Sunday, August 30, 2015

about Oracle Linux

Oracle Linux, formerly known as Oracle Enterprise Linux, is a Linux distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux(RHEL),
repackaged and freely distributed by Oracle, available under the GNU General Public License (GPL) since late 2006.
Oracle Linux can be downloaded through Oracle's E-delivery service or from a variety of mirror sites, and can be deployed and distributed without cost. Commercial technical support is available through Oracle's Oracle Linux Support program, which supports Oracle Linux, and existing RHEL or CentOS installations (i.e. without reinstallation). As of 2013, Oracle Linux has over 11,000 customers subscribed to the support program.

RHEL compatibility

Oracle Corporation distributes Oracle Linux with two alternative kernels:
  • Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK) – identical to the kernel shipped in Red Hat Enterprise Linux
  • Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) – based on newer mainline Linux kernel versions, with Oracle's own enhancements for OLTP, InfiniBand, and SSD disk access, NUMA-optimizations, Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS), async I/O, OCFS2, and networking.
Oracle claims that the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel is compatible with RHEL, and that Oracle middleware and third-party RHEL-certified applications can install and run unchanged on the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. For users requiring strict compatibility with Red Hat or for users running kernel modules dependent on specific kernel versions, the Red Hat Compatible Kernel offers 100% compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Hardware compatibility

Oracle Linux is certified on servers from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, and Cisco. In 2010, Force10 announced support for Oracle VM and Oracle Linux.Oracle Linux is also available on Amazon EC2 as an Amazon Machine Image, and on Microsoft Windows Azure as a VM Image.
Oracle/Sun servers and blades with x86-64 processors can be configured to ship with Oracle Linux.

Virtualization support

Under the Oracle Linux Support program, Oracle Linux supports KVM and Xen.
Other Oracle products are only supported under the Xen-based Oracle VM.

Deployment inside Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation uses Oracle Linux internally to lower IT costs. Oracle Linux is deployed on more than 42,000 servers by Oracle Global IT; the SaaS Oracle On Demandservice, Oracle University, and Oracle's technology demo systems also run Oracle Linux.
Software developers at Oracle develop Oracle Database, Fusion Middleware, Oracle Grid Engine, E-Business Suite and other components of Oracle Applications on Oracle Linux.

Related products

Oracle Linux is used as the underlying operating system for the following appliances.
  • Oracle Exadata
  • Oracle Exalogic
  • Oracle Big Data Appliance
  • Oracle Exalytics
  • Oracle Database Appliance

Specific additions

  • Ksplice – Oracle acquired Ksplice Inc in 2011, and offers Oracle Linux users Ksplice to enable hot kernel patching
  • DTrace – As of October 2011, Oracle has begun porting DTrace from Solaris as a Linux kernel module
  • Oracle Clusterware – OS-level high availability technology used by Oracle RAC
  • Oracle Enterprise Manager – freely available to users with Oracle Linux support subscriptions to manage, monitor, and provision Oracle Linux.

Benchmark submissions

Sun Fire systems

In March 2012, Oracle submitted a TPC-C benchmark result using a Sun Fire server running Oracle Linux and Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. With 8 Intel Xeon processors running Oracle DB 11 R2, the system is able to handle over 5.06 million tpmC (New-Order transactions per minute while fulfilling TPC-C). The server is the third fastest TPC-C non-clustered system and is the fastest x86-64 non-clustered system.
Oracle also submitted a SPECj Enterprise 2010 benchmark record using Oracle Linux and Oracle WebLogic Server, and achieved both a single node and an x86 world record result of 27,150 EjOPS (SPECjEnterprise Operation/second).

Cisco UCS systems

Cisco submitted 2 TPC-C benchmark results that run Oracle Linux with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R2 on UCS systems. The UCS systems rank fourth and eighth on the top TPC-C non-clustered list.

Future SPARC version

In December 2010, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison announced that future versions of Oracle Linux will run on Oracle's SPARC and UltraSPARC T-series (Niagara) platforms.
John Fowler, Executive Vice President Systems Oracle, in Openworld 2014 said Linux will be able to run on Sparc at some point.

Software updates and version history

In March 2012, Oracle announced free software updates and errata for Oracle Linux on Oracle's public yum repositories. In September 2013, Oracle announced that each month its free public yum servers handle 80 TB of data, and the switch to the Akamai content delivery network to handle the traffic growth.

Release history

  • Oracle Linux 7, 7.1
  • Oracle Linux 6, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7
  • Oracle Linux 5, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, 5.10, 5.11
  • Oracle Enterprise Linux 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9
Oracle Linux ReleaseArchitecturesRHEL baseOracle Linux release dateRHEL release dateDays after RHEL release
4.5i386, x86-644.52007-05-01
4.6i386, x86-644.62007-12-102007-11-1624
4.7i386, x86-644.72008-08-052008-07-2412
4.8i386, x86-644.82009-05-262009-05-188
4.9i386, x86-644.92011-02-16
5.0i386, x86-6452007-06-262007-03-14104
5.1i386, x86-645.12007-11-262007-11-0719
5.2i386, x86-645.22008-06-022008-05-2112
5.3i386, x86-645.32009-01-282009-01-208
5.4i386, x86-64, ia645.42009-09-092009-09-027
5.5i386, x86-64, ia645.52010-04-072010-03-317
5.6i386, x86-64, ia645.62011-01-222011-01-139
5.7i386, x86-64, ia645.72011-08-162011-07-2126
5.8i386, x86-64, ia645.82012-03-022012-02-2110
5.9i386, x86-64, ia645.92013-01-162013-01-079
5.10i386, x86-64, ia645.102013-10-082013-10-017
5.11i386, x86-64, ia645.112014-09-232014-09-167
6.0i386, x86-6462011-02-112010-11-1093
6.1i386, x86-646.12011-06-012011-05-1913
6.2i386, x86-646.22011-12-152011-12-069
6.3i386, x86-646.32012-06-282012-06-217
6.4i386, x86-646.42013-02-282013-02-217
6.5i386, x86-646.52013-11-272013-11-216
6.6i386, x86-646.62014-10-212014-10-147
6.7i386, x86-646.72015-07-312015-07-229
7.0x86-647.02014-07-232014-06-1043
7.1x86-647.12015-03-122015-03-057

Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux

Oracle announced on 24 September 2014 Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux distribution which allows users to control Oracle Linux and Oracle VM through OpenStack in production environments. Based on the OpenStack Icehouse release, Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux distribution is a cloud management software product that provides an enterprise type solution to deploy and manage the IT environment. The product maintains the flexibility of OpenStack, allowing users to deploy different configurations, and to integrate with different software and hardware vendors. Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux is available for free download. There is no licensing cost. It can be downloaded for free from the Oracle web page. Supported OpenStack Services in Version 1 includes Nova, Keystone, Cinder, Glance, Neutron, Horizon and Swift. According to Oracle the support for Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux is included as part of Oracle Premier Support for Oracle Linux, Oracle VM, and Systems. Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux can be downloaded from this site.

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