Oracle Enterprise Linux - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Oracle Linux, formerly known as Oracle Enterprise Linux, is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux-based operating system developed by Red Hat and targeted toward the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86, x86-64, Itanium, PowerPC and IBM System z, and desktop versions for x86 and x86-64...

-compatible distribution, repackaged and sold by Oracle

Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...

, available under the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

(GPL) since late 2006.

Oracle Linux can be freely downloaded through Oracle's E-delivery service, and can be deployed and distributed without cost. Commercial technical support is available through Oracle's Oracle Unbreakable Linux Support program, which supports Oracle Linux, and existing RHEL or CentOS

CentOS

CentOS is a free operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux . It exists to provide a free enterprise class computing platform and strives to maintain 100% binary compatibility with its upstream distribution...

installations (i.e. without reinstallation). As of 2011, Oracle Linux has over 8,000 customers subscribed to the support program.

RHEL compatibility

Oracle Corporation distributes Oracle Linux with two kernels:

Red Hat Compatible Kernel - identical to the kernel shipped in Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux-based operating system developed by Red Hat and targeted toward the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86, x86-64, Itanium, PowerPC and IBM System z, and desktop versions for x86 and x86-64...

(RHEL).
Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel - based on a later Linux 2.6-series kernel, with Oracle's own enhancements for OLTP
Online transaction processing
Online transaction processing, or OLTP, refers to a class of systems that facilitate and manage transaction-oriented applications, typically for data entry and retrieval transaction processing...

, Infiniband
InfiniBand
InfiniBand is a switched fabric communications link used in high-performance computing and enterprise data centers. Its features include high throughput, low latency, quality of service and failover, and it is designed to be scalable...

, and SSD
Solid-state drive
A solid-state drive , sometimes called a solid-state disk or electronic disk, is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data with the intention of providing access in the same manner of a traditional block i/o hard disk drive...

disk access, NUMA
Non-Uniform Memory Access
Non-Uniform Memory Access is a computer memory design used in Multiprocessing, where the memory access time depends on the memory location relative to a processor...

-optimizations, RDS
Reliable Datagram Sockets
Reliable Datagram Sockets is a high-performance, low-latency reliable connectionless protocol for delivering datagrams. It is developed by Oracle Corporation.It was included in the Linux kernel 2.6.30 which was released on 9th of June, 2009...

, async I/O
Asynchronous I/O
Asynchronous I/O, or non-blocking I/O, is a form of input/output processing that permits other processing to continue before the transmission has finished....

, OCFS
OCFS
OCFS is a shared disk file system developed by Oracle Corporation and released under the GNU General Public License....

, and networking.

Oracle claims that the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel is compatible with RHEL, and Oracle middleware and 3rd-party RHEL-certified applications can be installed and run unchanged on Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel.

Hardware compatibility

Oracle Linux is certified on servers from IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

, HP, Dell

Dell

Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...

, and Cisco

Cisco

Cisco may refer to:Companies:*Cisco Systems, a computer networking company* Certis CISCO, corporatised entity of the former Commercial and Industrial Security Corporation in Singapore...

. In 2010, Force10

Force10

Force10 Networks , is a United States company which develops and markets 10 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit Ethernet switches for computer networking to corporate, educational, and governmental customers. It has offices in North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region.In 2011 Dell announced that they...

announced support for Oracle VM and Oracle Linux. Oracle Linux is also available on Amazon EC2 as an Amazon Machine Image

Amazon Machine Image

An Amazon Machine Image is a special type of virtual appliance which is used to instantiate a virtual machine within the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud...

.

Oracle/Sun servers and blades with x86-64 processors can be configured to ship with Oracle Linux.

Virtualization support

Under the Unbreakable Linux program, Oracle supports KVM

Kernel-based Virtual Machine

Kernel-based Virtual Machine is a virtualization infrastructure for the Linux kernel. KVM supports native virtualization on processors with hardware virtualization extensions....

and Xen

Xen

Xen is a virtual-machine monitor providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently....

.

Oracle products (including Oracle Database and other Oracle Applications) are only supported under the Xen-based Oracle VM

Oracle VM

Oracle VM is the server virtualization offering from Oracle Corporation. Oracle VM is based on the open-source Xen hypervisor technology, supports Windows, Linux, and Oracle Solaris guests and includes an integrated Web based management console. Oracle VM features fully tested and certified Oracle...

Oracle Linux deployment inside Oracle

Oracle Linux is used by Oracle internally to lower IT costs. Oracle Linux is deployed on more than 42,000 servers by Oracle Global IT; Oracle On Demand, Oracle University, and Oracle's technology demo systems also run Oracle Linux.

Software developers at Oracle develop Oracle Database

Oracle Database

The Oracle Database is an object-relational database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation....

, Fusion Middleware

Oracle Fusion Middleware

Oracle Fusion Middleware consists of several software products from Oracle Corporation. OFM spans multiple services, including Java EE and developer tools, integration services, business intelligence, collaboration, and content management...

, Oracle Grid Engine, E-Business Suite and other Oracle Applications

Oracle Applications

Oracle Applications comprise the applications software or business software of Oracle Corporation. The term refers to the non-database parts of Oracle's software portfolio....

on Oracle Linux.

Oracle Linux-related products

Oracle Linux is used as the underlying operating system for the following appliances.

Oracle Exadata
Oracle Exadata
Oracle Exadata is a database appliance with support for both OLTP and OLAP workloads. It was initially designed in collaboration between Oracle Corporation and Hewlett Packard where Oracle designed the database, operating system , and storage software whereas HP designed the hardware for it...
Oracle Exalogic
Oracle Exalogic
Exalogic is a computer appliance made by Oracle Corporation, commercially available since 2010. It is a cluster of x86-64-servers with preinstalled Fusion Middleware....
Oracle Big Data Appliance
Oracle Exalytics

Oracle Linux specific addition

Ksplice
Ksplice
Ksplice is an open source extension of the Linux kernel which allows system administrators to apply security patches to a running kernel without having to reboot the operating system. Ksplice has been implemented for Linux on the x86-32 and x86-64 architectures. It was developed by Ksplice, Inc...

- Oracle acquired Ksplice Inc in 2011, and offers Oracle Linux users Ksplice to enable hot kernel patching
DTrace
DTrace
DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework created by Sun Microsystems for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time...

- Oracle ported DTrace from Solaris as a Linux kernel module

Future SPARC version

In December 2010, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison

Lawrence Joseph "Larry" Ellison is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation, one of the world's leading enterprise software companies. As of 2011, he is the third wealthiest American citizen, with an estimated worth of $33 billion.- Early life :Larry Ellison was born in the...

announced that future versions of Oracle Linux will run on Oracle's SPARC

SPARC

SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....

and UltraSPARC T-series

UltraSPARC T1

|right|262px|UltraSPARC T1 processorSun Microsystems' UltraSPARC T1 microprocessor, known until its 14 November 2005 announcement by its development codename "Niagara", is a multithreading, multicore CPU...

(Niagara) platforms.

Release history

Oracle Linux 6, 6.1
Oracle Enterprise Linux 5, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7
Oracle Unbreakable Linux 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.