Oracle Hypes Server, Management Intro

A year after claiming that its "integrated and expansive virtualization portfolio is far superior to the 'point' solution offered by VMware," Oracle teed up the market leader for another shot, saying that its newly introduced Oracle VM 3.0 delivers four times better scalability that VMware "at a fraction of the cost." Oracle 3.0 is the latest release of the company's server virtualization and management product.

Oracle claims to provide full stack support for virtualization from application to disk, and for cloud computing needs.

Oracle's assertions came as part of a product announcement for not only Oracle VM 3.0, but also Oracle VM Storage Connect plug-ins for Oracle VM 3.0.

Version 3.0--which is available via a free download and has no license cost--is targeted at datacenter workloads and includes new, policy-based management capabilities, advanced storage management via the VM Storage Connect plug-in API, centralized network configuration management, improved ease-of-use and Open Virtualization Format (OVF) support.

Oracle expanded on its claim of 4x better scalability than VMware by saying the 3.0 product supports "up to 128 virtual CPUs per VM at a fraction of the cost." It did not, however, release any pricing information to substantiate that claim. Nor did it substantiate its assertion that when compared to VMware vSphere 5 running Red Hat Enterprise Linux guest VMs, Oracle VM 3.0 running Oracle Linux guest VMs is four times less expensive.

Oracle VM Storage Connect Plug-ins for Oracle VM 3.0 is a framework enabling storage vendors to make their advanced storage features "a natural part" of Oracle VM. It reportedly allows customers to transparently manage storage and virtualization together via the newly announced Oracle VM Manager, which is a component of VM 3.0.

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 08/25/2011 at 12:48 PM