You might be wondering why OVM Server for x86 (OVM/x86 here and below) should be seriously considered as a nice (business point of view) alternative to standard Hypervisors, if you are virtualizing Oracle Software, especially if you are planning to move to Oracle x86 Hardware (rackmount or blades). Well, let see some "not well known" facts that might interest you and help you in saving more money for your entire company (and not only the Virtulization team).

Fact 1: OVM/x86 is considered as a hard partitionning technology (check page 2 of Oracle Server Partitionning Licencing Policies), so if you are buying new servers based on the latest INTEL Xeon E7 CPUs (10 cores per Socket) and have some licencing issues in deploying further Oracle SW, because you are using a hypervisor not recognized as a hard partitionning technology (like VMware), then you need to check here how to do it with OVM . This might help you to continue to deploy your Oracle DB instances on new x86 HW (12 cores, 40 cores, 64 cores servers) in a reasonable way, without having to pay licences for 12 CPU, 40 CPUs or 64 CPUs. You might also consider migrating your legacy Oracle DB DBs to a virtualized environment like OVM/x86 an recover some CPU licences, that can be reused somewhere else in production.

Fact 2: OVM/x86 is free to use, without any extra licence for any specific feature (LiveMigration, High Availability, Embedded Management Console). If you want to use it on non Oracle HW, there is a support fee per  system and per year, that is much below VMware support (Oracle VM Premier Limited Support for systems up to 2 CPUs, and Oracle VM Premier Support for any bigger system, independently on the number of populated sockets).

Fact 3: support is included with your Oracle x86 HW support (OPS for systems)  and you can re-install on you system Oracle Linux, Oracle Solaris or Oracle VM server for x86, without beeing charged, an keeping the same support level.

Fact 4: it is less expensive to virtualize Oracle Linux or Oracle Solaris on OVM/x86 with Oracle HW that any other similar solution with VMware, because all the VMs are then supported and licenced when you buy Oracle HW with OPS.

Fact 5: Oracle VM Templates bring you many Virtual Machines already installed, patched and optimized for various Oracle applications. And to be more specific, those templates are fully supported by Oracle, which is not really true when it comes to another hypervisor. By optimized VM Kernel, I mean PV drivers, OVM-ready kernels in the VM, single source clock for all the VMS, better memory management of the VM ...

Fact 6: there is no extra costs for a management console. OVM comes with a free OVM Manager package for Linux. 

More infos:

• Latest announcement of OVM/x86 update 2.2.2
• A short flash demo of OVM server for x86
• A short flash demo on OVM Templates and Virtual Assembly Builder
• Oracle Linux Support and Oracle VM Support Global Price List 
• ISVs: Benefits for Independant Sofwtare Vendors (ISVs) in using OVM/x86
• Consultant Services: Advanced Customer Services for OVM/x86 
• Technical Features
• Best practices and Guideline for OVM with Oracle Blades
• Reduce TCO and get more Value from your x86 Infrastructure