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Categorized Oracle Cloud VMware Solution FAQs

FAQ topics

General

What is Oracle Cloud VMware Solution?

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution is based on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and provides a fully supported, customizable cloud environment for VMware deployments and migrations. The solution delivers a full-stack software-defined data center (SDDC), including VMware’s vCenter, ESXi, NSX, and vSAN. Specific use cases targeted by Oracle Cloud VMware Solution include data center and application migration, hybrid extension, on-demand capacity, and disaster recovery.

In which regions is Oracle Cloud VMware Solution available?

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution is currently available in all OCI regions where compute supports it.

Is Oracle Cloud VMware Solution a managed VMware service?

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution isn’t a managed service. It’s a customer-controlled service that provides customers full administrative access and control. Customers control and manage VMware operations, patching, and updates.

Can customers target Oracle Cloud VMware Solution to run native applications hosted by VMware VMs backed by DBaaS?

Yes. Oracle Cloud VMware Solution easily can be connected to other Oracle Cloud Infrastructure service offerings, such as Oracle Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS).

Supported shapes

What are the shape series that Oracle Cloud VMware Solution supports?

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution supports the DenseIO series—DenseIO.52 (X7) and DenseIO.E4—of shapes. It also supports the Standard series of bare metal shapes: Standard2 (X7), Standard3 (X9), and Standard.E4.

What are the core configurations of Standard shapes that Oracle Cloud VMware Solution supports?

  • Standard3: X9-based standard third-generation Intel Xeon Platinum 8358 processor (formerly code-named Ice Lake); base frequency 2.6 GHz, max turbo frequency 3.4 GHz; available in 16-, 32-, 48-, and 64-core configurations with 1 TB RAM and 100 Gb/sec network bandwidth.
  • Standard2.52: X7-based standard Intel Xeon Platinum 8167M; base frequency 2.0 GHz, max turbo frequency 2.4 GHz; available in 52-core configurations with 768 GB RAM and 50 Gb/sec network bandwidth.
  • StandardE4: E4-based standard compute third-generation AMD EPYC 7J13 processor; base frequency 2.55 GHz, max boost frequency 3.5 GHz; available in 32-, 64-, 96-, and 128-core configurations with 2 TB RAM and 100 Gb/sec network bandwidth.

What does the end of orderability for X7 mean for Oracle Cloud VMware Solution customers?

We’ll continue to have X7 capacity in the existing regions (as of March 2022) and will let customers consume Oracle Cloud VMware Solution on X7 for their commit periods.

Deployment

Which VMware vSphere versions does Oracle Cloud VMware Solution support?

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution supports provisioning of vSphere 7.0 and vSphere 8.0. vSphere 6.5 and 6.7 reached the end of the General Support phase from VMware on October 15, 2022. Oracle began providing commercially reasonable support for provisioning of vSphere 6.5 and 6.7 environments after the General Support phase from VMware ended October 15, 2022, and the Technical Guidance phase ensued. Oracle Cloud VMware Solution shape support has been limited to the shapes supported at the end of the General Support phase. New Oracle Cloud VMware Solution shapes introduced after October 15, 2022, won’t be enabled for vSphere 6.5 or 6.7. At the end of the Technical Guidance Phase on November 15, 2023, customers will no longer be able to provision using vSphere 6.5 or 6.7.

What is the maximum number of ESXi hosts that can be deployed?

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution supports VMware cluster deployments up to the current VMware limit of 64 instances. Additional host instances can be added at any time up to the maximum supported in the customer's tenancy based on OCI service limits. Note: The customer will use VMware software and tooling to define additional clusters within vCenter Server. The Oracle Cloud VMware Solution SDDC can contain more than 64 hosts, but each cluster has a current maximum of 64 based on VMware limits. Please note that Standard shapes are limited to a maximum of 32 instances.

What is the minimum number of ESXi hosts that can be deployed?

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution supports a single ESXi host SDDC for a single node SDDC (available only in Dense shapes) or a minimum of three ESXi hosts for a multihost SDDC.

How many Single Host SDDCs can I provision?

A single node SDDC is limited to a global maximum of 10 across tenancies and regions.

Can I run a Single Host SDDC indefinitely?

Please refer to the service descriptions (PDF) for details.

What is the service level agreement for a Single Host SDDC?

Please refer to the service descriptions (PDF) for details.

What are the features that will work for a Single Host SDDC?

High availability configuration works only in multihost clusters (three or more hosts). All other features that work with a multihost will work with a single host.

Will additional VMware products work on Oracle Cloud VMware Solution beyond the core components of VCF (vSphere, vCenter, vSAN, NSX)?

Additional VMware product suites are expected to function as advertised on Oracle Cloud VMware Solution based on the VMware compatibility matrix.

Is Oracle responsible for patching and management of the customer’s Oracle Cloud VMware Solution SDDC?

No, the customer or the customer’s operating partner is responsible for all VMware configuration, patching, operations, and application deployment.

Is it possible to use Oracle Bring Your Own License (BYOL) to license Oracle Cloud VMware Solution components?

The BYOL VMware license model isn’t supported for core Oracle Cloud VMware Solution components (vSphere, vSAN, and NSX). This is the VMware standard across all public cloud offerings.

What is the Oracle licensing policy for running Oracle software on Oracle Cloud VMware Solution?

The licensing policy for Oracle software, including Oracle Database, running on virtualized environments hasn’t changed. Customers that deploy Oracle software on Oracle Cloud VMware Solution are subject to Oracle’s current server/hardware partitioning policy (PDF).

Which VMware features are supported with Oracle Cloud VMware Solution X7 Dense and E4 Dense shapes?

  • vSphere Enterprise Plus
  • NSX Data Center Advanced
  • vSAN Advanced with Encryption
  • HCX Advanced (can be upgraded to HCX Enterprise on demand)

Customers need to buy the licenses for attached services, such as VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), VMware Horizon VDI, VMware vRealize Suite, and VMware Tanzu.

What VMware licenses are included for customers with Oracle Cloud VMware Solution Standard shapes?

  • vSphere Enterprise Plus
  • NSX Data Center Advanced
  • HCX Advanced (can be upgraded to HCX Enterprise on demand)

Customers need to buy the licenses for attached services, such as VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), VMware Horizon VDI, VMware vRealize Suite, and VMware Tanzu.

How can I migrate to a production SDDC?

You can use VMware HCX to migrate workloads to a 3-node production SDDC or use your preferred method of migrating the workload from one SDDC to the other.

What is a customer initiated in-place upgrade?

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution supports an automated guided workflow along with some manual steps to initiate and upgrade to VMware vSphere version 7 from older versions. It automates updating a SDDC, providing a downloadable link for binaries and licenses and performing a rolling upgrade of the host to bring it to the latest version. Please refer to Oracle Cloud VMware Solution documentation for detailed step-by-step instructions. Upgrading to vSphere 8.0 isn't supported at this time.

What is the downloadable link?

Once an SDDC upgrade is complete, the Details page provides you with the links for VMware Cloud Foundation bundle binaries and licenses. The downloadable link is a preauthenticated read-only object storage bucket URL pointing to the vCenter component bundle and NSX-T Data Center bundle.

What is the process to get the binaries when I need to upgrade or patch VMware bundles?

If you need assistance with any binaries or licenses, please submit a ticket at My Oracle Support.

How do I upgrade ESXi hosts?

Once an SDDC upgrade is complete, from the list of ESXi hosts to be upgraded, select each host and upgrade to the latest version. The new host created will be with the existing host configuration. Once the workloads are migrated from the old host to the new ESXi host, old ESXi hosts need to be deleted. The new ESXi host will be billed hourly; there’s no minimum eight-hour charge on this host, unlike with the regular hourly SKU. Any term commitments assigned to the old host are moved to the new host when the old host is deleted and have the same terms as the original commitment.

What happens if I don’t delete the old ESXi hosts?

You’ll receive a notification for the old hosts to be deleted; the new hosts will be billed hourly until the old hosts are deleted.

Storage

What size block volume can I provision with OCI Block Volumes?

You can provision block volumes from 50 GB to 32 TB in 1 GB increments.

How many block volumes can I attach to a host?

You can attach up to 32 block volumes per host.

What is the maximum performance in a block volume supported by Oracle Cloud VMware Solution?

At this time the maximum performance supported is up to 50 volume performance units (VPUs).

What are the features of OCI Block Storage that aren't supported in Oracle Cloud VMware Solution?

Multipathing, backup polices, auto-performance, cross-region replication, and VPUs above 50 aren't supported by Oracle Cloud VMware Solution.

What type of storage can I use with Oracle Cloud VMware Solution?

Bare metal Dense shapes have vSAN with local NVMe as storage. Storage can be extended by adding additional hosts or external storage as OCI Block Storage or NFS. Bare metal Standard series shapes use OCI Block Storage as the primary data store. You can extend the storage capacity by adding additional block volumes or using NFS as external storage.

How many hosts can be added to a single block volume?

You can add up to 32 ESXi hosts to a single block volume.

Do I need a device path when I set a block performance VPU?

When you select block volume beyond 20 VPUs, assign any device path.

Billing

How is Oracle Cloud VMware Solution priced?

Please refer to the pricing document for the latest pricing information.

What are the different commitment pricing options?

The different commitment terms are hourly, monthly, one year, and three years. Monthly commitment is available only for Dense shapes.

What is the minimum commitment term?

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution supports a minimum commitment term of eight hours using the hourly commitment option.

What happens when I delete the host before the end of the commit period?

If the host is deleted before the end of the commit period, the host will continue to be billed for the duration of the commitment.

Will the customer see separate line items for infrastructure and VMware software fees?

No, Oracle Cloud VMware Solution is billed via a single SKU per host in the customer’s usage reports and includes both infrastructure and VMware license access.

Can I reuse commitment from a deleted node?

You can reuse the commitment while provisioning the host of the same shape and core count. The term of the commitment will remain unchanged.

Can you swap billing commitments between two hosts?

You can swap billing commitments between two active hosts.

Do you have to pay for HCX Enterprise when upgrading from HCX Advanced to HCX Enterprise?

You must pay for HCX Enterprise in Dense shapes (DenseIO.52 and DenseIO.E4.128) only when you upgrade from HCX Advanced.

Monitoring and observability

Will customers be able to monitor Oracle Cloud VMware Solution guests with on-premises VMware monitoring tools?

Yes. Customers should observe VMware's guidance and recommendations for the monitoring tools in question.

What Oracle Cloud telemetry data related to compute and networking will be available for troubleshooting?

Standard Oracle Cloud telemetry isn’t available because no agent is installed in the ESXi bare metal instance. However, customers can get compute and network telemetry data from VMware directly in ESXi, vCenter, and NSX-T administrative interfaces or via the APIs provided as part of these offerings.

Support

What is the OCI/VMware support model?

Oracle provides tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 customer support for all support-related issues.

For which VMware products will Oracle provide support?

Oracle provides support for core VMware Cloud Foundation components (vSphere, vCenter, vSAN, and NSX) that we license and deploy.