Oracle VM – Xen Hypervisor

Oracle did what we expected and hoped for, they released their virtualization product, Oracle VM, today at OpenWorld. Oracle VM (aka Oracle Virtual Server and OVS) is Oracle’s implementation of the Xen Hypervisor and more importantly management tools for your virtualized infrastructure.

The Oracle VM product will be freely available on OTN on Wednesday. Oracle will be selling support for Oracle VM at about the same rate as Unbreakable Linux support.

I am sure the Linux purest are grumbling heatedly over this announcement. But for those who have to support real systems, it will be a huge step in the right direction. Oracle is also releasing a Oracle VM Manager, which manages the Xen environment in a web-based application similar to Virtual Center for VMware. The next release of Oracle Enterprise Manager, 11g, will have a full featured management pack for Oracle VM. Both management products are very promising and have been the missing piece of Xen going mainstream.

I talked to one of the members of the product team in depth. He gave me a demo of the Oracle VM Manager and discussed the history behind Oracle VM. I guess they wanted to release the product months ago, but had to re-write pieces of the Xen Hypervisor to work in an enterprise fashion. We also discussed some of the future steps Oracle VM will be taking, and without disclosing too much information, they are going down the right path IMHO.

I would suggest browsing Oracle FAQ on Oracle VM at http://www.oracle.com/technologies/virtualization/docs/ovm-faq.pdf

For more information see, http://www.oracle.com/technologies/virtualization/index.html