What is Oracle Linux?
*This is the second half of the previous article.
Free of charge even in a production environment
Oracle Linux is a RHEL-compatible distribution that can be used for free even in production environments. Updates will also be provided for the same length of time as RHEL.
Oracle Linux has attracted a lot of attention in recent years due to the announcement at the end of 2020 that CentOS would be discontinued as a RHEL-compatible distribution. CentOS 8, which was originally scheduled to be supported until 2029, was discontinued at the end of 2021. Updates are no longer provided, and the mirror site has stopped.
Subsequently, new RHEL-compatible distributions such as AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux were also released. Oracle Linux, on the other hand, has the advantage of a long track record in the enterprise space. In addition to providing updates quickly, there is also a huge amount of supported hardware and third-party software.
The table below shows the support period for each distribution.
| Linux distribution | Support period |
|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | 2024/6/30 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | 2029/5/31 |
| CentOS 7 | 2024/6/30 |
| CentOS 8 | 2021/12/31 |
| Oracle Linux 7 | 2024/12 |
| Oracle Linux 8 | 2029/7 |
Technical support is not available with the free version of Oracle Linux, but this is the same as with CentOS and other RHEL-compatible distributions.
We also currently offer migration tools from CentOS and RHEL to Oracle Linux. These tools allow you to upgrade in-place without reinstalling.
* This procedure requires a paid support contract.
10 year support period equivalent to RHEL
Extended support is also available for a fee
Some companies may need technical support. By subscribing to paid support for Oracle Linux, you can receive technical support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and you can also benefit from advantages such as Ksplice and other paid support.
In addition to standard Premier Support, the support contract has several options, including Basic Support, which has a narrower scope of support but is cheaper, and Extended Support, which allows you to receive more extensive updates than usual.
Notably, it has more freedom than RHEL’s subscription “RED HAT Enterprise Contract”. RED HAT Enterprise Contracts are difficult to cancel and users tend to be locked in. Compared to that, Oracle Linux can provide flexible contracts according to the convenience of the user. Please contact our sales team for more information.
Ksplice rebootless patch adaptability
Ksplice is a live patching system that can update the kernel without rebooting the OS. To enable the updated Linux kernel, you must reboot the OS. However, with Ksplice, you can enable updates without having to reboot.
The key benefits are as follows:
- Patch application/rollback with no downtime
- Respond quickly to security vulnerabilities
Ksplice is a feature available to Premier Support subscribers and can also be used with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. It supports not only UEK but also RHCK, and it also supports libraries such as glibc and openssl.
RHEL also offers a live patching system called kpatch, but it is not as advanced as Ksplice.
Advanced enterprise features
Oracle Linux is often used for enterprise, so it has a lot of features for security and scale.
In the field of security, it also provides support for FIPS 140-2 (Federal Information Processing Standards) and a Security Technology Implementation Guide (STIG).
Some of the advanced features include the Solaris-inherited trace tool DTrace, scalable distributed storage Gluster Storage, and clustering software Oracle Clusterware.
In addition, it provides various functions that enable efficient building and operation of large-scale environments. The following table compares Oracle Linux and RHEL.
| Tools/Foundation | RHEL | Oracle Linux |
|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure management tools | Red Hat Satellite | Oracle Linux Manager（Spacewalk） |
| Configuration management tools | Ansible Tower | Oracle Linux Automation Manager（AWX） |
| Virtualization environment management tools | Red Hat Virtualization | Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager（oVert） |
| Kubernetes platform | OpenShift | Oracle Cloud Native Environment |
Hardware partitioning with Oracle Linux KVM
So far, we have focused on the Linux part. When Oracle products are used on Oracle Linux KVM virtual servers, there is a significant licensing benefit.
There is a troublesome problem when using Oracle products such as Oracle Database in a virtual server environment. This is the rule that, “When using Oracle products in a virtual server environment, regardless of the number of cores assigned to the guest OS, all server processors will be counted.”
In recent years, due to the progress of multi-core CPUs and manycore CPUs, it has become an extremely expensive license. Oracle Linux KVM is recognized as a hard partitioning technology, so you can use Oracle products with appropriate licensing fees even in virtual server environments.
For details, see the Partitioning Guide Oracle Partitioning Policy
Summary
Did you understand what Oracle Linux is? Again, the following is explained in “What is Oracle Linux?” in the first half.
- 100% application binary compatible with RHEL
- Many years of use in enterprise areas such as Exadata
- Free of charge even in a production environment
- 10-year support period equivalent to RHEL. Extended support is also available for a fee
- Easy-to-use paid support contract compared to RED HAT Enterprise Contract
- Offers an Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel based on a newer kernel in addition to the RHEL-compatible kernel
- Ksplice rebootless patch adaptability
Next time, we will explore what the differences are while actually using Oracle Linux. In addition, if you want to use it right away, we recommend Oracle Cloud Free Tier (Always Free) that you can use for free. You may also want to check out the documentation available on the following website.