Oracle 11gR2 on RHEL6
Posted by Vishal Gupta on Sep 19, 2011
Just a quick note to say that RedHat submitted certification test result of Oracle 11gR2 on RHEL6 to Oracle Corporation on 09-Aug-2011, so we should expect the formal certification around last week of Sep-2011.
More news at – http://www.redhat.com/about/news/blog/Red-Hat-Submits-Oracle-11gR2-on-Red-Hat-Enterprise-Linux-6-Certification-Test-Results-to-Oracle
[Update: 17-Apr-2012]
Oracle has finally certified 11gR2 on OEL6 and RHEL6. See the announcement here
Vishal Gupta's Blog 
Tim Hall said
Hi.
It will be cool when this is confirmed and the oracle-validated package is updated accordingly.
Cheers
Tim…
Vishal Gupta said
Yes, indeed it will be good. RHEL6 has some good enhancement and i would expect the performance of database to increase just by running it on RHEL6 (vs running on RHEL5)
Tim Hall said
Running RHEL6.x kernel should be faster than running the RHEL5.x kernel, but the Oracle Linux 5.x Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) already has the useful performance enhancements, along with a bunch more.
So if you are using RHEL, then yes, it’s good news. If you are using OL+UEK, the jump from OL5.x to OL6.x is not so drastic.
Cheers
Tim…
Jeff said
Has anyone heard any updates on this? we have some DBs that need to be built and we’d like to use RHEL 6…
is Oracle playing the monopoly card and holding RHEL 6 back in the hopes that people go to OEL6?
Tim Hall said
Oracle Linux 6 isn’t certified either, so that can’t be the issue. 🙂
Red Hat said they expected it last quarter, which there is still about 6 week of, so it could be any time now, assuming there are no delays.
I can’t claim to know Oracle’s motives, but certifying a platform is a pretty big deal. I guess Oracle want to be pretty darn sure before they do that and open the flood gates to support. 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
Vishal Gupta said
Still no sign of official certification of Oracle on RHEL6. Wonder why Oracle is taking so long…..!!!
Brem said
Still no positive news from Oracle, a support bulletin was published (ID 1350000.1) on Jan 12 2012, stating that both RHEL and OEL 6 are not supported for any Oracle RDBMS version on production.
It looks like Oracle is forcibly trying to promote their new SPARC T4 and gain market parts.
Vishal Gupta said
Brem,
MOS Note 1350000.1 states that as of article on 21-Dec-2011, OEL6 and RHEL6 is not certified for Oracle database and client. Not sure why they are taking this long. Oracle themselves have released OL6.1 and OL6.2 since its base release of OL6.0. Surely Oracle has had plenty of time to test the database and client software on OL6/RHEL6.
Come on Oracle people are waiting for official certification so that they can start using Oracle on RHEL6 in production.
Brem said
Hi Vishal,
They couldn’t honestly certify OEL 6 and not RHEL 6 unless they want to clearly say to the world that they entered the monopoly era.
They are trying to gain time to sell their T4 solution instead.
They will certainly finish by certifying *EL6 but the later will be the best for them.
I’ve seen a lot of installation demos on the internet (including ASM ones) with 11gr2 that are successfully running.
Hope things are going to go the right way.
Tim Hall said
Brem: I don’t claim to know the issues why Oracle have not certified RHEL6/OL6 yet, but there is no way I could see them doing it to push their T4 kit. The Solaris/Sparc market is very different to the Linux/Intel market. If you work for a company that would consider a move the Sparc because of a delay in certification of RHEL6/OL6, I would respectfully suggest you should get out of that company as quickly as possible and find a job with a company run by sane people.
Of all the conspiracy theories people have posted, the “annoying RH” one is the most plausible, but it would not surprise me if there were no sinister motives. Certifying the database on a new OS is a very big task. Remember, the database software is the same on Oracle’s Engineered Solutions and Appliances as what you run on your kit. That means certifying the database on RHEL6/OL6 means they probably have to give the green light to having OL6 on Exadata and ODA etc. That is a massive undertaking to be ready to support that sort of thing, especially when the UEK kernel in OL5.7 has all the performance features (and more) of the RHEL6.2 kernel already…
One conspiracy theory I’m mulling over is that 11g will never be certified on RHEL6/OL6. Instead, a move to RHEL6/OL6 could require an upgrade to database 12c. It will be out later in the year. It would be a neat way to try and force people into a quick database upgrade. Remember, this is just a bullsh*t conspiracy theory I’ve made up. There is no insider knowledge and no basis in fact. Even so, it seems more likely than a ploy to push T4 kit… 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
Brem said
Hello Tim,
markets targeted by Solaris/Sparc are not different to the ones targeted by Linux/X86_64. Most of the companies I know around here (European markets) , are Solaris/Sparc historical clients and initiated the move to Linux/X86_64 since a while (thanks to Nehalem/Linux successful combination) on business critical applications.
I’m talking about companies with more than a few thousands of servers (for a few hundreds of Oracle instances and Sybase dataservers) where standardization processes are based on vendors roadmaps and exhaustive solutions testings. In this case, the roadmap thing hurts.
There may be a revenge thing here, since RedHat have changed their errata policies making it more difficult for cloners (Oracle Enterprise Linux, Centos, …) to follow the original stream.
But still convinced that clients who have initiated the above move to hesitate and step back to the original Sparc/Solaris known solution due to the unclear RHEL/Oracle roadmap, and this is makes gains of market parts for Oracle.
I’m not in the conspiracy theory field here, but more on “fair war” acts.
Brem
Tim Hall said
At the ACE Directors meeting at OOW2011 I asked the Oracle team about a number of hardware decisions, like, “Why no Intel/Linux version of the new SuperCluster machine?”, “Why no Sparc Exadata?”. The reply was, “The Intel and Sparc markets are fundamentally different”. Most of the people buying Sparc are people who have always bought Sparc. They are happy with the platform and used to running individual big machines. On the other hand, most of the people running Intel typically make use of lots of smaller servers in clusters, the whole commodity thing. This is what the Oracle guys are saying and how they perceive the market and what they are building their kit for. When I talk to people (I’m European too) this is what they are saying also.
The fact of the matter is, none of us know why the certification has not happened yet and anything we say is just speculation, which is essentially just a conspiracy theory, regardless of what you want to call it. 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
Vishal Gupta said
I agree with Tim on that, no sane company would shift to Solaris just because Oracle has not yet certified their database on OEL6/RHEL6. Changing OS/hardware vendor is no mean task in any big organisation. You need to consider not only database, but application and all the peripheral component talking to database as well.
– Your 3rd party application (if any and if hosts on same server as database) may or may not be certified to run on Solaris. Though usual practice in big organisation is not host application on a separate host than the database server host.
– Scripts running on database server needs to be tested on solaris. ksh and bash command behave differently on linux and solaris.
– Many organisations are considering or already shifting from SPARC on proprietary hardware to Linux on commodity hardware. Though companies could consider Solaris x86-64, but i have not seen many companies adopting it. If they go with Intel/AMD, its usually has linux/windows.
Lets hope Oracle officially certifies their database on OEL6/RHEL6. Though there is nothing technically stopping you from running Oracle right now on OEL6/RHEL6, apart from official certification.
Vishal
Ken said
I have another thought on why oracle might be delaying…. We know most of the performance increase from thier UEK kernel is due to the kernel they use… a 6 kernel… if you want to run oracle faster you need to run 5 with UEK… until they get R2 of UEK released they don’t want to give 6 an equal standing with UEK
Tim Hall said
I’ve been in a long conversation about this recently with some people who know a lot more about Oracle platform certification than me. They are saying it’s just a matter of the amount of effort it takes to complete the certification. Oracle on RHEL6 certification has been done by RH, but is awaiting Oracle approval. OL certification has not been completed by Oracle. Oracle will not let RHEL6 be certified when OL6 is not, hence the hold up.
The bad news is that their opinion is 11gR2 will *never* be certified on RHEL6 or OL6. Instead, you will just have to keep running it on RHEL5 or OL5. If you want RHEL6/OL6, you will have to wait for 12c, available later this year (probably). Why? Well 12c is in beta and you can bet Oracle will be putting all their certification efforts into that, rather than wasting effort on an “old” DB version that is already certified on several platforms.
If Oracle had never done UEK they would have been desperate for RHEL6/OL6 certification because of the performance improvements it would have given to all their appliances. Once UEK came along, distribution version becomes irrelevant because UEK is not tied to a distro version. This makes the whole, “got to certify the latest distro panic”, irrelevant.
The 10 year RHEL/OL support lifecycle announced recently make a lot more sense if you look at it in these terms.
Note. This is not insider information. I was not discussing it with people currently working at Oracle. The people in the conversation could be as wrong about this as all the other conspiracy theories flying around, but my attitude now is Oracle will never certify 11gR2 on RHEL6/OL6.
Once you accept that, life is a lot easier and if by some fluke it does happen, then it will be a pleasant surprise. 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
Vishal Gupta said
Tim,
As always, thanks for your valuable input.
Cheers,
Vishal
Vishal Gupta said
Oracle has finally certified Oracle 11gR2 on RHEL6 and OEL6, see here>