Oracle Enterprise Manager vs. Oracle VirtualBox

OEM is very well suited for all Oracle products, especially Oracle databases and Exadata machines; even not Oracle hardware, it is very good and displaying high level details. OEM is not well suited for older hardware vendors like AIX, HP-UX, DEC/Digital, Microsoft (sql server). This is a big negative as most large companies have a heterogeneous environment with many different vendor hardware and (database) software products.

Incentivized

It is best suited when you want to have different operating systems on your laptop or desktop. You can easily switch between operating systems without the need to uninstall one. In another scenario, if you expect some application to damage your device, it would be best to run the application on the VM such that the damage can only be done to the virtual machine. It is less appropriate when time synchronization is very important. At times the VMs run their own times differently from the host time and this may cause some losses if what you doing is critical. Another important thing to take note of is the licensing of the application you want to run your VM. Some licenses do not allow the applications to be run on virtual servers so it is not appropriate to use the VM at this time.

Incentivized

• Monitoring Templates: There are out of box monitoring templates for each target types, you can customize them or use them as it is.
• Administrative Groups: This is a relatively new feature in OEM Cloud Control. This lets you create and manage your targets and monitoring templates smarter and with less re-work.
• DB Monitoring: There are so many cool DB monitoring features and visual graphics, that it can be used by both DBA and functional people to see what's going on in the database.

Incentivized

• It is simple to install - there is no advanced knowledge required to begin building virtual computers
• It is easy to use - adding new virtual machines is simple with wizard-based deployment
• It enables easy portability - moving virtual machines from one host to another is straight-forward and simple
• It is free

Incentivized

• Bugs. Every version we upgrade to has a number of bugs. Some stop us from rolling to production OEM (we have a sandbox OEM), some are simply annoying. If I could improve on one thing, it would be for better QA from oracle before releasing each version.
• Flash. I'm told that they are moving from Flash to Jet in version 13.3 and beyond (we are on 13.2 currently). That change cannot come soon enough. The OEM pages load SO slowly due to Flash.
• Hierarchy Groups. OEM allows five Hierarchy groups. A Hierarchy group allows a top down metric/rule roll out. However, they limit you to five. I'd like to see them open that up, so that we can have any number of custom groups.

Incentivized

• I have had issues in the past when it has come to resizing VM disk storage. The issue is entirely detailed here: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/9103 -- the problem was caused because of having existing snapshots (which error message output was not detailing). I haven't had to deal with the issue due to my dynamic disk sizes not being small from the start anymore (this is mostly an issue for my Windows VMs where the base disk may need significant size for the OS). It looks like, for a resize, that a merge of all snapshots has to occur first -- one user on that list details a workaround to maintain snapshots by cloning the VM. (Note: 5.2 was just released a few weeks ago, and looks like it should prevent the problem happening in the future by properly informing users that it isn't possible with snapshots).
• Certain scenarios, like resizing disks, required dropping into a terminal as there were no options to previously do so via the GUI. According to some recent posts, I've seen that v5.2 has added disk management stuff like that to the GUI (or will be adding it). I'm comfortable with dropping into the terminal, but in a teaching scenario or when evaluating the learnability of the tools, it complicates things.

Incentivized

I give this rating because virtual box is inexpensive but there is another product such as vm ware that can also be used

Incentivized

It's great! It does everything and anything you would want it to do. It can monitor things which doesn't comes out of the box by adding plug ins to it, for example, you can even monitor Oracle GoldenGate Replication by adding a plug-in to OEM Cloud Control.

Incentivized

I love using the Graphical User Interface. The VirtualBox Manager is very easy to understand and use. You can quickly create, configure and manage all your virtual machines in one window. It makes operating virtual machines easy and simple. When using VBoxManage it gives the user comprehensive control over VirtualBox so that you can use automation and scripting at the command-line interface

Incentivized

Dependency on the Host OS means it is as reliable as it is possible to be. Application errors are beyond the purview of the application.

Incentivized

No issues, especially with the extensions addons.

Incentivized

I still rate OEM as a must-have tool for central management of Oracle fleet. The pros and cons of the product is prominent. Meanwhile, I also acknowledge that OEM was design about a decade ago. At that time, it did not have the landscape we have today, such as cloud, DEVOPS, machine learning, etc. I hope in future releases, the design will incorporate those features.

Incentivized

Oracle have a very fast response rate and a strong user community. One can geet help from many sources if they choose to research for themselves.

Incentivized

We really enjoy using virtual box. We do not require to buy expensive hardware but instead we can minimize costs and maximize profits.

Incentivized

Being an Oracle shop using Oracle Database and MySQL, management console from Oracle was a better choice than IBM or Microsoft even though we do use Microsoft Azure and storage/servers from IBM (on-prem).

Incentivized

VirutalBox is very similar to using Vmware with the slight difference in appearance and what might be considered a less polished look. However, what it lacks in polish and looks it makes up for in functionality, easy of use and the wide range of operating systems and features it supports without the need of buying the full professional edition

Incentivized

The only problem I have found is that the deployment is dependent and intrinsically linked to the Host OS. This is different from bare metal solutions which remove that dependency on a Host OS. The latter is more reliable and removes a layer of potential failure.

Incentivized

I work with OEM SCP team. They are great.

Incentivized

• We are a 7x24 shop. Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control helps us meet that objective by proactively warning us before issues cause down time. Things like disk space, archive log issues or temporary table space issues.
• Spreading the use of this tool outside of the DBA group has allowed us to not hire additional personnel for those teams. Over time, as folks have retired from our operations team, we are not replacing them. Instead we have used OEM Cloud Control to automate tasks.
• We also now have the tools to measure up-time by using specific measurements inside of OEM. This allows us to report real numbers to management.

Incentivized

• Minimal-to-no support needed from the DevOps team.
• Provides a direct and an easy way to access multiple VMs inside the same machines which enables performing various testing and QA tasks without the need to switch hardware.
• Automatic provisioning using tools (esp. Vagrant) which enables developing a base image once, and allows for exporting/importing anywhere across the developers team.
• Very cost-effective (no fees or monthly subscriptions).

Incentivized