Enhanced Operational Agility and Scalability For …docs.media.bitpipe.com/io_10x/io_105531/item_553415/vce-enhanced...Vblock systems are enterprise– and service provider–class

Enhanced Operational Agility and Scalability For Orace E-Business Suite R12 and RAC on VMware vSphere 5

Table of Contents

1 © 2012 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

ENHANCED OPERATIONAL AGILITY AND SCALABILITY FOR ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE R12 AND RAC ON VMWARE VSPHERE 5

May 2012

© 2012 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

www.vce.com


Contents Introduction ...............................................................................................................................4

Business case..........................................................................................................................4 Objectives ................................................................................................................................5 Key results ...............................................................................................................................5 Key benefits .............................................................................................................................5 Scope ......................................................................................................................................6 Audience..................................................................................................................................6 Feedback .................................................................................................................................7

Technology overview ................................................................................................................8 VCE Vblock™ Systems ...........................................................................................................8 VMware vSphere 5 ..................................................................................................................9 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition .................................................................9 Oracle Real Application Clusters ...........................................................................................10 Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 .....................................................................................10 EMC Unified Infrastructure Manager ......................................................................................10

Solution architecture ..............................................................................................................11 High-level architecture ...........................................................................................................11 Physical topology ...................................................................................................................12 Performance test environment ...............................................................................................13 Scalability test environment ...................................................................................................14 Hardware components ...........................................................................................................15 Virtual machine configuration .................................................................................................15 Software components ............................................................................................................16 Storage layout .......................................................................................................................16

Storage pool 1 ....................................................................................................................16 Storage pool 2 ....................................................................................................................17 Storage mappings for Oracle database...............................................................................18

Performance and scalability testing ......................................................................................19 Test environment ...................................................................................................................19 Workload description .............................................................................................................19 Performance testing ...............................................................................................................20

Test objectives....................................................................................................................20


Test methods ......................................................................................................................20 Test results .........................................................................................................................21

Scalability testing ...................................................................................................................21 Test objective .....................................................................................................................21 Test methods ......................................................................................................................22 Test results .........................................................................................................................23

Upgrading to vSphere 5 ..........................................................................................................24 Related documentation ..........................................................................................................24 Preparing for the upgrade ......................................................................................................24 Upgrading vCenter Server .....................................................................................................25 Upgrading vSphere Client ......................................................................................................25 Upgrading hosts to ESXi 5 .....................................................................................................25 Upgrading virtual machine hardware version .........................................................................26 Post-upgrade tasks ................................................................................................................26

Migrating to vSphere 5 ...........................................................................................................27 Setting up the source Oracle VM environment .......................................................................28 Installing vCenter Converter Standalone ................................................................................28 Converting the virtual machines .............................................................................................29

Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................33 Next steps ..............................................................................................................................33

Additional references .............................................................................................................34


Introduction

Vblock™ Systems offer IT organizations the performance, agility, and scalability to effectively manage and allocate resources to meet the demands of even the most dynamic, data-intensive Oracle applications. In addition, Vblock systems provide a predictable cost model by accelerating infrastructure consolidation in the form of virtual machines on a single host to shave off licensing costs tied to dependency on the number of servers and cores.

Earlier testing of Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) on the Vblock system with VMware vSphere 4.1 demonstrated the performance and scalability benefits of virtualization (refer to Oracle E-Business Suite and RAC Performance and Elasticity on Vblock Infrastructure Platforms with vSphere 4.1).

Results from that initial testing showed that virtualization on the Vblock system provides customers with a high level of return on investment (ROI) and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO). Application response times for transactions in the physical and virtual environments were within a 5-10% range and scaling out Oracle EBS and RAC on the Vblock system improved performance due to load balancing.

The availability of VMware vSphere 5 brings significant enhancements to the virtual environment on the Vblock system such as support for faster scaling, additional virtual CPUs (vCPUs), and more virtual memory (vMem). To demonstrate the performance and scalability improvements enabled by vSphere 5, VCE conducted performance and scalability testing similar to the earlier testing. Performance test results showed only a one percent difference between physical and virtual environments, while scalability testing showed that near linear scalability could be achieved when scaling Oracle EBS and RAC in the virtual environment.

This solution architecture describes how performance and scalability testing of Oracle EBS and RAC on the Vblock system with vSphere 5 was conducted and presents the test results.

Business case

Customers want assurance that virtualizing their Oracle production systems and business applications will:

Maximize the performance and quality of service of their Oracle applications

Meet the needs of business service level agreements (SLA)

Allow non-disruptive migration of applications and workloads to improve performance, facilitate maintenance, and enhance business continuity

Reduce time to market and lower total cost of ownership (TCO) while maintaining a high return on investment (ROI)

This solution architecture will demonstrate that the Vblock system with vSphere 5 provides a simplified, cost-effective IT infrastructure to run business-critical Oracle and mixed workloads in a high-performance converged infrastructure.

http://www.vce.com/pdf/solutions/vce-oracle-ebs-and-rac-on-vblock-whitepaper.pdf

http://www.vce.com/pdf/solutions/vce-oracle-ebs-and-rac-on-vblock-whitepaper.pdf


Objectives

Oracle EBS R12 was deployed on a virtualized Oracle RAC on the Vblock system with vSphere 5. Performance and scalability testing of this environment was conducted to demonstrate the following:

Vblock systems maximize performance of Oracle EBS applications on vSphere 5 to allow faster deployment of new features to the business, minimize time-to-market and deliver faster time to revenue

Vblock systems with vSphere 5 make it easy to scale the virtual environment to support the most data-intensive and business-critical Oracle EBS workloads while maintaining performance levels.

Existing VCE customers interested in improving the performance and increasing the scalability of their Oracle EBS deployments may want to consider upgrading to the latest technology from VMware on the Vblock system. Customers currently deploying their Oracle EBS and RAC on Oracle VM may want to migrate to vSphere 5 on the Vblock system to leverage the ability to deploy mixed workloads on a single system. To demonstrate the ease, convenience, and low risk of upgrading or migrating to vSphere 5 on the Vblock system, this solution architecture includes the steps you need to take.

Key results

VCE conducted extensive performance and scalability testing of Oracle EBS applications in a virtual Oracle RAC environment on the Vblock system with vSphere 5. Key results were:

Comparison of average application response times of Oracle EBS and RAC in the physical environment with average application response times in the virtual environment under similar workloads showed a 1 percent difference.

Near linear scalability was achieved when additional virtual Oracle EBS and RAC nodes were added to the deployment. The number of transactions per second increased linearly while using fewer resources than before scaling out.

Key benefits

Test results support the following key benefits to virtualization of Oracle EBS and RAC on the Vblock system with vSphere 5:

Simplified deployment and management

Standardized, prepackaged units of converged infrastructure on the Vblock system accelerate deployment and simplify operation.

Simple, automated virtual machine migration and conversion from Oracle VM and other third-party platforms to the Vblock system using VMware vCenter Converter reduces risk and increases chances for a successful production cutover to vSphere 5.

Virtualization on Vblock systems allows deployment of more Oracle instances on less hardware to maximize licensing return on investment (ROI).


Operational agility

Integrated, best-in-class components to support computing, networking, storage, security, virtualization and management technologies on the Vblock system make it easy to scale the virtualization environment to support the most data-intensive application workloads.

Provisioning of new pre-configured Oracle EBS environments takes only minutes using VMware vSphere templates

Live migration of virtual machines from one physical server to another using VMware vMotion

Converged infrastructure of the Vblock system makes workload balancing simple and straightforward across all components.

Performance and scalability

Design of the Vblock system makes it easy to scale the virtualization environment to support data-intensive application workloads while maintaining performance levels.

Dynamic vertical and horizontal scaling of virtual machines accommodates growth, changing workloads, and scheduled maintenance demands.

Load balancing data-intensive workloads by scaling out application and database nodes improves throughput.

Scope

This solution architecture provides:

Descriptions and diagrams of test components and architecture

Details on how the performance and scalability testing was conducted and the test results

Instructions for upgrading an existing vSphere 4.1 deployment to vSphere 5 on the Vblock system

Instructions for migrating an Oracle Virtual Machine (Oracle VM) deployment to vSphere 5 on the Vblock system

Audience

The primary audience for this solution architecture is technical, including CIOs, data center managers, Oracle architects, and Oracle Database Administrators (DBAs) in medium-sized and large enterprises.

New customers interested in virtualizing or migrating their Oracle applications environment to vSphere 5 on the Vblock system to improve quality of service and reduce baseline cost structure should read this paper. Current VCE customers interested in upgrading their Vblock systems to vSphere 5 to leverage a more robust feature set will also benefit from reading this paper.


Feedback

To suggest documentation changes and provide feedback on this paper, send email to [email protected]. Include the title of this paper and the name of the topic to which your feedback applies.

mailto:[email protected]


Technology overview

The VCE solution for virtualized Oracle EBS and RAC on the Vblock system uses the following major hardware and software components:

VCE Vblock Systems

VMware vSphere 5

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition

Oracle Real Application Clusters

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12

EMC Unified Infrastructure Manager

VCE Vblock™ Systems

Vblock systems are enterprise– and service provider–class IT infrastructure units that are pre-engineered, tested, and validated with pre-defined performance, capacity, and availability service levels. The standardized converged infrastructure of Vblock systems is a foundational building block for cloud computing that helps customers to realize the benefits of applications running in a virtualized environment.

Vblock systems are characterized by:

Repeatable units of construction based on matched performance, operational characteristics, and discrete requirements of power, space, and cooling

Repeatable design patterns that facilitate rapid deployment, integration, and scalability

An architecture that can be scaled for the highest efficiencies in virtualization and workload mobility

An extensible management and orchestration model based on industry-standard tools, APIs, and methods

A design that contains, manages, and mitigates failure scenarios in hardware and software environments

Vblock systems provide pre-engineered, production–ready (fully tested) virtualized infrastructure components, including industry-leading technology from Cisco, EMC, and VMware. Vblock systems are designed and built to satisfy a broad range of specific customer implementation requirements.

The Oracle solution described in this paper works with any of the Vblock system models.

Note: Refer to the Vblock Infrastructure Platforms 2010 Vblock Platforms Architecture Overview for detailed information on the Vblock system architecture.

http://www.vce.com/pdf/solutions/vce-vblock-infrastructure-reference-architecture.pdf


VMware vSphere 5

The virtualization layer of the Vblock system is provided by VMware vSphere. vSphere is the industry-leading virtualization system for building cloud infrastructures. It enables customers to run business-critical applications with confidence and respond to business needs faster.

The following table summarizes some of the new features and functionality in vSphere 5:

Functionality/Feature Description

VMware vCenter Server scalability

Faster high availability (HA) configuration times A 32-host, 3,200 virtual machine, HA-enabled cluster can be configured 9 times faster in vSphere 5.

Faster failover rates Able to fail over 60% more virtual machines within the same period.

Lower management operational latencies Higher management operations throughput (ops/min)

Up to 120% improvement, depending on the intensity of the operations.

Compute 32-way vCPU scalability Virtual machines can now support vMem up to 1 TB.

With this new support, Tier 1 applications consuming large amounts of memory, such as in-memory databases, can now be virtualized.

Storage vSphere Storage I/O Control (SIOC) now supports NFS. You can set storage quality of service priorities per virtual machine, enabling better access to storage resources for high-priority applications.

Network vSphere Network I/O Control (NIOC) gives a higher granularity of network load balancing.

VMware vSphere vMotion vSphere vMotion Multi–network adaptor enablement that contributes to an even faster vMotion.

vSphere Storage vMotion Fast, live storage migration with I/O mirroring.

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 provides industry-leading performance, scalability, security, and reliability on a choice of clustered or single servers with a wide range of options to meet user needs. It provides the foundation for IT to successfully deliver more information with higher quality of service, reduce the risk of change within IT, and make efficient use of IT budgets.

In Oracle 11g R2 Enterprise Edition, both Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) and Oracle Clusterware have been integrated into a single set of binaries and named Oracle Grid Infrastructure. This now provides all cluster and storage services required to run an Oracle RAC database.


Oracle Real Application Clusters

Oracle RAC supports the transparent deployment of a single database across a cluster of servers, providing fault tolerance from hardware failures or planned outages. Available as an option with Oracle Database 11g, Oracle RAC is a cluster database with a shared cache architecture that overcomes the limitations of traditional shared-nothing and shared-disk approaches to provide a highly scalable and available database solution.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12

The Oracle EBS architecture is a framework for multitiered distributed computing. In the Oracle EBS model, services are distributed among multiple levels or tiers. A service is a process or a group of processes that exercises some business logic and provides a particular functionality. A tier is a grouping of services that can potentially span physical machines. In other words, a tier is a logical grouping of services that is not limited by physical nodes or machines. Each tier can consist of one or more nodes, and each node can accommodate more than one tier. For instance, the database server can reside on the same node as one or more servers in the application tier..

Note: For more details, refer to Oracle Applications Concepts [B10642-01].

EMC Unified Infrastructure Manager

EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager/Provisioning (UIM/P) provides simplified management for Vblock systems, including provisioning, configuration, change, and compliance management. With a consolidated dashboard view, policy-based management, automated deployment, and deep visibility across the environment, UIM/P is integral to managing Vblock systems efficiently.

UIM/P provides the functionality to package portions of the compute, storage, and network resources of a Vblock infrastructure into infrastructure services. Once in a service, the resources can be reserved, deployed, allocated, and managed as a single entity through UIM/P.

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B11454_01/11.5.9/acrobat/11iconcepts.pdf


Solution architecture

The testing described in this solution architecture was conducted in a virtualized Oracle environment created on a Vblock Series 700 model MX (Vblock 700MX) system with vSphere 5. To replicate a common customer environment, the virtual environment included Oracle EBS applications and a virtualized Oracle clustered database (Oracle and Oracle RAC).

High-level architecture

The following diagram shows the high-level architecture of the environment used to validate the solution:


Physical topology

The following diagram shows the physical topology of the test environment:


Performance test environment

Performance testing involved measuring and comparing performance of Oracle EBS on Oracle RAC in the physical environment with performance in the virtual environment. The following diagram illustrates the test environment for performance testing:


Scalability test environment

Scalability testing involved adding Oracle EBS application and Oracle RAC database nodes to the virtual environment, and then monitoring performance improvements. The following diagram illustrates the scalability test environment:


Hardware components

A virtual Oracle RAC can be deployed on any Vblock system that provides SAN connectivity. The testing described in this paper was performed on the Vblock Series 700 model MX.

The following table lists the hardware components used to validate the solution:

Component Quantity Configuration

UCS Blade B250-M2

8 12 x CPU cores, 192 GB memory per blade 3 used for physical environment tests 3 used for virtualized environment tests 2 additional used for scale out tests

MDS 9148 Multilayer Fabric Switch

2 4 x 8 Gbps ports per switch

Symmetrix VMAX 1 172 x 450 Gb (15K RPM) disks

VMAX FA ports 8 8 Gb per port

Cisco ACE load balancer 1 --

UCS Blade B200-M1 3 For Oracle VM Server 8 x CPU cores, 96 Gb memory per blade

Virtual machine configuration

By default, vNUMA is enabled only for virtual machines with more than eight vCPUs. Although vNUMA can be enabled for smaller machines, it was not enabled for the virtual machines used in validation of this solution.

The following table describes the configuration of each virtual machine used to validate the solution:

Virtual Machine Memory No. of vCPUs vNIC Type Virtual SCSI Adapter

oel5u4-app1 65 Gb RAM 8 VMXNET3 LSI Logic Parallel



*oel5u4-app4 65 Gb RAM 8 VMXNET3 LSI Logic Parallel

oel5u4-rac1 98 Gb RAM 6 VMXNET3 LSI Logic Parallel




*oel5u4-rac5 98 Gb RAM 6 VMXNET3 LSI Logic Parallel


Software components

The following table lists the software components used to validate the solution:

Platform Role Version

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 Operating system RHEL 5 U4 (64-bit)

Oracle EBS 12.1 Application 12.1.1

Oracle 11g R2 Enterprise Edition

Database 11.2.0.2

Oracle 11g R2 RAC Clusterware 11.2.0.2

VMware vSphere 4.x Virtualization 4.1

VMware vSphere 5.x Virtualization 5.0

Storage layout

For performance testing, two VMAX thin storage pools comprising Fibre Channel (FC) disks were used. These disks were 600GB 15K RPM.

Storage pool 1

Pool 1 (eBizR10) contained twenty 50 GB RAID 1 data devices with 1TB of usable storage. The following table lists the thin LUNs (TDEVs) created from this pool.

Environment LUNs Virtual Disks

Physical Oracle DB online redo logs 3 x 100 GB

Virtual (provisioned as RDMs)

Oracle DB online redo logs 3 x 100 GB


Storage pool 2

Pool 2 (eBizR5) contained 200 50-gigabyte RAID 5 data devices with 10 TB of usable storage. The following table lists the thin LUNs (TDEVs) created from this pool:

Tier Environment LUNs Virtual Disks

Oracle DB Physical Oracle RAC voting/OCR disks Oracle archive log DG Oracle data DG Oracle temp space DG

6 x 4 GB 1 x 536 GB 3 x 365 GB 1 x 256 GB

Virtual (provisioned as RDMs)

Oracle RAC voting/OCR disks Oracle archive log DG Oracle data DG Oracle temp space DG RAC

6 x 4 GB disks Oracle RAC voting/OCR disks

Oracle Application

Physical OS Application tier binary and shared application tier files

1 x 100 GB 1 x 500 GB

Virtual (provisioned as VMDKs)

OS Application tier binary and shared application tier files

1 x 100 GB 1 x 500 GB

Note: DG = Automatic Storage Management Disk Group


Storage mappings for Oracle database

The following illustration shows the storage mappings for the Oracle database:


Performance and scalability testing

Performance and scalability tests were conducted to demonstrate the enhanced functionality, agility, and other benefits of virtualizing Oracle EBS and RAC on the Vblock system with vSphere 5.

Test environment

The following table describes how the test environment was set up:

Step Action Notes

1 Install and configure a split-node Oracle EBS R12 (12.1.1) environment consisting of one application tier server and one Oracle 11g database tier server.

Refer to the appropriate Oracle documentation for instructions.

2 Create a 2-node physical Oracle RAC. Refer to the appropriate Oracle documentation for instructions.

3 Migrate the physical Oracle RAC to the virtual vSphere 5 environment.

Refer to Zero Downtime Bi-directional Physical to Virtual Migration for Oracle EBS R12 With RAC on Vblock Infrastructure Platforms for instructions.

4 Clone the virtual Oracle EBS and RAC environment to the physical environment using EMC storage replication technology with Oracle Rapid Clone Technology.

Refer to Cloning Oracle Applications Release 12 with Rapid Clone (Doc ID 406982.1) for detailed information.

Workload description

The table below describes the customized Order to Cash (O2C) workflow used to generate workload for the performance and scalability testing. This workload demonstrates the performance and scalability of Oracle applications and provides metrics for comparing performance of Oracle applications on different system configurations.

The transactions were scripted using HP LoadRunner and executed under predefined user loads. Each user executes the transactions as part of the O2C process.

Step Description

1 Enter Order/Create Sales Order

The cycle begins in the Order Management Module where an order is created with about four lines. This order is then booked and passed to Pick Release.

2 Pick Release Pick Release finds and releases the order and creates a move order request. The process of transacting move orders creates a reservation against the source sub-inventory.

http://www.vce.com/pdf/solutions/vce-oracle-ebs-p2v-migration.pdf






Step Description

3 Ship Confirm Ship Confirm is the process of confirming that items have shipped. Shipping execution confirms that the delivery lines associated with the delivery have shipped. Interface Trip Stop (ITS) creates a trip and related stops for all eligible deliveries that have not been assigned to a trip. The ITS process happens automatically when you Ship Confirm the order.

4 Workflow Background Process

To create an invoice from the Shipped/Closed order lines, the workflow background process, OM Order Line, must run to interface eligible order lines into Accounts Receivable (AR) as invoices. In most production/customer environments, this process is set up to run automatically as prescribed by business requirements. For this test, this process was manually submitted after the completion of ITS.

5 Receivables Query Invoice

An invoice is created based on the customer and the items that were ordered previously.

Performance testing

Five load tests were performed in each environment: physical and virtual Oracle RAC. Application response times (in seconds) were averaged for each transaction in the load test. Then, the average application response times on the physical Oracle RAC were compared to the average application response times with the virtual Oracle RAC.

Test objectives

The objectives of the testing were to:

Compare performance of Oracle EBS in the physical environment with performance in the virtual environment

Demonstrate that running I/O-intensive, application-based workloads on the Vblock system with vSphere 5 meets industry expectations

Test methods

Performance testing consisted of execution of Order Management transactions. To test performance with increased load, the number of concurrent users was incremented from 100 to 500.


Test results

The following chart compares average application response times on the physical Oracle RAC with average transaction response times on the virtual Oracle RAC under similar workloads.

Major findings of the performance test were:

1. Compared to the physical environment, average application response times in the virtual test environment increased slightly during testing with 500 concurrent users.

2. A comparison of the average application response times in the virtual environment with average application response times in the physical environment under similar workloads showed a 1 percent difference.

Scalability testing

To demonstrate the operational agility and scalability of applications in the vSphere 5 environment, performance under load was measured before and after scaling out the virtual Oracle environment.

Test objective

The objective of the scalability testing was to demonstrate that the virtual environment provided by vSphere 5 on the Vblock system allows scaling out of Oracle EBS with Oracle RAC deployments to accommodate dynamic I/O-intensive workloads.


Test methods

To determine when to scale the Oracle RAC environment, Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) 11g R1 Grid Control and native system tools were used to monitor utilization on the Oracle RAC database nodes. When CPU and memory utilization reached 80 percent of available resources for the Oracle RAC nodes, one Oracle RAC node and one Oracle EBS node were added to the environment to provide sufficient resources for additional users to perform tasks within the Oracle EBS environment.

Note: For detailed information about adding virtual nodes to Oracle EBS and RAC, refer to Zero Downtime Bi-directional Physical to Virtual Migration for Oracle EBS R12 With RAC on Vblock Infrastructure Platforms.

Scaling Oracle RAC

Step Action

1 Add a virtual Oracle RAC node to the cluster.

2 Add an Oracle RAC instance to the new node.

3 Register the instance with the listener on the new node.

Scaling the Application Tier

Step Action

1 Prepare the environment.

2 Configure the new application node.

3 Update profile options.

4 Verify the APPLCSF variable setting.

5 Update the SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN value in ICX_PARAMETERS.

6 Configure load balancing.

7 Configure parallel concurrent processing.





Test results

The testing showed that near linear scalability was achieved on the Vblock system by adding additional nodes. After scaling out the environment, transactions per second (TPS) increased from 800 to 1430 with less resource utilization than before scaling because the load was evenly distributed to the newly added nodes. The following chart shows TPS before and after scaling out the environment:


Upgrading to vSphere 5

Customers who already have Oracle deployments on the Vblock system with vSphere 4.1 may want to upgrade to leverage the performance and scalability enhancements in vSphere 5. For example, virtual machines on vSphere 5 can have up to 32 virtual CPUs and 1TB of RAM to support even the largest applications.

The following sections provide an overview of the procedures for a non-disruptive upgrade from vSphere 4.x to vSphere 5. In most cases, this upgrade is a straightforward process and can be completed in a matter of hours.

The steps to upgrade are:

1. Prepare for the upgrade.

2. Upgrade vCenter Server.

3. Upgrade vSphere Client.

4. Upgrade hosts to ESXi 5.

5. Upgrade virtual machine hardware and VMware Tools.

6. Perform post-upgrade tasks.

Related documentation

For detailed upgrade instructions, refer to the following documentation available on the VCE support portal (http://support.vce.com/):

Vblock Systems Software and Firmware Upgrade Guide

Vblock Systems Software and Firmware Upgrade Guide for VMware vSphere 5.0

Note: A username and password are required to access the VCE support portal.

Preparing for the upgrade

1. Use the VMware Compatibility Guide (http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility) to verify that the current hardware, storage, and network drivers are compatible with vSphere 5.

2. If the vSphere system includes VMware plugins, verify they are supported by vCenter Server 5.

http://support.vce.com/

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility


Upgrading vCenter Server

1. Verify the following requirements for upgrading to vCenter Server 5 are met:

Item Requirement

vCenter Server logs Minimum 450 MB additional storage

vCenter Server 5 appliance 7 GB of disk space and 8 GB RAM

vCenter 5 Client 1.5 GB disk storage per client

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Express Disk Note: SQL Server 2008 is supported for the

vCenter 5 internal database.

Up to 2 GB free disk space to decompress the installation archive

2. Back up your vCenter Server database and SSL certificates.

3. Stop the vCenter Server services.

4. Run the vCenter Host Agent Pre-Upgrade Checker, and resolve any issue that Pre-Upgrade Checker finds.

5. Make sure that no processes are running that might use the ports that vCenter Server uses.

6. Run the vCenter Server upgrade.

Upgrading vSphere Client

Note: The vSphere Client upgrade operation requires no downtime. Virtual machines do not need to be powered off.

1. (Optional) Use Add/Remove Programs from the Windows Control Panel to remove any previous vSphere Client.

2. Run the vSphere Client installer.

Upgrading hosts to ESXi 5

1. Make a backup of host profiles, configurations, and VMFS 4.x filesystems.

2. Allocate additional required disk space for VMFS datastores with ESXi hosts.

Note: vSphere 5 requires an additional 50 MB of disk storage per VMFS datastore to perform the upgrade.

3. If not enabled, enable Intel VT mode in the host’s BIOS.

4. Place the host or hosts in maintenance mode. Make sure virtual machines have been evacuated to available hosts.

5. If a fibre-attached SAN is connected to the ESXi hosts, detach the fibre before proceeding.

Note: Do not disable HBA cards in the BIOS.


Upgrading virtual machine hardware version

1. Make a backup of the virtual machines.

2. Use Update Manager in vCenter to upgrade the virtual machines from version 7 to version 8.

Note: Do not use vmware-vmupgrade.exe to upgrade the virtual machines.

3. Upgrade the VMware Tools for all virtual machines.

Post-upgrade tasks

1. Apply upgrade licenses for vSphere 5.

2. Reconnect ESXi hosts to vCenter Server and to SAN fibre connections.

3. Execute the following command to convert LUN masking to the claim rule format:

esxcli corestorage claimrule convert

4. Validate the upgraded environment is fully operational and without errors.


Migrating to vSphere 5

Customers using Oracle VM as their virtualization platform for Oracle EBS may want to migrate their deployments to the Vblock system with vSphere 5 to maximize performance, scalability, and availability of their applications and take advantage of the ability to run mixed workloads on a single platform. Migrating from Oracle VM to the Vblock system is quick, low cost, and low risk using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.

To demonstrate the ease of virtual machine migration and conversion, six virtual machines (two Oracle EBS application tier and four Oracle RAC) were migrated from a source Oracle VM environment to a destination vSphere 5 system on the Vblock system using VMware Converter Standalone.

Converter Standalone provides an easy-to-use solution to automate the process of creating VMware virtual machines from physical machines (running Windows and Linux), other virtual machine formats, and third-party image formats. Through an intuitive wizard-driven interface and a centralized management console, Converter Standalone can quickly and reliably convert multiple local and remote physical machines without any disruptions or downtime.

The diagram below shows the types of conversions that can be performed with Converter Standalone.


Setting up the source Oracle VM environment

To set up the source Oracle VM environment, the following components were installed and configured:

Oracle 3.0.3 VM Server

Oracle 3.0.3 VM Manager

Oracle VM template images

After verifying the source Oracle VM 3.0.3 environment was operational, the Oracle VM templates for Oracle 11gR2 RAC and Oracle R12 were deployed.

Installing vCenter Converter Standalone

1. Download VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5 from:

http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

2. In the Oracle VM source environment, change the XEN kernel to normal kernel configuration.

3. In the destination vCenter 5 environment, select OVM as the physical host source.

4. Modify the network name and IP address of the Oracle virtual machines from the Oracle VM network to allow both the source virtual machines and new destination virtual machines to coexist on the same network.

Note: If the VMware virtual machines have disks that are populated by using a backup of a physical host or by cold cloning, Converter Standalone prepares the image to run on VMware virtual hardware. If third-party virtualization software was used to create a virtual machine on an ESX host, use Converter Standalone to reconfigure it. Any operating system installed on a multi-boot machine can be reconfigured if the virtual machine is imported to an ESX host. Before reconfiguring a multi-boot machine, the boot.ini file must be changed.

5. Disable ports that block access to the source and destination virtual machine environments, as this will affect the conversion process.

6. Install Converter Standalone. Refer to the VMware vCenter Converter Standalone User's Guide for instructions.

http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/convsa_50_guide.pdf


Converting the virtual machines

1. Start the Converter Standalone application.

2. Click Convert Machine in the application menu. The Source System page appears.

3. On the Source System page, select the source system to convert (192.168.106.152).

4. Click Next. The Destination System page appears.

5. On the Destination System page:

a. Select VMware Infrastructure virtual machine from the Select destination type drop-down menu.

b. Enter the IP address or host name and the credentials for authentication with the ESXi host or vCenter Server.


6. Click Next. The Destination Virtual Machine page appears.

7. On the Destination Virtual Machine page, name the destination virtual machine.

If the destination is a vCenter Server, select the destination folder.

8. Click Next. The Destination Location page appears.

9. On the Destination Location page:

a. Select a data center object from the inventory to accommodate the destination virtual machine (hugo101.mord0r.vce).

b. From the Datastore drop-down menu, select the datastore to hold the destination virtual machine files (OVM Target on VMAX4149_dev_275).

c. From the Virtual machine version drop-down menu, select the virtual hardware version for the destination virtual machine (Version 8).


10. Click Next. The Options page appears.


11. Use the Options page to configure the following conversion parameters based on the infrastructure and environment:

a. Virtual hardware resources that the destination virtual machine uses.

b. Network settings of the destination virtual machine

c. Guest operating system

d. Conversion process and behavior of the source and destination systems during and after conversion

Refer to the VMware vCenter Converter Standalone User's Guide for detailed instructions.

12. Click Next. The Summary page appears.

13. Use the Summary page to verify the source and destination settings are correct.

14. Click Finish to submit the job.

Converter Standalone validates the job parameters. If the validation succeeds, the conversion job appears in the Job View list in the main application window. If the validation fails, click Back and correct the invalid parameters as prompted.

15. Start the destination Oracle virtual machines and validate that the newly migrated Oracle environment is functional and stable.

Refer to the VMware vCenter Converter Standalone User's Guide for more information.

16. Apply VMware best practices for Oracle and test the functionality of the migrated Oracle virtual machines in the vSphere 5 environment.

Refer to Oracle Databases on VMware Best Practices Guide for detailed information.



http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/partners/oracle/Oracle_Databases_on_VMware_-_Best_Practices_Guide.pdf


Conclusion

Vblock Systems deliver enterprise-level functionality to address the needs of a vast array of business-critical applications such as Oracle EBS. Vblock systems scale to match the performance needs of the largest and most data-intensive business applications, while the ability to migrate applications and workloads enhances business continuity.

To demonstrate the performance, operational agility, and scalability benefits of virtualizing Oracle EBS and Oracle RAC on the Vblock system with VMware vSphere 5, VCE performed extensive data-intensive workload performance and scalability testing.

Testing was conducted on a virtualized Oracle EBS R12 and Oracle RAC environment created on a Vblock Series 700 model MX (Vblock 700MX) system with vSphere 5.

Major findings of the performance and scalability tests were:

Comparison of average application response times of Oracle EBS and RAC in the physical environment with average application response times in the virtual environment under similar workloads showed a 1 percent difference.

Near linear scalability was achieved when additional virtual Oracle EBS and RAC nodes were added to the deployment. The number of transactions per second increased linearly while using fewer resources than before scaling out.

To demonstrate the ease with which virtual machines can be migrated and converted using Converter Standalone, multiple virtual machines from a source Oracle VM environment were migrated to a destination vSphere 5 environment on the Vblock system. The virtual machines were migrated and converted to the vSphere 5 environment on the Vblock system quickly and easily without disruptions or downtime.

Next steps

To learn more about this and other solutions, contact a VCE representative or go to www.vce.com.

http://www.vce.com/


Additional references

VCE

Vblock Infrastructure Platforms Series 700 Architecture Overview

Zero Downtime Bi-directional Physical to Virtual Migration for Oracle EBS R12 With RAC on Vblock Infrastructure Platforms

Oracle

My Oracle Support Notes

Cloning Oracle Applications Release 12 with Rapid Clone (Doc ID 406982.1)

Using Oracle 11g Release 2 Real Application Clusters with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Doc ID 823587.1)

Using Load Balancers with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Doc ID 380489.1)

Configuration of Load Balancing and Transparent Application Failover (Doc ID 226880.1)

How to Implement Load Balancing With RAC Configured System Using JDBC (Doc ID 247135.1)

Using Cisco ACE Series Application Control Engine with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Doc ID 603325.1)

Sharing the Application Tier File System in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Doc ID 384248)

Oracle VM: Installation and Upgrade Guide for Release 3.0.3

Oracle VM: User's Guide for Release 3.0.3

VMware

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone User's Guide

http://www.vce.com/pdf/solutions/vce-vblock-series-700-architecture-overview.pdf

http://www.vce.com/insights/

http://www.vce.com/insights/

http://support.oracle.com/

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26996_01/e18548.pdf

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26996_01/e18549.pdf


© 2012 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

ABOUT VCE VCE, formed by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel, accelerates the adoption of converged infrastructure and cloud-based computing models that dramatically reduce the cost of IT while improving time to market for our customers. VCE, through the Vblock system, delivers the industry's first completely integrated IT offering with end-to-end vendor accountability. VCE solutions are available through an extensive partner network, and cover horizontal applications, vertical industry offerings, and application development environments, allowing customers to focus on business innovation instead of integrating, validating and managing IT infrastructure. For more information, go to www.vce.com.

THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS." VCE MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION, AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Copyright © 2012 VCE Company, LLC. All rights reserved. Vblock and the VCE logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of VCE Company, LLC and/or its affiliates in the United States or other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

Documents

Enhanced Operational Agility and Scalability For …docs.media.bitpipe.com/io_10x/io_105531/item_553415/vce-enhanced...Vblock systems are enterprise– and service provider–class