Oracle has a support statement for VMware products thatis honored around the world. While there has been much public discussion about Oracle’s perceived position on support for VMware virtualization, ourexperience is that Oracle Support upholds its commitment to customers, including those using VMware virtualization in conjunction with Oracle products.VMware is also an Oracle customer; our E-Business Suite and Siebel instances are virtualized; and VMware routinely submits and receives assistance with issues for Oracle running on VMware virtual infrastructure. The specifics of Oracle’s support commitment to VMware are provided by the MyOracleSupport Metalink document ID #249212.1. Gartner, IDC, and others also have documents for their subscribers that specifically address this policy. Though prohibited from reproducing this documenthere, the following highlightssome of the keyfactsaboutOracle Support:Oracle RAC support is now included for 11.2.0.2 and above.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 9i, 10g, or other products with a long history, the odds are in your favor that Oracle has seen your problem before. If they’ve 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. We sayfair enoughas this is essentially the same policy thatother ISVsuse 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 lives 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 testOracle’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.
