Oracle Linux vs. VMware ESXi

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Oracle Linux
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Oracle Linux, which is application binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, is free to download, use, and share. There is no license cost, no need for a contract, and no usage audits. 24/7 enterprise-grade support is available for business critical environments. A single support offering includes virtualization, management, HA, and cloud native computing tools such as Kubernetes and Kata Containers, along with the Linux operating system. The vendor states that as the only Linux…N/A
VMware ESXi
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
A bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly onto a physical server. With direct access to and control of underlying resources, VMware ESXi partitions hardware to consolidate applications and cut costs.N/A
Pricing
Oracle LinuxVMware ESXi
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Oracle LinuxVMware ESXi
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Oracle LinuxVMware ESXi
Features
Oracle LinuxVMware ESXi
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
Oracle Linux
-
Ratings
VMware ESXi
8.2
Ratings
1% above category average
Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Management console00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Oracle LinuxVMware ESXi
Small Businesses
Ubuntu
Ubuntu
Score 8.7 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.3 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.3 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Oracle LinuxVMware ESXi
Likelihood to Recommend
9.9
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Oracle LinuxVMware ESXi
Likelihood to Recommend
As a result of the migration from Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Oracle Linux, overall application performance was improved significantly. Oracle Enterprise Linux is pretty much based on the Red Hat Linux code, although it receives faster and more regular updates from Oracle. They have better security configurations. However, it is also missing a lot of packages that are usually available in other distributions.
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If you're looking for the industry standard in server virtualization, I would recommend ESXi. After decades of expertise in the field, VMware continues to provide a strong product, production-ready, with an easy-to-learn interface that allows for quick management along with less costly upfront onboarding and training. Grab the free personal-use license and install in your homelab to start!
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Pros
  • Oracle Linux is a clone of Red Hat Linux, a well-known version of Linux and is very stable. This helps in maintaining fairly error-free systems.
  • The operating system kernel can be updated without having to reboot the system, a potential time saver.
  • Oracle Linux comes in fairly easy to implement packages that work well with Oracle databases.
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  • Incredibly quick to deploy. Total installation time of less than five minutes
  • Able to easily mount ISCSI storage devices to VMWare ESXi hosts within the GUI
  • Allows you to run the product for free - if you stay under the physical core count (and with some reduced features)
  • Incredibly stable software - we have not run into any issues that were a direct result of VMWare ESXi being at fault
  • Very low hardware resources utilized to run this product
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Cons
  • TigerVNC needs some fine tuning in Oracle Linux 8.4.
  • AutoTuning of Kernal Parameters for Oracle Databases based on the available hardware resources.
  • Embedded IPA Solutions to manage large number of Oracle Linux Systems.
  • Simple commands for LUN management.
  • Proactive SELinux policy violation message to administrator's mailbox.
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  • There are some odd issues with VMware's virtualized network drive (VMXNET3). On occasion, after a reboot of a Windows-based VM the NIC will fail to bind properly and network access is unavailable until an admin intervenes by disabling/re-enabling the adapter. While it's possible that our environment is a contributing factor, this never happens on VMs using Intel E1000 emulation, only the paravirtual NICs.
  • Logging is extensive but difficult to work with. VMware's solution is a product called Log Insight, which comes at additional cost. Fortunately this is somewhat mitigated by the extensive support documentation and robust user community, but in the heat of the moment obtaining the required detail can be a trying experience.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
It is critical to our business, what started out as a way to do certain functions, it has now become core to ensuring our product is available to our customers and reducing our costs to operate and reduce our recovery time and provisioning servers. Their support is great and the costs to renew is reasonable.
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Usability
No answers on this topic
The interface is fairly intuitive for most things, and the areas that are a little less obvious usually have fantastic documentation in the online knowledgebase. In 3-4 years of managing our ESXi hosts, I think that I have only opened 4-5 support cases for things that I could not figure out myself or find answers to on the website.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
Without the need to patch the servers with bug fixes and enhancements we whave not experienced any downtime with VMware issues. Even the bug fixes and updates do not cause of downtime as we just migrate the servers to the opposite node and update the one and then move servers back. Very simple and painless.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
We do not notice any difference between a physical and virtual server running the same workload. In fact we can scale quicker with the virtual server than we can with the physical.
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Support Rating
Quick & [on-point] response is what I would say for the support team. There hasn’t been trouble ever since we get in touch with them and ask for help for any major or minor trouble we have been facing. Moreover, the team is very accurate with their solutions and detailed orientated. With such [a] high-performance application and agile environment, a team as such is great at hand.
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I rarely ever need support for anything VMWare makes, but when I do, the documentation available just in the free community is generally enough. It's extensive and the community is truly robust and active. And if you have a myvmware account, you can get support for your owned products from VMWare support by the conventional case/ticket method
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Jsut read and follow anything your storage provider may require to allow the integration of VMware with storage operations, outside of that VMware jsut works.
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Alternatives Considered
Oracle Linux became the obvious choice amongst its competitors due to its speed, agility, flexibility, and support from Oracle engineers. The ease of use was one of the major reasons for choosing Oracle Linux over the above-operating systems. Also, the cost of operations, management, and retention were significantly quite low. This made Oracle Linux a very easy and quick choice for our organisation.
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While Hyper-V also can work very well and can have licensing benefits, it does rely on Windows in order to run. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can add another layer of potential failure and might not be running on as low of a level as ESXi does. The footprint for Hyper-V can be smaller if the Desktop Experience isn't used for the hosts, but this is the default fashion that ESXi has been running for many years. VMware's support has always been stellar, and its documentation is phenomenal. Hyper-V can work as a virtual environment option, but ESXi has never let me down in any environment I have managed. I will continue standing by this product and prefer it over other options. It has proven itself time and time again over time as the defacto virtual environment hosting platform.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
We started out with a two-server cluster and adding a third or fourth is very straightforward and simple with no issues. You just need to be aware of the size of your Vcenter Server to handle the workload, but still the resources needed is very minimal
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Return on Investment
  • Zero-downtime automated patching for kernel, hypervisor, and critical user-space libraries.
  • Optimized–out of the box–for Oracle software.
  • A single support offering includes Linux, virtualization, management, HA, and cloud-native computing tools.
  • Available on-premise, in the cloud, and as Autonomous Linux.
  • The system has a graphical and command-line interface, which makes it very complete and superior to other similar products.
  • Security
  • Compatible with multiple types of hardware. If we need to upgrade our hardware, the idea of not having to change OSs or platforms is a huge benefit.
  • Managing Memory usage.
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  • Positively, it has saved us time in spinning up new servers for the different departments in our company. It is easy for us to spin up virtual machines with VMware ESXi and deploy applications at the drop of a hat.
  • Positively we are able to save space in our data closets as we no longer need to keep room for physical servers and workstations, allowing us to expand in other areas like networking equipment and physical backup solutions.
  • It has moved our business forward as we are able to migrate old servers and static workstations in the virtual environment allowing us to easily keep an eye on older applications and update/backup easily through VMware ESXi management console.
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ScreenShots