On-premises, physical servers can run workloads directly on bare metal hardware when performance or compatibility require them. But customers want the same options when choosing an on-premises, public cloud solution. Most customers also run VMware in their data centers and cannot tolerate any risk when moving to cloud. They need to maintain the operation and management of their native environment as closely and with as little modification as possible.
Customers want to migrate the workloads running on these physical servers and VMware environments without rearchitecting applications, changing familiar software or IT processes, or introducing complexity into their operations. Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer meets user requirements in these areas.
Migrate and run non-virtualized workloads
You can run your workloads without a hypervisor because Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer provides dedicated server hardware, such as bare metal shapes, for workloads that can only run in non-virtualized environments because of compatibility needs. Without the overhead of virtualization, customers’ specialized and traditional workloads also achieve the same high levels of performance, just as they would on-premises. Unlike other on-premises public cloud offerings that can install agents and extra software, Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer installs zero software on bare metal shapes. As a result, non-virtualized workloads run faster in an environment that offers consistency in response to application calls. Customers can run the largest non-virtualized workloads on Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer with the largest bare metal shapes: Up to 128 cores, 2 TB of RAM, and 1 PB of storage.
You can run your non-virtualized workloads on an extensive list of operating systems supported on Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer’s bare metal shapes, including Microsoft Windows Server and enterprise Linux operating systems (Oracle Linux, CentOS, Ubuntu, and others). Oracle Autonomous Linux is a free, autonomous operating environment that reduces complexity and human error to deliver increased cost savings, security, and availability. You can also create disk images from Oracle and our partners to run Oracle Applications and third-party business applications. You can also bring your own operating systems and hypervisors to run on Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer. Non-virtualized workloads can’t run on AWS Outposts because it doesn’t provide bare metal instances.
Migrate and run VMware workloads with lowest risk
Most customers have VMware implementations in their data centers and can’t tolerate any risk when moving to cloud. In such a scenario, Oracle Cloud VMware Solution provides a customer-managed VMware environment running on Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer. Customer-managed means the same customer’s VMware implementation on top of Oracle’s cloud hardware, which is managed by the customer’s existing VMware staff.
Unlike managed services, we don’t layer on more automation that takes away investment in skills, tools, and experience. Full transfer of skills means that the migration of customized VMware estates can be done with lower risk. When moving their VMware estate to the cloud, customers need to maintain the operation and management of their native environment as closely as possible, with as little modification as possible. Oracle Cloud VMware Solution running on Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer has the smallest learning curve and provides the smoothest migration for VMware workloads.
As for control, enterprise IT teams want full administrative control over their VMware environments. For example, they want to edit the vSAN cluster settings, browse the datastore, upload files to it, or delete files from it, just like their on-premises VMware implementation. They also don’t want to upgrade software versions to someone else’s schedule. Why? They might have databases certified on previous versions of VMware and want to thoroughly test for compatibility with existing applications and configurations. Managed VMware services take away this level of control. Customers must run the version of VMware chosen by the cloud provider with no customer-selectable version. The cloud provider—not the customer—controls the software update policy, such as version, time, and deferment.
With managed VMware services, customer access to ESXi host is also restricted. They can’t access or configure hosts, clusters, and management VMs. Customers have full root access to the ESXi hosts when their workloads run in Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customers. Version updates are done on the timeline of the customer. So, customers who are running a particular version of ESXi on-premises can match that to the version running in Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer because there are no forced upgrades.
Many VMware customers tell us they have a diverse portfolio of applications, and only by giving customers such complete control of their environment can a smooth migration happen. Customers can’t bring their VMware workloads to Outposts currently, because VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts is not generally available, but it is in beta.
Customer success
Oman Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Group is an entity within the government of Oman dedicated to developing ICT sector for national advancement. Oman ICT Group sought to modernize both its Oracle and non-Oracle workloads to increase efficiency and performance. Because it needed to keep all government and citizen data within its geographic borders, Oman ICT Group selected Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer to ensure the highest level of data privacy and price-performance while also provisioning cloud services, workloads, and standardized IT operations for over 120 government and semi-government entities.
“Oracle Dedicated Region enables a variety of use cases, from migrating Oracle ERP and CRM applications to deploying custom developed applications using Oracle Database, as well as implementing Digital Innovation services, such as Blockchain, AI, and Big Data, and high-performance computing (HPC),” said Al-Mandhari, CEO of Oman ICT Group.
Forward perspective
Oracle is committed to enabling customers with the most competitive cloud solution offerings in support of their business requirements and modernization path forward. For our next post in the blog series, we will spotlight how Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer helps customers migrate Oracle workloads better than AWS Outposts.
Learn more about how Oracle is transforming customer data centers with Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer. Watch the Oracle Cloud Platform Virtual Summit today.