We at Exitas are following the developments of OLVM closely. Oracle is working on extending this to the older versions of the database but no dates have yet been communicated on when we can expect this. One caveat though is that currently only Oracle Database 19c on Oracle Linux 7 Guests is certified on KVM.

Customers with existing OVM setups will continue to get security updates on the kernel and hypervisor until the end of Premier Support but migration to OLVM, to take advantage of the new features, should seriously be considered.

Customers looking to setup new virtualization architectures should be using OLVM.

OVM will still get the maintenance update 3.4.6.3 but further development on the product and new features has stopped. What does this mean for OVM and my environment?Īs of 31 March 2021, Premier Support for OVM will end and the product goes into lifetime sustaining support.

Snapshotting of existing VMs to improve backup & restore functionalityĪn added benefit is that OLVM comes with the Oracle Linux Premier support subscription, so there is no longer a need to buy a separate support subscription for the virtualization layer.

Virtual Appliances & Templates (ovf/ova support)Īnd new features will only be added to OLVM, features already available in the current 4.2.8 release are :.

All the key functionalities of OVM are available in OLVM :

Oracle states that with the updates done via UEKR5 to KVM, the hypervisor is much more stable and delivers higher performance. We already noticed this in the Oracle Cloud and a part of the engineered systems portfolio has already been changed to use KVM instead of XEN. The hypervisor of choice for Oracle is now KVM. Previously this was only possible on OVM and it was a major factor in the decision of our customers to run OVM. On 11 October 2019 a White Paper was released announcing that OLVM now also supports the hard-partitioning of guests for limiting licenses conform the Oracle Licensing policies for partitioned environments.

OLVM is built on the proven technology of the open source oVirt Project and uses a kernel-based Virtual Machine environment (KVM) as hypervisor. On June the 3rd 2019 Oracle announced the general availability of Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager (OLVM).

Linux virtualization