VMs are a Great Way to Consolidate Database Servers and Reduce Cost

Running database servers in virtual machines is a great way to consolidate database servers and significantly reduce costs by leveraging your hardware to the fullest extent.  Especially with development and test database servers.  Most development and test databases are using 10% or less of their hardware.  This creates a great environment for consolidating database servers and running them in virtual machines.

If you look at Oracle licensing for VMware there are some great opportunities to significantly save on your hardware costs.  They include:

• Tremendous cost savings for consolidating database servers using virtualization.
• Leveraging Oracle Standard and Standard One Editions on VMs.   The Oracle Standard Editions are great solutions to use when the all the features in the Oracle Enterprise Editions are not needed.
• Significantly reducing hardware and administration costs by leveraging features of virtualization.

Here is an article regarding running Oracle RAC on VMware vSphere,  http://tinyurl.com/277mgl2 .
I always hear how expensive Oracle makes it to run Oracle on VMware.  However, if you really look at Oracle licensing there are some very nice cost savings opportunities if you make sure you understand the licensing.

One thing to be careful with is making sure you control which hosts, VMs running Oracle databases can run on.   You do not want VMs running Oracle to vMotion (move) to host servers that are not licensed.  It is very easy to control within a DRS Cluster or using Groups in a Cluster to make sure you control which hosts VMs run on.  If you have any questions on Oracle licensing on VMware make sure you double check at http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/index.html.   The URL www.vmware.com/oracle is another great place to get more detailed information for running Oracle on VMware, as well as white papers, FAQs, customer references, etc.