VMware Support

Zerto can protect Oracle Database virtual machines running on VMware vSphere.

VMware states the following with regards to Oracle Database support:

Oracle has a support statement for VMware products that is honored around the world. While there has been much public discussion about Oracle's perceived position on support for VMware virtualization, our experience is that Oracle Support upholds its commitment to customers, including those using VMware virtualization in conjunction with Oracle products.

The following are some of the key facts about Oracle Support:

Oracle RAC support is now included for Database 11.2.0.2 and later.
Known issues: Oracle Support will accept customer support requests for Oracle products running on VMware virtual infrastructure if the reported problem is already known to Oracle. This is crucial—if you are running Database 9i, 10g, or another product with a long history, the odds are in your favor that Oracle has seen your problem before. If they have already seen it, they will accept it.
New issues: Oracle Support reserves the right to ask customers to prove that "new issues" attributed to Oracle are not a result of an application being virtualized. This is reasonable, as this is essentially the same policy that other ISVs use to some degree. It is key to look at the history of Oracle Support with regard to new issues.
Certification: VMware vSphere is a technology that resides under the certified Oracle stack (unlike other virtualization technologies that alter the OS and other elements of the stack). As a result, Oracle cannot certify VMware virtual infrastructure. However, VMware is no different in this regard from an x86 server—Oracle doesn't certify Dell, HP, IBM, or Sun x86 servers.

VMware recommends that customers take a logical approach and test Oracle's support statement. Begin with pre-production systems, and as issues are encountered and SRs are filed, track Oracle's response. Our experience is that customers see no difference in the quality and timeliness of Oracle Support's response.

Best Practices with VMware

The recommendations from VMware for working with Oracle are:

Create a computing environment optimized for vSphere.
Create golden images of optimized operating systems using vSphere cloning technologies.
Allow vSphere to choose the best virtual machine monitor based on the CPU and guest operating system combination.
Set memory reservations equal to the size of the Oracle SGA.
Use large memory pages.
Use as few virtual CPUs (vCPUs) as possible.
Enable hyperthreading for Intel Core i7 processors.
Enable jumbo frames for IP-based storage using iSCSI and NFS.
Create dedicated datastores to service database workloads.
Use VMware vSphere VMFS for single instance Oracle database deployments.
Align VMFS properly.
Use Oracle automatic storage management.
Use your storage vendor's best practices documentation when laying out the Oracle database.
Avoid silos when designing the storage architecture.
Use Paravirtualized SCSI adapters for Oracle data files with demanding workloads.
Use the VMXNET family of Paravirtualized network adapters.
Separate infrastructure traffic from virtual machine traffic for security and isolation.
Use NIC teaming for availability and load balancing.
Take advantage of Network I/O Control to converge network and storage traffic onto 10GbE.
Use vCenter and/or the esxtop/resxtop utility for performance monitoring in the virtual environment.
To minimize time drift in virtual machines follow guidelines in the relevant VMware Knowledge Base articles.