Why Oracle Virtual Machine

* Oracle VM doesn't have the same Oracle licensing and support issues as VMWare.

* Oracle provide pre-configured templates (over 100) for deployment on OVM to speed up initial deployment

* Oracle VM supports Oracle Linux, Oracle Solaris, Microsoft Windows, and other Linux distros

* Oracle VM integrates with Oracle Enterprise Manager

* Oracle VM is FREE

There are some interesting quotes from Overstock.com... who apparently achieve 100% Uptime with Oracle Linux and Oracle VM...

"If I had to operate without Oracle VM, I would be spending up to 87 percent more on just the hardware and the Oracle Database license than what I'm spending."

There's also a direct VMWare to OVM comparison here...

and an OVM vs VMWare Cost Calculator here...

Admittedly Oracle could be considered to be acting unfairly in their stance on licensing for VMWare (all cores on all servers must be licensed), but it's not a situation we can change.

For me, VMWare also shoot themselves in the foot in their own sales literature...

"Near Native Performance – Oracle databases run at performance and service levels similar to that of a physical system with minimal virtualization overhead."

Independent testing of OVM shows...

"Revera Limited (an infrastructure service provider in New Zealand) compared single instance Oracle Database 11g performance on Oracle VM, on physical servers, and on a competitive virtualization solution. Oracle VM delivered better response times (and more transactions per minute, even exceeding bare metal in some cases), while using less CPU than the nonOracle virtualization technology"

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