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Hard Partitioning and Virtualization with Oracle Virtual Machine An approach toward cost saving with Oracle Database licenses

JANUARY 2013

Hard Partitioning and Virtualization with Oracle Virtual Machine Dewpoint | making technology work | www.dewpoint.com 1

Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 2

Hard Partitioning Concepts ...................................................................................................................... 2

Oracle Support of Virtualized Servers ...................................................................................................... 3

Oracle VM vs. VMware Comparison......................................................................................................... 4

Hard Partitioning with Oracle VM Server for x86 ..................................................................................... 6

Oracle Real Application Cluster on Oracle VM Server for x86 ................................................................... 6

What is RAC? ....................................................................................................................................... 6

Cost Advantages ...................................................................................................................................... 7

Solution #1 – Active-Passive Cluster Using VMware ............................................................................. 8

Conceptual Architecture .................................................................................................................. 8

Cost Analysis .................................................................................................................................... 9

Solution #2 – RAC Cluster with VMware ............................................................................................. 10

Conceptual Architecture ................................................................................................................ 10

Cost Analysis .................................................................................................................................. 11

Solution #3 – RAC Cluster with OVM .................................................................................................. 12

Conceptual Architecture ................................................................................................................ 12

Cost Analysis .................................................................................................................................. 13

Summary ............................................................................................................................................... 14

Contact Dewpoint Today ....................................................................................................................... 14


Introduction Virtualization has become the normal method of deploying server workloads in today’s data center.

This technology has become so pervasive that it is rare to find a data center that is not virtualized at the

web and application tier. However, there are two types of environments that have not made

widespread use of virtualization technology: Tier 1 applications and database servers.

While Oracle supports virtualization of its database, its support of these configurations is somewhat

limited on any virtualization platform that relies on the operating system to perform the resource

management. This soft partitioning concept allows a very flexible approach toward resource

management that can ultimately impact the overall database licensing for a particular server.

To account for this flexibility Oracle requires that a server be licensed in its entirety for the database,

even if only a small percentage of that server is allocated to a virtual machine running the database.

However, organizations are requiring that server resources be more leveraged to spread out the cost of

that server over multiple applications, thereby lowering the total cost of ownership of the application or

project.

In order to provide companies with the ability to use their assets in a more efficient manner while

maintaining the integrity of its licensing, Oracle has implemented a hard partitioning concept within its

virtualization software.

This white paper addresses the advantages and disadvantages of utilizing hard partitioning to control

database licensing costs, thereby lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the database

environment.

Hard Partitioning Concepts Hard partitioning is not a new concept. It was originally implemented in IBM mainframe technology 1

and is used to physically segment a server into several smaller servers with dedicated resources assigned

to each of the segmented servers. Technologies from IBM, HP, Oracle and Fujitsu exist that perform

hard partitioning on each of their Unix servers. The implementation of this technology provides the

ability of the system administrator to dedicate specific compute resources to a virtual machine running

on that physical server.

This hard partitioning concept has been very prevalent in the “big iron” Unix servers and has now been

implemented in servers that adhere to a much smaller form factor. Even in the smaller Unix server form

factors, the implementation of hard partitioning is dependent on purchasing a server from a specific

hardware vendor. For example, LDOMs and Dynamic System Domains are Solaris implementations

unique to servers created by Oracle. Likewise, Integrity VM, VPAR, nPAR and Secure Resource Partitions

1http://www.ittoday.info/Articles/Server_Virtualization_Technologies/Server_Virtualization_Technologies.htm


(capped only) are implementations unique to HP-UX and HP hardware. IBM and AIX have LPAR and

Micro-Partitions.

Since commodity hardware continues to become more important in today’s data centers, a method of

virtualizing database servers that controls licensing costs is very much needed. Oracle Virtual Machine

provides a solution that will allow organizations to take advantage of virtualizing the Oracle database

while controlling licensing costs.

Oracle Support of Virtualized Servers VMware is the unquestioned market leader in server virtualization. VMware vSphere is a robust

virtualization platform that provides an extensive feature set that may or may not be utilized by an IT

organization. Some customers question the cost benefit associated with this product, but overall it

continues to be the primary virtualization platform in the market.

One area where VMware has not gained significant adoption is with the Oracle database. The lack of

traction for the database environment is related to a perceived lack of support by Oracle running its

database on VMware. In November 2010, Oracle published a formal policy in MyOracleSupport

Document ID# 249212.1. In summary, this policy states that while Oracle does not certify its products to

run in a VMware environment, they will assist customers running in a VMware environment with issues

that are “…either known to occur in the native OS, or can be demonstrated not to be the result of

running on VMware.”2

Oracle VM server for x86 is an enterprise class server virtualization solution that reflects Oracle’s

commitment to enabling Oracle products to be integrated into a cohesive stack. Oracle VM is built on a

concept of Application Driven Virtualization and is designed to make the entire hardware and software

stack easier to deploy, manage and support. This entire concept is business focused, enabling IT to be

more agile to the business. Oracle VM Server for x86 is the only x86 server virtualization solution fully

certified by Oracle to run the Oracle Database and other Oracle applications.

2 MyOracleSupport Note 249212.1


Oracle VM vs. VMware Comparison The following table illustrates how Oracle VM for x86 compares favorably to VMware in terms of features.3

Reason Oracle VMware

Application-Driven Oracle offers a complete applications-to-disk stack, and

virtualization is fully integrated across all layers

Oracle's virtualization solutions are aware of what's

running inside the virtual machine and can provision

and manage applications, middleware, and databases

VMware's virtualization/

hypervisor has no

awareness of the database,

middleware, or the

applications running inside

of it

Lower Cost Unlike VMware, Oracle VM is free to download, use, and

distribute

Affordable support fees

Simple licensing

High cost of ownership

Very high license, support,

and management costs

Complex licensing

Scalability Oracle VM 3.0 is 4 times more scalable than VMware with support for 128 vCPUs per guest VM

VMware vSphere 5 only supports 32 vCPUs per guest VM

Integrated Management

Full stack management

Manages the hypervisor, physical server, and the

applications running in it

Multiple vendor tools

needed for managing the

hypervisor and what’s

running inside it

Accelerating Application Deployment

Oracle VM Templates offer pre-installed, pre-configured

virtual machines of enterprise software including CRM,

ERP, clustering, and management, enabling you to

deploy in minutes and hours as opposed to days and

weeks

Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder makes it easier to

package multi-tier applications and then deploy them

with the click of a button

Best practices for accelerating deployment of complete

virtual infrastructure via Oracle VM Reference

Configurations

Virtual appliances are via a

community marketplace,

not vendor supported

3 http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/app-aware-346610.html

http://www.vmware.com/appliances/


Oracle VM vs. VMware Comparison Continued from previous page

Reason Oracle VMware

High Availability Oracle offers high availability for the entire stack—not

just the hypervisor level

Oracle views clustering and virtualization as

complementary technologies

Oracle VM customers can achieve additional high

availability from using Oracle Clusterware and Oracle

Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC)

High availability is only at

the hypervisor level;

VMware is completely

unaware of application

crashes

Architected for Efficiency

Architected for low overhead when moving from

physical to virtual servers

Aggressive testing with real Oracle Database and

application workloads

Oracle has a single engineering team for Linux and

Oracle VM, leading to better optimization between Xen

and Linux

Architecture is prone to

inefficiency

Integrated Support One call to Oracle; no finger pointing at another vendor

Full stack is certified and supported

Faster time to resolution

Need to deal with

numerous vendors for the

complete stack and

management

Virtualization Built into the System

In addition to Oracle VM, Oracle offers virtualization

built into its hardware and the Oracle Solaris operating

system

Oracle Solaris Containers and Oracle VM for SPARC

allows multiple applications to be run on a single system

Dynamic Domains are included in SPARC Enterprise M-

Series servers, enabling greater hardware utilization and

providing a high level of isolation from other domains

Only offers x86

virtualization

Comprehensive Platform Support

Oracle VM is available for both x86 and SPARC

architectures

Only x86 platform is

supported


Hard Partitioning with Oracle VM Server for x86 While Oracle has clarified its support policy and will, for the most part, support customers running the

Oracle database on VMware, it does not recognize VMware’s partitioning as a valid method of

controlling licensing costs.

Oracle’s VM server for x86 is specifically recognized by Oracle as a valid hard partitioning virtualization

server that allows for licensing, a subset of CPU’s known as sub-capacity licensing.

Oracle has published a white paper entitled, “Hard Partitioning with Oracle VM Server for x86”4 that

describes the specific approach an implementer must follow to take advantage of Oracle’s sub-CPU

licensing scenario. While a full description of this approach is beyond the scope of this paper, a

summary, including limitations, are provided below.

Oracle VM Server for x86 utilizes CPU pinning to bind Virtual CPUs (vCPUs) to physical CPUs. This

prevents the vCPUs from running workloads on physical CPUs other than the ones specified.

Utilizing the hard partitioning features of Oracle VM Server for x86 does limit some of the functionality

that can be utilized on these pinned CPUs. Specifically, live migrations are prohibited and therefore

Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and Distributed Power Management (DPM) cannot be utilized for

server pools containing pinned CPUs.

Oracle Real Application Cluster on Oracle VM Server for x86 A key criterion in today’s business-centric IT environment is a highly available and scalable database

environment. Oracle provides two different kinds of high availability mechanisms in an Oracle virtual

environment. Oracle VM High Availability is an implementation that is external to the database, while

Oracle Clusterware (used for Oracle RAC) is an implementation that is internal to the database.

Oracle overcomes the limitations inherent with server virtualization by clustering the database using

Oracle’ Real Application Cluster (RAC) and underlying technology such as Oracle Clusterware and Oracle

Automatic Storage Management (ASM). This combination of products running on a platform that is

using Oracle VM Server for x86 provides customers with a highly available and scalable architecture that

leverages all of the advantages of virtualization that is fully certified to work with the Oracle Database.

When properly configured, this architecture can also take advantage of hard partitioning.

What is RAC?5

A RAC database is a clustered database implemented on a series of independent servers architected to

work as a single system. A clustered database differs from a single instance database in a way that the

database can be accessed by multiple instances concurrently. Each instance runs on a separate server in

a cluster formed by Oracle Clusterware. When additional resources are required, additional nodes and

4 Hard Partitioning with Oracle VM Server for x86, an Oracle White Paper, June 2012

5Oracle Real Application Clusters in Oracle VM Environments ,An Oracle Technical White Paper March 2012


instances can easily be added to the cluster with no downtime. Once a new instance has been started,

applications using services can immediately take advantage of it with no changes to the application or

application server.

Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) One Node is a new option to the Oracle Database 11g Release 2

Enterprise Edition. It improves upon many of the benefits of server virtualization and extends them to

databases running in physical server environments. It allows customers to virtualize database storage,

standardize their database environment and if required upgrade to a full RAC implementation without

downtime.

RAC One Node is fully compatible with Oracle VM Server, allowing customers to architect environments

that leverage the strengths of both RAC and server virtualization.

There are several reasons customers will want to run an Oracle RAC database in an Oracle VM

environment - one of the most important being the ability to use sub-capacity licensing. Other reasons

include consolidating workloads on under utilized servers, creating virtual clusters for test and

development, and rapidly provisioning new database instances.

Cost Advantages Oracle’s favorable database licensing constraints combined with Oracle VM Server for x86, and a very

low cost for the hypervisor itself, in many instances Oracle delivers more value to customers than

VMware. To illustrate the cost advantages of an Oracle HA configuration compared to a standard

VMware configuration, the following scenario is presented:

Two database instances need to be clustered for high availability;

the level of high availability is to be presented to the customer in the solutions

For high availability, the CPU utilization for the Oracle database instances should be less than

50%; if a failure does occur, the database performance will not be impacted

The database instances are sized as follows (including required capacity for failover):

o Instance #1 – 4 cores

o Instance #2 – 2 cores

Hardware needs to be purchased to allow for an increase of 50% at the 24 month mark

Additional capacity shall also be provided to allow for unexpected growth

Present a Total Cost of Ownership (direct costs only) for each solution

In order to solve this scenario three solutions are presented for consideration:

Active – Passive cluster using VMware

RAC cluster using VMware

RAC cluster using OVM


Solution #1 – Active-Passive Cluster Using VMware

Conceptual Architecture

The diagram below depicts a conceptual perspective of a VMware cluster that will solve the business

scenario addressed above through an active-passive cluster.

In this solution two Sun Server X3-2s were purchased and built in a dedicated database cluster using

VMware and Oracle Enterprise Linux as the underlying operating systems/cluster solution. To properly

account for a failover condition, each server was sized with 16 cores to provide the required capacity for

the database workload, planned growth and unplanned growth.

See next page for Cost Analysis


Cost Analysis

Oracle’s licensing scenario requires that all cores in the solution be licensed regardless of the capacity

requirements of the underlying database. Combining the Oracle DB licensing requirements with the

cost of VMware results in a 3 year Total Cost of Ownership of $1.32M.

VMware Cluster Solution Server Cost Data Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total Cost Servers each $11,350 $- $- $- Quantity 2 $- $- $- Capital Server Cost $22,700 $- $- $22,700 Annual Server Maintenance Cost $2,724 $2,724 $2,724 $8,172

Vmware Licensing $13,980 $- $- $13,980 Vmware support $3,336 $6,672 $6,672 $16,680 Linux Support Included Included Included $- OVM Licensing N/A N/A N/A OVM Support N/A N/A N/A DB Cores Total 32

DB Cores Licenses purchased 32

Core Factor 0.5

Oracle DB Licensing $760,000 $- $- $760,000 RAC Licensing $- $- $- $- Oracle Support $167,200 $167,200 $167,200 $501,600

Total 3 year TCO $1,323,132


Solution #2 – RAC Cluster with VMware


This solution builds on Solution #1 by implementing a true active-active database cluster using RAC. In

this scenario VMware is allowed to manage the application virtual machines fail-over using its native

failover mechanisms..

See next page for Cost Analysis


Cost Analysis

The costs associated with this solution incrementally add the RAC licenses to the costs specified in

Solution #1. Since VMware is still handling the failover of the applications, an additional application

specific server is not required.

VMware RAC Cluster Solution Server Cost Data Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total Cost

Servers each $11,350 $- $- $- Quantity 2 $- $- $-

Capital Server Cost $22,700 $- $- $22,700 Annual Server Maintenance Cost $2,724 $2,724 $2,724 $8,172

Vmware Licensing $13,980 $- $- $13,980 Vmware support $3,336 $6,672 $6,672 $16,680

Linux Support Included Included Included $- OVM Licensing N/A N/A N/A

OVM Support N/A N/A N/A

DB Cores Total 32

DB Cores Licenses purchased 32

Core Factor 0.5

Oracle DB Licensing $760,000 $- $- $760,000 RAC Licensing $368,000 $- $- $368,000

Oracle Support $248,160 $248,160 $248,160 $744,480



Solution #3 – RAC Cluster with OVM


The diagram below depicts a conceptual perspective of an Oracle RAC Cluster with OVM that will solve

the business scenario addressed above through an active-active cluster.

In this solution, two Sun Server X3-2s were purchased and built in a database cluster using Oracle RAC,

Enterprise Linux and Oracle Virtual Machine as the underlying operating systems/cluster solution. In

order to properly account for a failover condition, each server was sized with 16 cores to provide the

required capacity for the database workload, planned growth and unplanned growth.

Since hard partitioning is deployed, Dynamic Resource Scheduler and Distributed Power Management

cannot be utilized for server pool Distributed Power Management (DPM). Therefore, an additional OVM

Server pool would need to be added specifically for the application failover.


Cost Analysis

Oracle’s licensing scenario allows for hard partitioning of a server to limit the cores that are needed for

the database workloads. Since the RAC licenses need to match the database licenses, the customer also

gains the cost effects of hard partitioning with RAC.

To ensure that the comparison between a VMware and OVM-based active-active clusters was

consistent, an additional server pool was added to confirm that DRS and DPM were available to support

application failover.

RAC Cluster Solution with OVM

Server Cost Data Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total Servers each $11,350 $- $- $-

Quantity 4 $- $- $- Capital Server Cost $45,400 $- $- $45,400

Annual Server Maintenance Cost $5,448 $5,448 $5,448 $16,344

VMware Licensing N/A N/A N/A VMware support N/A N/A N/A

Linux Support Included Included Included OVM Licensing Included Included Included

OVM Support Included Included Included

DB Cores Total 32

DB Cores Licensed 12

6

Core Factor 0.5

0.5

Oracle DB Licensing $285,000 $- $142,500 $427,500 RAC Licensing $138,000 $- $69,000 $207,000

Oracle Support $93,060 $93,060.00 $139,590 $325,710



Summary Server virtualization is a mainstream method for deploying many applications in an enterprise. Tier 1

applications, which often include the Oracle database, have been the last holdout. With Oracle VM

Server for x86, Oracle has created a solution that is engineered specifically to work with Oracle products,

including the database.

Oracle Virtualization Machine is a robust virtualization solution that provides features similar to

VMware, but has been engineered to be application aware. This application aware concept provides

Oracle virtual machines with visibility into what is running inside the virtual machine and can provision

and manage applications, middleware, and databases. OVM—unlike VMware—is free to download and

use, resulting in an overall lower cost.

One of OVM’s more valuable features is its ability to implement hard partitioning in such a way that

supports Oracle’s sub-capacity licensing requirements.

Combining OVM with Oracle RAC for a database cluster can have a dramatic positive impact on a

database environment’s overall Total Cost of Ownership. The table below provides a summary of the

TCO for the 3 solutions:

Solution # Description Database Clustering 3 year TCO

1 VMware Cluster Active-Passive $1,323,132

2 VMware with RAC Active-Active $1,934,012

3 OVM with RAC Active-Active $1,036,342

In summary, Dewpoint understands that Oracle database licensing is a complicated and costly part of an

overall IT infrastructure. In order to limit costs while providing a highly available database environment,

the proper implementation of OVM with RAC can provide a significant cost savings over a three-year

period.

Dewpoint also understands that each company’s environment is different and unique. Therefore, we

have developed a process and proprietary application to that uses Total Cost of Ownership to help

customers understand the true costs associated with their database environment and to create

solutions that will allow them to limit that cost.

Contact Dewpoint Today For more information and to begin investigating how your company can take advantage of these

technologies to reduce costs and improve efficiencies.

www.dewpoint.com/RunITBetter | 888-DEWPOINT | [email protected]

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