Migration of physical to vm - licensing

[satish]

Hi erman,

We are hosting r12 ebs on physical servers. Since we are migrating to fusion, and existing r12 servers reached end of life, we want to migrate to vms.

We have existing VMware setup.


Our admin will give a vm to us.

If we  install Oracle Linux + KVM inside the VMware VM, then create another guest VM and run Oracle Database inside → Is this supported?

Thanks for all the support.

Thanks,
Satish

[satish]

Hi erman,

Can you please guide us.

Thanks

[ErmanArslansOracleBlog]

Why do you use oracle linux kvm on top of vmware ? What is your motivation doing that.
It doesn't bring any good thing to the table.. Actually it brings overhead of running virtualization on virtualization. + Licensing will be like you are running directly on vmware.

[satish]

Dear erman,

We might be wrong.

Requirement: We are hosting r12 ebs on physical servers. existing r12 servers reached end of life, we want to migrate to vms.

Can you please share your expertise and high level steps.

Thanks,
Satish

[ErmanArslansOracleBlog]

Okay, install Oracle Linux and virtualize it with Oracle Linux KVM.
Create your VM(s) and configure (install necessary packages and do the OS configuration) them for EBS and EBS database.
Migrate your EBS database and APPS tier following Oracle Support documentation..
Most probably you will go with Dataguard switchover for DB, execute a postclone for db.. For Apps Tier, file copy all the apps filesystem and apps tier postclone afterwards.

[satish]

Thanks for the update.

Okay, install Oracle Linux and virtualize it with Oracle Linux KVM.

Is Oracle linux mandatory? Can we go with rhel
Do we need to install it on physical server?

Please give us some idea

Thanks,
Satish

[ErmanArslansOracleBlog]

You can use RHEl. Oracle Linux is not a must.
As long as , Oracle certifies the OS with EBS, you can use it.

[satish]

Hi erman,

We want to migrate ebs from physical servers to vm.

Oracle officially supports KVM only on Oracle Linux (OL) with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK).

If you’re using RHEL as the host OS, then RHEL KVM is supported by Red Hat, not by Oracle.

Do we need physical host for kvm.

Can you please give us some idea

[ErmanArslansOracleBlog]

"Oracle Products are not certified to run on virtual machines/guests provided by Xen or KVM offerings by Red Hat, Novell, SUSE, Ubuntu, Citrix, Nutanix, or XenSource."

So, you may have issues if you go with Redhat and KVM, and if any issues arise, you ll be the one that will try to solve them.. (Redhat may support you but it depends according to the issue type.)

Why do you need virtualization for this? and why do you use Redhat?

[satish]

Hi erman,

Existing servers are physical and reached end of life. We are migrating to fusion and so customer don't want to buy physical servers. They said they will provide 2 vm and asked us to migrate ebs app and db to these vms. We are stuck here how to go ahead.
In Google we have come to know some cpu pinning kvm etc but we don't have any idea.

Need ur support.

Thanks
Satish

[ErmanArslansOracleBlog]

*CPU pinning in virtualizations is for being aligned with Oracle licenses. So it is like hard partitioning & pinning the CPUs. Oracle Linux KVM is approved for that.

Approved hard partitioning technologies include:   Physical Domains (also known as PDomains, Dynamic Domains, or Dynamic System Domains), Solaris Zones (also known as Solaris Containers, capped Zones/Containers only), IBM’s LPAR (adds DLPAR with AIX 5.2), IBM’s Micro-Partitions (capped partitions only), vPar (capped partitions only), nPar,  Integrity Virtual Machine (capped partitions only), Secure Resource Partitions (capped partitions only), Fujitsu’s PPAR.

However; for instance VMware is not approved. So cpu partitioning on vmware considered as soft partitioning.

Examples of such partitioning type include: Solaris 9 Resource Containers, AIX Workload Manager, HP Process Resource Manager, Affinity Management, Oracle VM, and VMware.

Check : Oracle Partitioning Policy

So if you are on a OS which is not approved by Oracle  (in the context of CPU pinning) , you will typically be required to license all physical CPU cores of the entire server.
Well,

If you run Oracle software on a VM hosted by Red Hat Linux KVM (or a KVM host not running Oracle Linux and managed by OLVM):
Licensing Impact: Oracle considers this Soft Partitioning. Even if you technically set up CPU pinning or affinity (which KVM supports for performance reasons), Oracle's licensing policy does not recognize it as a valid way to restrict the license count.
**********Still you can ask this to Oracle ,but this is what I see..

*I understand that you will have vm(s) on the target, and you will migrate your EBS to those vm(s).
EBS will run on Redhat with KVM. But again ->

Oracle Products are not certified to run on virtual machines/guests provided by Xen or KVM offerings by Red Hat, Novell, SUSE, Ubuntu, Citrix, Nutanix, or XenSource."
So, you may have issues if you go with Redhat and KVM, and if any issues arise, you ll be the one that will try to solve them.. (Redhat may support you but it depends according to the issue type.)


*Bytheway, there is no difference running an Oracle Linux with Red Hat Compatible Kernel than running a Red Hat Enterprise Linux, binary wise. So it is better for you to go with Oracle Linux on those VM(s).

[satish]

Dear erman,

Thanks or the update.

Can you please kindly clarify:

Purpose of kvm in this case is to align with oracle licencing correct?
Is kvm comes with operating system or do we need to install it seperately?
We have target vm provided by linux team virtualized with VMware. Is mandatory to virtualize the physical host to vm using kvm.

[ErmanArslansOracleBlog]

aligning with oracle licensing is not the only purpose of it. Consolidation, seperating the workload etc are the purposes.
KVM is enabled with Linux. So you need Oracle Linux(for instance) to run KVM.
You can use Oracle products with VMware. It is supported. But you need to license all the cores of the underlying hardware. Because Oracle considers partioning in VMware as soft partitioning.
And finally using virtualized environments is not mandatory.

[satish]

Thanks for the clarification. We are almost there.
Can we use rhel instead of oracle linux. I hope kvm also enabled in rhel.
Does your last update applies to rhel as well? What will be the problem if we use rhel.

Thanks for helping us in the migration.

[ErmanArslansOracleBlog]

I already answered this.

Reference MOS Document ID 417770.1 -> Oracle products are not certified to run on guest virtual machines provided by Red Hat's KVM offering.

You can use Redhat KVM but you may issues with Oracle Support (if there is a need) + you may have license -cpu core alignment issues... Check my earlier updates.

Use Oracle Linux KVM..