Oracle updates Linux FAQs

1. What is Oracle's Unbreakable Linux strategy?

Oracle is fully committed to supporting the Linux operating system. In fact, Oracle was the first commercial database available on Linux. By supporting Linux with Oracle's industry-leading products, we are enabling customers to deploy enterprise-class solutions on the lowest cost hardware and operating system infrastructure. We believe that Linux is more attractive today than ever, as customers are looking for open, cost-effective solutions.

Over the past few years Oracle and its customers have learned a tremendous amount about running Oracle on Linux for enterprise class deployments. Combining this knowledge with the opportunity to drastically reduce IT infrastructure costs has provided the catalyst for Oracle to provide customers with seamless and complete technical support for the Linux OS in addition to support for the Oracle stack. Oracle's delivery of a complete solution, including direct technical support of the operating system, is critical to our customers' success.

With technical contributions to enhance Linux, code-level support of the key Linux systems, and strategic partnerships, Oracle is offering an Unbreakable Linux platform for customers to safely deploy Linux in a mission-critical environment.

2. Which Oracle products are available on Linux?

All key Oracle products, including Oracle Database, Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), Oracle Application Server, Oracle Collaboration Suite, Oracle Developer Suite, and Oracle E-Business Suite are available on Linux. For a list of certified products, please visit Oracle MetaLink.

3. Does Oracle provide technical support for the Linux OS?

Oracle's Unbreakable Linux Support offering includes Linux operating system support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS/ES (RHEL), Novell SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server (SLES), and Asianux. Oracle customers running RHEL, SLES or Asianux, can call Oracle directly for any Oracle or OS issue. Oracle will diagnose the issue and will work with the OS partner to address the operating system issue as needed. For critical OS issues (Priority 1), Oracle will provide a fix directly to the customer regardless of whether the issue is related to an Oracle product or a Red Hat/Novell/Asianux product. Oracle will forward any Linux critical bug fixes/patches to the appropriate Linux distributor for inclusion in their future releases.

Oracle's delivery of a complete and integrated support solution leads to faster problem resolution and reduced support costs, which are critical to our customers' success.

4. Does Oracle charge any fees for providing Linux OS support?

Oracle does not charge any fees for Linux OS support, however, customers must have a current support contract in place with Oracle. In addition, Novell and Asianux customers must maintain current support contracts with those distributors, and Red Hat customers must maintain a Standard or Premium support contract with Red Hat to be eligible for Unbreakable Support.

5. What distributions of Linux does Oracle support?

The following distributions are certified and supported by Oracle:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS and ES (RHEL)
Novell SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server (SLES)
Asianux (only supported in the Asia/Pacific region). The products supported by Oracle, as part of Asianux, include:
Red Flag DC 4.1 Asianux Inside
Miracle Linux 3.0 Asianux Inside

6. Will Oracle provide support if a customer recompiles the kernel or uses third-party software that modifies the kernel?

Customers can take the latest patches/kernels from Red Hat for Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS/ES, from Novell for SLES, or from Asianux, and they will be supported by Oracle for Oracle products running with these operating systems.

It is important for customers and third-party vendors to NOT modify or add anything with the latest kernel/glibc version, in order to receive Unbreakable Support.

If the customer decides to deploy a third-party kernel module, which is not shipped with Oracle supported distribution, Oracle will provide full OS support with the exception that if a problem is determined to be caused by this module, Oracle will defer the customer to the system vendor.

If a generic kernel bug fix can cause the third-party no longer to load after applying the fix, a bug number made available by Oracle will allow the customer to follow up with the third-party vendor to fix the module.

7. Why doesn't Oracle provide technical support for all Linux distributions?

Oracle does not want to support fragmentation in the Linux operating system market. Customers have consistently asked for stability, better performance, and reliability of the Linux platform as well as enterprise-class support. Oracle cannot be effective in addressing these customer needs if we attempt to provide Unbreakable Linux Support for a large number of different Linux distributions.

8. What filesystems are supported for Oracle on Linux?

Supported filesystems include Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM), ext3 (with O_SYNC), NFS, OCFS, ReiserFS, and raw. XFS is not supported.

9. How does Oracle contribute to the enhancement of Linux technology?

Oracle works with the key Linux distributors to test and optimize the OS to effectively handle mission-critical applications. For example, Oracle has collaborated with Red Hat and Novell to create a core set of enhancements in the areas of performance, reliability, clustering and manageability in order to enable Linux to support our customers' enterprise-class deployments. These efforts have been integrated into Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as well as into Novell's SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server. We believe that our work with Red Hat and Novell to enhance the Linux kernel benefits all Linux distributions.

Oracle is actively supporting the Linux open source community by contributing source code for products like Oracle Cluster File System, to drive development of the Linux operating system.

10. Why are Linux developers developing their applications using Oracle's software?

Oracle8i was the first commercially available RDBMS to be certified on Linux. Since then Oracle has been enabling and enhancing Linux and the same enterprise-class Oracle products with proven track records are available for Linux. Oracle continues to attract Linux developers with database technology innovations that are highly available via scalable clustering technology.

11. Does Oracle run its business on Linux?

Oracle has realized first-hand the benefit of lower IT costs from using Linux in a grid computing infrastructure. Oracle On Demand, Oracle's outsourcing business, runs on Linux and we run our Application Demo Systems and Technology Demo Systems, which consist of several hundred servers, on Linux. These systems are utilized by Oracle's worldwide sales organization to provide Oracle product demonstrations to customers and prospects. In addition, several of our Global IT systems are now running on Linux. With more than 9,000 developers using a Linux infrastructure to do product development, Oracle boasts one of the world's largest commercial Linux development organizations.