Lessons Learned from Moving On-Prem VMware Oracle Workloads to Google Cloud GCVE Environment

The idea of moving your whole on-prem VMware workloads to GCVE comes with architecture decisions you need to consider.

1. The ideal scenario is for the on-prem system to be able to have an interconnect connection. When talking about data transfer volume, most Oracle workloads would amount to large datasets, thus requiring a higher amount of data to be transferred between the on-prem and Google Cloud GCVE. Consider reviewing your data center location and interconnect connectivity options with GCP.

2. On the topic of licensing, all licensing specific questions go to a compliance licensing expert. One of the things to consider is your current VMware cluster CPU allocation. In this case, make sure you use a Google Cloud Partner, to request the creation to limit the number of CPUs on your GCVE cluster to match your current deployment. 

3. Define your network segments and complete your VPC peering into your Google Cloud project. Make sure your project has all network segments and a VPC has been created, by default, all inbound traffic to the VPC is blocked, and all outbound traffic is permitted. 

On the other hand, when we moved a client, we found a pleasant surprise in the backup and DR space. The tool and implementation that are more in-depth mentioned by our Lead Database Consultant, Raivis Saldabols, come with great features and could be the initial phase for your transformation in adopting out-of-the-box GCP technologies. We found backup and DR, which are based on what was previously known as ACTIFIO, a very robust tool. I recommend searching for Actifio Oracle DBA PDFs still available online to review some use cases for Oracle DBA and search for knowledge on the tool.

In conclusion, moving an Onprem VMware Oracle workload to GCVE comes with its challenges and rewards. Cost savings based on time commits, enterprise-grade redundancy and reliability in GCP, leverage of the Google cloud network, and security schemes. Backup and DR make it easier to backup, restore, deploy, and clone environments (database/VM machines).