Reason | Oracle | VMware | Resources |
1. Application-Driven | - Oracle offers a complete applications-to-disk stack, and virtualization is fully integrated across all layers
- Oracle's virtualization solutions are aware of what’s running inside the virtual machine and can provision and manage applications, middleware, and databases
| - VMware's virtualization/ hypervisor has no awareness of the database, middleware, and applications running inside it
| |
2. Lower Cost | - Unlike VMware, Oracle VM is free to download, use, and distribute
- Affordable support fees
- Simple licensing
| - High cost of ownership
- Very high license, support, and management costs
- Complex licensing
| |
3. Scalability | - Oracle VM 3.0 is 4 Times More Scalable than VMware with support for 128 vCPUs per guest VM
| - VMware vSphere 5 only supports 32 vCPUs per guest VM
| |
4. Integrated Management | - Full stack management
- Manages the hypervisor, physical server,
and
the applications running in it
| - Multiple vendor tools needed for managing the hypervisor and what’s running inside it
| |
5. Accelerating Application Deployment | - Oracle VM Templates offer pre-installed, pre-configured virtual machines of enterprise software including CRM, ERP, clustering, and management, enabling you to deploy in minutes and hours as opposed to days and weeks
- Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder makes it easier to package multi-tier applications and then deploy them with the click of a button
- Best practices for accelerating deployment of complete virtual infrastructure via Oracle VM Reference Configurations
| - Virtual appliances are via a communitymarketplace, not vendor supported
| |
6. High Availability | - Oracle offers high availability for the entire stack—not just the hypervisor level
- Oracle views clustering and virtualization as complementary technologies
- Oracle VM customers can achieve additional high availability from using Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC)
| - High availability is only at the hypervisor level; VMware is completely unaware of application crashes
| |
7. Architected for Efficiency | - Architected for low overhead when moving from physical to virtual servers
- Aggressive testing with real Oracle Database and application workloads
- Oracle has a single engineering team for Linux and Oracle VM, leading to better optimization between Xen and Linux
| - Architecture is prone to inefficiency
| |
8. Integrated Support | - One call to Oracle; no finger pointing at another vendor
- Full stack is certified and supported
- Faster time to resolution
| - Need to deal with numerous vendors for the complete stack and management
| See what customers are saying about the value of integrated support: |
9. Virtualization Built into the System | - In addition to Oracle VM, Oracle offers virtualization built into its hardware and the Oracle Solaris operating system
- Oracle Solaris Containers and Oracle VM for SPARC allows multiple applications to be run on a single system
- Dynamic Domains are included in SPARC Enterprise M-Series servers, enabling greater hardware utilization and providing a high level of isolation from other domains
| - Only offers x86 virtualization
| |
10. Comprehensive Platform Support | - Oracle VM is available for both x86 and SPARC architectures
| - Only x86 platform is supported
| |