Oracle is integrating virtualization management into its grid control product, the company’s chief corporate architect said.
Oracle VM, a server virtualization product based on the Xen open source virtualization hypervisor, made its debut last November. The VM software supports Oracle and non-Oracle applications. Oracle’s databases, middleware and applications are certified for Oracle VM. Oracle Grid Control will have a virtualization management features this year, an Oracle executive said.
“The first challenge is to make sure that you’ve got a management level that understands both the virtualization layer, you know, and the application layer, and of course let’s not forget the OS in between,” said Oracle’s Edward Screven, in an interview conducted with the Linux Foundation. ” We’ve done that with Oracle Grid Control. So this year we’ll release a version of Oracle Grid Control that integrates virtualization management.”
He noted that Oracle’s VM has a separate management module for customers not using Oracle Grid Control that manages virtualiuation but it does not support the software running on top of the VM. Because of the level of integration required among virtualization and clustering technologies for proper resource allocation, an additional management layer is needed and will be delivered sometime in 2008, Screven told Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin as part of the foundation’s Open Voices series. A transcript of the interview was released to the media. The webcast will air today from the Linux Foundation web site.
Screven also acknowledged that customers who have used virtualization technology for years, first on the mainframe, and now on commodity servers, want a utility pricing model that works. “I think in a way you could look at grids as the new mainframe. Yes, we called our virtualization product Oracle VM for a reason,” Screven said. “A lot of our customers, you know, that’s one of the first things they’ve asked for—Oracle VM—’Is [there] some way to help me account?’ And it’s just like it was in the mainframe base, right; charging back. ”
“Now, I have to say—admit—we didn’t actually predict the chargeback feature request from customers, and so that’s something we’ll be adding over time,” Screven said.
