Oracle: Unbreak my Linux Heart

Oracle's Virtualization Blog informed me that they've expanded the use of Oracle VM (OVM) significantly by supporting visualization on the SPARC platform. "Oracle VM Server for SPARC, previously called Sun Logical Domains, leverages the built-in SPARC hypervisor to subdivide supported platforms' resources (CPUs, memory, network, and storage) by creating partitions called logical (or virtual) domains. Each logical domain can run an independent operating system. Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides the flexibility to deploy multiple Oracle Solaris operating systems simultaneously on a single platform. Oracle VM Server also allows you to create up to 128 virtual servers on one system to take advantage of the massive thread scale offered by the CMT architecture."

Oracle is pleased to announce the general availability of Enterprise Linux Release 5 Update 4 for x86 (32 bit) and x86_64 (64 Bit) architectures. This update includes the following kernel/driver changes: Bug Fixes added by Oracle * Check to see if hypervisor supports memory reservation change [orabug 7556514] * Add entropy support to igb [orabug 7607479] * Convert ENETUNREACH to ENOTCONN [orabug 7689332] * Add xen pv/bonding netconsole support [orabug 6993043] * Shrink zone patch [orabug 6086839] * Fix aacraid not to reset during kexec [orabug 8516042] * Fix failure of file creation from hpux client [orabug 7579314] Fixes/Additions from the upstream distribution provider * A new tunable parameter /proc/sys/vm/max_writeback_pages has been added to the kernel, allowing system administrators to change the maximum number of modified pages kupdate writes to disk per iteration each time it runs. It defaults to 1024 or 4MB ...

Drizzle : "The Drizzle project is building a database optimized for Cloud and Net applications. It is being designed for massive concurrency on modern multi-core architecture. The code is originally derived from MySQL."

Through an explanation about memory management in Linux on the Gentoo Wiki, I was lead to an article on KernelTrap about High Memory In The Linux Kernel . Though I'm still not sure, this leads me to believe Oracle compiles the kernel with the CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y switch on and thus the 3 GB RAM for user space application should be in place. However, I'm forced to test this to make sure. :)

" Oracle Validated Configurations are pre-tested, validated architectures with software, hardware, storage, and networking components with included documented best practices for deployment. Oracle and its strategic partners offer and recommend these configurations to enable end-users to deploy fully tested solutions to achieve standardization with high performance, scalability, and reliability while lowering infrastructure costs."

While playing with Oracle Linux (OEL) and Oracle RDBMS, we waded through the lengthy install guide for Oracle. We had decided to install the 64 bit (x86_64) version of Oracle. The install guide showed that several 32 bit RPMs (libraries) are still required. Of course, you can't use the CD for this. Fortunately, the guide describes in (albeit lengthy) detail what to do, where to find the RPMs and so on. At point in time, we needed to know which architecture of a certain RPM was installed: 32 bit or 64 bit? Or both? An Oracle consultant provided us with a handy option for the rpm command to find out: rpm -qa <RPM_NAME> --queryformat "%{NAME}-%{VERSION}.%{RELEASE} (%{ARCH})\n"

Oracle Validated Configurations are pre-tested, validated architectures with software, hardware, storage, and networking components with included documented best practices for deployment. Oracle and its strategic partners offer and recommend these configurations to enable end-users to deploy fully tested solutions to achieve standardization with high performance, scalability, and reliability while lowering infrastructure costs. Oracle works together with all major hardware manufacturers on creating these configurations. HP, Dell, EMC, Emulex, QLogic and many more.