmanArslansOracleBlog]

 Rule of thumb: pick one hypervisor and go directly on hardware:
  - ESXi (bare metal) → EBS VMs, OR
  - KVM/OLVM/Proxmox (bare metal) → EBS VMs.

  Never stack them for a production Oracle workload.