Support of Oracle for VMware

[Former Member]

Oracle, VMware and SAP are working collaboratively to ensure support for SAP customers that use VMware virtualization for SAP solutions running Oracle DB. Functional tests are currently being performed to verify supportability of the SAP & Oracle stack. Details will be made available in SAP Note 1173954 u201CSupport of Oracle for VMware and XENu201D after tests have been completed. It is expected that in Q1 2010, ESX 3.5 and later releases including vSphere 4 will be supported by Oracle and SAP according to Oracleu2019s Article ID 249212.1.

[Former Member]

Oracle MetaLink note 249212.1 still contains similar language to what SAP continues to have in note 1173954 -- that Oracle has not certified any of its products on VMware, and that problems may need to be demonstrated on native/physical hardware.

The "SAP on Oracle: Development Update February 2010" (available from SDN) on page 28 states "New: Oracle does now support VMware for productive SAP environments" yet this statement is not called out on either MetaLink or Service Marketplace in quite that strong of language.

Note 1173954 has been positively updated, and states prerequisites for using Oracle on VMware in the SAP environment, but in the solution section it still states that Oracle has not certified its products on VMware, and that problems may still need to be confirmed to be not only on VMware but on native hardware as well. This somewhat contradicts the statement in the development update.

I opened a note with SAP last week, and was told that if problems occur, that "...the problem must be confirmed to occur on native hardware as well as VMWare. For the time being there are no plans for complete certification on top of virtualization products and hence reproduction is needed on native hardware." This does not feel like full support.

Regards,

Mark

[Former Member]

MaxDB is the only database for SAP where virtualization is supported without any reservation. For DB2 on LUW and MS SQL apply similar restrictions as for Oracle, but it's not discussed that loudly.

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?&uid=wws1e333ce0912f7b152852571f60074d175

http://windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvpsupport.htm

The major change of SAP Note 1173954 in January this year is that before that change it was not supported to run SAP on Oracle on VMware. Now you can do it under the same policies that apply for DB2 on LUW and MS SQL. That every error "must be confirmed on native" is not correct. SAP Global Support - which includes staff from Oracle and VMware - will decide when and how it has to be reproduced. From a technical point of view it's clear that this makes only sense in rare cases. Nobody wants to tease customers just for fun.

[Former Member]

Is it right that only Windows 2008 is supported for Oracle 10.2.0.4 virtualization?

[markus_doehr2]

> Is it right that only Windows 2008 is supported for Oracle 10.2.0.4 virtualization?

Did you read the note mentioned in the thread?

Markus

[Former Member]

Hm, actually, the statement "minimum recommended Windows OS: Microsoft Windows Server 2008" can be considered as ambiguous. In fact, every Windows version which is supported by the PAM (service.sap.com/pam) is supported, but Oracle recommends using Windows 2008.

[Former Member]

Dear Matthias Schlarb

Thank you very much for this very good news!

Why doing functional tests? A lot of SAP customers are allready running successfully SAP with Oracle on Vmware.

Ask this customers and you have the best test results.

We are running SAP Enterprise Portal 7.0 & SAP SRM Catalog 3.0 (MDM) with Oracle 10.2.0.4 on Vmware 3.5. On Q1 we migrate our PI on the Vmware infrastructre.

Kind Regards

SAP Technical Consultant

Stadt Biel / Ville de Bienne

Informatik und Logistik / Informatique et logistique

[Former Member]

Hello Carlos,

thank you for your feedback. Yes, we know that a lot of customers are running SAP on Oracle on VMware already. We do not believe that there will be issues. But the tests of SAP Production Services ensure the formal completion of the SAP certification process.

Kind regards,

Matthias

[Former Member]

ORACLE ON VMWARE IS NOW SUPPORTED

See today's update of [Note 1173954|https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1173954] - Support of Oracle for VMWare

[former_member204746]

This note is not released for general viewing yet.

The requested SAP Note is either in reworking or is released internally only

Oracle support note 249212.1 still is not updated?

[Former Member]

The SAP Note should be released within the next few hours. As far as I know, Metalink 249212.1 won't change.

[former_member204746]

so, Oracle is supported on VMWare... with restrictions.

If you get an obscure bug, Oracle will ask you to reproduce this problem on a physical server.

[Former Member]

is VMware ( VMware ESX , Oracle RAC ) allowed for production instances now?

[Former Member]

Yes itu2019s allowed, we are also on the same infrastructure.

Where our databases are on Oracle RAC and SAP Central and Dialog instances on VMWare ESX platform.

Thanks,

Surendra

[Former Member]

Hi Sagarkavi,

> is VMware ( VMware ESX , Oracle RAC ) allowed for production instances now?

If you mean running Oracle RAC on VMware ESX, it's NOT supported.

As you can see in the note 1173954:

" For SAP with Oracle in VMware virtualized environments please consider the following additional prerequisites:

...

Only Oracle single instance, no support for Oracle RAC"

Regards,

Federico Biavati

[Former Member]

Yes what ever Federico Biavati says is correct,

I presented in a wrong way... Oracle RAC is not supported in VMware environment.

We have Oracle RAC in Linux environment (not on VM ware)

But our Central and Database instances are on VMware ESX environment.

Thanks,

Surendra

[matthias_ftnt]

Re: If you get an obscure bug, Oracle will ask you to reproduce this problem on a physical server.

Hi Eric,

you are technically correct, but this has not occured before. What you are describing is a worst-case scenario. Oracle will help customers to resolve strange behaviour and they will use standard support processes, also for bugs caused by virtualization. This is all good for customers and we do expect that customers will say "GREAT, this is what I have been waiting for".

Rgds,

Matthias

[former_member204746]

Our Management might not be interested in the risk involved, even if they are minor.

They might accept to put non-prod systems on VMware. We already have sandbox systems on VMware and it works fine.

I would be interested to see what id the view for other companies.

[markus_doehr2]

> Our Management might not be interested in the risk involved, even if they are minor.

I personally consider the risk of running into a Windows bug or getting hit by some 0-day exploit (e. g. Conficker, the notorious SMB bug) much higher than running into an Oracle problem because of VMWare. I don't want to start a silly flame war here, I just think that "Windows" and "low risk" don't go together; IMO is the VMWare from a risk management your lowest concern but as stated, that's only my personal opinion (burnt child dreads the fire).

> I would be interested to see what id the view for other companies.

As I posted in another thread we had a situation where the (non-sap) application vendor blamed the database, the database vendor blamed the OS and the OS vendor blamed VMWare - and we in the middle.

However, this was only a small application and I'm sure SAP will do all what's possible to ensure the customers doesn't run in such a situation.

Markus