I have a lot of sympathy for Chad’s and Chuck’s recent posts here and here on Oracle support for VMware but I would have a lot more sympathy for them if EMC did not have such a track-record for using the support matrix as a marketing weapon.
EMC’s continued refusal to certify another controller in front of their arrays, be it NetApp, HDS or IBM; makes their current spat with Oracle quite amusing from where I’m sitting. I know many customers who have requested that EMC certify NetApp v-class in front of various EMC arrays, this always met with an unequivocal NO with dark mutterings as there being issues. If you challenge EMC as to what the issues are, you generally get a lot hand-wafting and nothing more.
Now, we know that various EMC arrays work behind NetApp because there’s an increasing number of customers who are doing so without EMC’s certification but certification would be nice or at least an open discussion to as to what the problems are?
The support matrix should not be used as a marketing and sales tool; it should be used to genuinely add value to the customer/vendor relationship. So guys put your own houses in order before throwing stones!
The difference here being that Oracle has never certified hardware, it's just explicitly stating that they will not support VMware.
So Oracle certifies that it runs on Windows or RedHat and MS/RedHat says Windows/RHEL runs fine in VMware, where's Oracle's problem with VMware?
In the eLab case it's just like any other customer putting a niche OS in front of EMC gear. It doesn't matter if it's an SVC/V-Series/USP/other or some niche flavour of Linux. There were more requests for MacOS X support, which is why it was added, than there are for support of those platforms combined.
The difference here being that Oracle has never certified hardware, it's just explicitly stating that they will not support VMware.
So Oracle certifies that it runs on Windows or RedHat and MS/RedHat says Windows/RHEL runs fine in VMware, where's Oracle's problem with VMware?
In the eLab case it's just like any other customer putting a niche OS in front of EMC gear. It doesn't matter if it's an SVC/V-Series/USP/other or some niche flavour of Linux. There were more requests for MacOS X support, which is why it was added, than there are for support of those platforms combined.