We were considering using Xen Server. We came across oracle vm which seem like has more features. Would anyone recommand which product might be better?
Seem like oracle vm comes with some options you have to pay for from Xen Server and is based off of Xen.
Anyone know? Thanks
We use Xen itself and not a derivative of it like Oracle VM and Citrix XenServer. Xen is less "user friendly" but has the broadest range of features available and nearly everything for it is free whereas you have to pay for most of that stuff with the commercial derivs. We are extremely happy with Xen and would not seriously consider the derivs after having used it.
Since both Oracle VM and Xenserver, use the XEN hypervisor under the hood, the main differences are going to be in the management tools and support. If you use any other Oracle tools, then I would say that you should stick with Oracle for support reasons. If you use Citrix in-house, then go with Xenserver.
Otherwise, compare the features of the management tools and see if there is anything there that would guide your choice.
In either case your virtual machines will get the same virtualization facility under the hood. Only your admin and ops people will notice a difference.
We're using both, and they are not all that different when it comes to features. Notably, Oracle supports PVM for Windows guests, and can be managed from within Oracle Enterprise Manager.
If you are planning to run Oracle databases you may want to go with Oracle VM to avoid licensing issues (such as having to buy a database license for every cpu in the cluster) and to have a single point for support.
edit> There's one significant difference, come to think of it; The management tools for Oracle VM does not support snapshots, although you can probably work something out on the storage level (LVM, NAS or SAN).