OLVM & KVM -- Oracle Premier Support

In this blog post, I will give a crucial info.. Yes, I find it important, although some may say that this is publically available information.. Still, I want to underline this thing, as it may be a support issue in Oracle Linux KVM environments some day.

Oracle Linux KVM is a feature that has been delivered and supported as part of Oracle Linux,as you know.  But! things are a little different for OLVM.(Oracle Linux Virutalization Manager)

If you want to get support for Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager, you must have an Oracle Linux Premier Support subscription. In other words; support for OLVM is not included Oracle Linux Basic Support subscription..

So lets answer this question ->  Do we (on-prem KVM users) need Oracle Linux Premier support?

Well, the answer depends on lots of things.. I mean, if you have Linux premier support, then it means you got the full package -> 

• Around-the-clock access to enhancements, updates, and errata
• Oracle Enterprise Manager for Linux Management
• Oracle Linux Manager (formerly Spacewalk)
• High availability with Oracle Clusterware
• Comprehensive tracing with DTrace
• Oracle Linux load balancer
• Comprehensive indemnification
• Oracle Container runtime for Docker
• Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager
• Zero-downtime patching with Ksplice
• Oracle Linux Cloud Native Environment
• Gluster Storage for Oracle Linux
• Oracle Linux software collections
• Oracle Linux high availability services support (Corosync and Pacemaker)
• Premier backports
• Lifetime sustaining support
  

Let's not go away from the context .. Does an Oracle Linux KVM user need a premier support?

Well, my answer is yes.. If you are using Oracle Linux KVM, you should use OLVM as well.. OLVM is a modern interface, that eases things and provides a smooth virtualization management platform.. As you use OLVM for an important process, you need to get Oracle Support for that.. Consider the following scenario;

Your security admin told you that the Http Server of the OLVM host has some security weakness and it must be upgraded to a target httpd release..

Facts : 

Currently, there is no direct document available on MOS for this kind of an upgrade..

There is no OLVM package or patch which is applicable for this kind of a request, as far as I can see.

You may be a HTTP Server and/or Linux expert and you can upgrade the latest httpd version by using your own methods.. (installing a new httpd and copy-pasting the OLVM-related httpd configuration).. However; this httpd in question belongs to OLVM , so you actually get a custom conf there..

You may wait for the new version of OLVM and you hope that, Oracle will be using the latest version of httpd in this new OLVM version.

But what about you don't have that time to wait? What about you don't have that Linux skills to make such an upgrade based on a custom method.

Or let's say you did the upgrade but you can't make OLVM running with the new httpd release..

You see it, right.. Oracle Linux Premier Support even solves these types of problems. 

Even in the cases, where we need it once a year, it provides us a guarantee .. 

Considering you are an Oracle Linux KVM customer, ask yourself the question 'Do I need to have Linux Premier Support?' again and answer the question yourself by reconsidering how vital OLVM is for you.. If you pay attention, I don't even want you to think about the other things supported (zero downtime patching with Ksplice and etc..) with the Oracle Linux Premier Support..