Certified Oracle Solaris and SPARC Virtualization and Partitioning Technologies for Oracle E-Business Suite

Certified Oracle Solaris and SPARC Virtualization and Partitioning Technologies for Oracle E-Business Suite

Oracle E-Business Suite has been supported on hardware vendor virtualization technologies (running on non x86/x86-64 architectures) following the 'supported but not explicitly certified' principle as outlined in the My Oracle Support Document 794016.1.

Oracle E-Business Suite is comprised of both an application tier (applications code and Fusion Middleware components) as well as a database tier (Oracle Database) - any limitations of the Oracle Database or Fusion Middleware with respect to the use of virtualization technologies necessarily also apply to Oracle E-Business Suite's tiers (see References section below for links).

All requirements listed in the Oracle E-Business Suite Installation and Upgrade Notes (see References section below) must be met in order to use E-Business Suite with these virtualization technologies.

Certifications for E-Business Suite Release 12

The following are the specific technologies certified explicitly for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12:

Dynamic System Domains

Dynamic System Domains is a hardware partitioning technology (with electrical and physical isolation) built in to the Sun SPARC Enterprise M-Series server family. Dynamic Reconfiguration technology is used with Dynamic System Domains in order to reallocate resources between different domains (such as removing and adding CPUs, memory and I/O subsystems). See this white paper for information on the use of these technologies.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (12.0.4 or higher, 12.1.1 or higher) is certified with this hardware partitioning technology for Sun SPARC Enterprise M-Series servers running Oracle Solaris on SPARC versions 9 or 10.

Oracle VM Server for SPARC

Oracle VM Server for SPARC (previously known as Logical Domains or LDoms) is a hypervisor-based virtual partition technology available on Sun SPARC T-Series servers. It allows for a single physical server to be partitioned into domains each with its own access to resources while running a separate instance of the operating system. See this data sheet for more information.

Oracle VM Server for SPARC version 1.3 or higher is certified with Oracle E-Business Release 12 (12.0.4 or higher, 12.1.1 or higher) running Solaris 10 10/09 (Update 8) or higher. The Fusion Middleware versions bundled with EBS must be upgraded to 10gR2 (10.1.2.3 or higher) and 10gR3 (10.1.3.4 or higher).

Oracle Solaris Containers

Oracle Solaris Containers is an OS partitioning technology specific to the Solaris operating system - it allows for multiple instances of 'local' hosts running within a single global instance of an OS.

Solaris Containers version Solaris 10 10/09 (Update 8) or higher is certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (12.0.4 or higher, 12.1.1 or higher). The Fusion Middleware versions bundled with EBS must be upgraded to 10gR2 (10.1.2.3 or higher) and 10gR3 (10.1.3.4 or higher).

On the application tier, both local and global Containers are certified with the E-Business Suite.

On the database tier, please refer to the specific requirements and limitations listed in the 'Supported Virtualization and Partitioning Technologies for Oracle Database and RAC Product Releases' document.

Solaris Branded Zones

The use of Branded Zones (specifically Solaris 10 Zones) for use with the SPARC-based Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud T3-1B system is certified for the E-Business Suite R12 (12.1.1 or higher) application tier. A Solaris 10 zone is an instance of Solaris 10 running as a container within a native Solaris 11 Express operating system (see the System Administration Guide in the References section below) which is the Solaris version installed on the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud T3-1B.

Note that Oracle Solaris 11 Express (SPARC) is not a fully certified Oracle E-Business Suite platform - there are plans to certify E-Business Suite Release 12 (both the application and database tiers) on Solaris 11 when it becomes generally available in the future.

All requirements pertaining to the use of E-Business Release 12 on Solaris 10 applies to Solaris 10 Zones with the addition of the following requirements as outlined in the current E-Business Suite Installation and Upgrade Notes for Oracle Solaris on SPARC (64-bit):

Patch 127111-11 which supersedes 127111-02
Patch 137111-09 which supersedes 137111-04
The Oracle Database is not supported or certified to run on a Solaris 10 branded zone within Solaris 11 Express - the use of an Oracle E-Business Suite R12 application tier in a Solaris 10 zone on Oracle Exalogic T3-1B must be in conjunction with running the database tier on a native Solaris 10 or other E-Business Suite certified database tier platform.



Support for E-Business Suite Release 11i

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i's terminal release (11.5.10.2) has been in Extended Support since December 2010 (see the Oracle Lifetime Support web page for details).

For Dynamic Systems Domains, Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Solaris Containers, E-Business Suite 11i continues to be supported under the previous 'supported but not explicitly certified' philosophy as outlined in the My Oracle Support Document 794016.1.

References

Hardware Vendor Virtualization Technologies on non x86/x86-64 Architectures and Oracle E-Business Suite (My Oracle Support Note 794016.1)
Supported Virtualization and Partitioning Technologies for Oracle Fusion Middleware
Supported Virtualization and Partitioning Technologies for Oracle Database and RAC Product Releases
Oracle's Optimized Solution for Mission Critical Databases - A Technical White Paper
Oracle VM Server for SPARC
Oracle E-Business Suite Installation and Upgrade Notes Release 12 (12.1.1) for Oracle Solaris on SPARC (64-bit) (My Oracle Support Note 761568.1)
Oracle Applications Installation and Upgrade Notes Release 12 (12.0.4) for Solaris Operating System (SPARC) (My Oracle Support Note 402312.1)
System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Zones, Oracle Solaris 10 Containers, and Resource Management
Oracle Announces SPARC Solaris-Based Exalogic Elastic Cloud System
Change Record