Remember back in July, when Dell and Hewlett-Packard made the surprising news that they would resell Oracle VM and other Oracle software? I even wrote a clever blog post comparing the whole thing to “Inception” and asking, “Are Dell and HP REALLY reselling Oracle VM, or is it all in my mind?”

Well, it looks like the whole HP part of that equation may be on hold. As you know by now, HP fired former CEO Mark Hurd, who was promptly hired by his good buddy Larry Ellison to be a president at Oracle, and now HP is suing Hurd for joining its rival/partner.

In response, Ellison has gone all “oh no they didn’t!” and released a tersely worded statement calling the lawsuit “vindictive.”

“The HP board is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together in the IT marketplace,” the statement says. So I guess that means you shouldn’t look for Oracle VM on HP servers any time soon.

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Vendor lock-in is a big concern in the server virtualization market, especially as more vendors come out with converged infrastructure and virtualization-ready appliances.

Vendor lock-in is also a big concern when you’re talking about Oracle, especially now that it owns Sun and has plans to build its own Oracle VM machine.

But it turns out that even Oracle recognizes the importance of customer choice when it comes to virtualization. In a somewhat surprising bit of news today, hardware rivals Dell and Hewlett-Packard have certified Oracle VM, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Solaris and will sell those systems on their x86 servers.

With this news, the server virtualization market is getting about as complicated as the plot of “Inception.” Are Dell and HP REALLY reselling Oracle VM, or is it all in my mind?

Try to follow along: Oracle, HP and Cisco are all pushing converged infrastructure and virtualization-ready appliances. Oracle is the only one that has its own hypervisor and its own hardware, but the company still partners with HP and Dell, two of its major hardware competitors. HP has virtualization partnerships in place with both VMware and Microsoft, who don’t exactly get along. And Cisco’s focus is on its Unified Computing System and Virtual Computing Environment coalition with VMware and EMC. (And that’s not to mention the Microsoft-Citrix relationship, or the various partnerships that Red Hat and Novell have.)

Such tangled webs have always existed in IT, but they’re getting more tangled than ever before, and today’s news is one of the best examples yet.

Market dynamics aside, these Dell and HP deals are good for Oracle. Oracle VM has a tiny market share, so anything that makes it easier for customers to buy and deploy will help …

… unless this is all just a dream. Where’s my totem?

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Appliances like Cisco’s Unified Computing System are designed to help you kick-start a virtualization deployment.

Now, Oracle is banking on an appliance to do the same for its lagging virtualization market share.

Our sister site SearchITChannel.com reports that a so-called “Oracle VM machine” (perhaps developed by Oracle’s Department of Redundancy Department?) is in the works. Oracle President Charles Phillips disclosed the news during the company’s quarterly earnings call last week.

The Oracle VM machine will bundle the Oracle VM hypervisor with Oracle VM Manager software on a server with integrated network switches and storage arrays. Phillips didn’t offer many details (or a timeline), but it’s basically the same approach that Cisco has taken with UCS and rival Hewlett-Packard is now taking with its converged infrastructure push.

At best, converged infrastructure is only a good option for certain organizations — usually those that are totally new to virtualization or don’t have large virtual infrastructures already in place. In this respect, Oracle is making a smart move: In theory, it will be easier to gain virtualization market share by going after greenfield opportunities than by trying to convert VMware shops.

But a lot of potential customers are wary of these kinds of appliances because they fear vendor lock-in. Sure, Cisco relies on VMware virtualization and EMC storage for the UCS, and HP has agreements in place with both VMware and Microsoft, but you still limit your options by going this route.

And the Oracle VM machine will presumably be even worse, because Oracle doesn’t need to rely on any other vendor’s equipment. The company already has the virtualization and management software, and all the hardware is there too, thanks to the Sun acquisition.

Between Oracle’s very late push into the virtualization market and the overall lukewarm reception to these kinds of appliances, the Oracle VM machine better offer one heck of a kick-start if it’s going to change the company’s fortunes.

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Feedback from my recent article on server virtualization in branch offices suggests that virtualization still has a long way to go in those settings.

FBL Insurance in West Des Moines, Iowa has a single VMware ESX host at each of nine branch offices throughout the state but isn’t particularly satisfied with the level of availability that brings them, said Kent Altena, technical engineer for the firm.

“VMware ESX 3.5 is the source of a lot of angst at the state offices, because the single box is a point of risk,” Altena said.

At the same time, “we knew we had to give them something,” Altena said. “We couldn’t just let them sit there.” Altena said.

Despite their reservations, the firm decided that, for the cost, the risk of running a single ESX host was an acceptable solution. But when it comes time to upgrade, Altena said the firm will probably opt to add a second VMware box and leave the old box in there for failover purposes. At the same time, FBL decided to invest in a dual-controller Hewlett-Packard MSA SAN, to provide shared storage for the ESX hosts when the time comes.

Likewise, David Michel isn’t thrilled about virtualization at the four branch offices of Turner Padget, a South Carolina law firm. The issue there is the single point of failure of the Riverbed Steelhead appliances running its Riverbed Service Platform (RSP). But it was cheaper than what they were doing — a single VMware ESX host. Bringing in WAN optimization technology with a Steelhead appliance eliminated the need for a second T1 line required with new VMware hardware. Michel estimated that the Riverbed approach would cost about 60% less over three years and deliver return on investment (ROI) in 8 months.

The high cost of storage and redundancy in the branch is the raison d’etre for VM6 Software, a startup out of Toronto, Canada that offers a turnkey virtualization solution targeted at SMBs and branch offices. Based on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2, the VM6 VMex includes two servers in an active cluster, a virtual SAN made up of locally attached drives, and an integrated management console familiar to Microsoft specialists. In the branch, VMex costs up to 70% less than a comparable VMware-based offering and at least 30% less than comparable physical infrastructure, said Eric Courville, VM6 founder and chief operating officer.

But even though Hyper-V — especially running on Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition — presents some cost savings over VMware, IT managers at existing VMware shops want no part of it.

“Why would I want to learn and support another hypervisor?” asked FBL’s Altena. “If I were already a Hyper-V shop, sure, but why would I want to spend the time and money for training on ESX all over again?”

A first generation version of VM6’s VMex was actually delivered on VMware, but Courville said its target market is more comfortable with Windows than with the Linux-ish ESX. Courville likened existing VMware data centers to Formula 1 race car teams, with expensive, high-performance systems that require the expertise of specialized mechanics to keep them running.

“But what if I can’t afford a Formula 1, but I still need a car to go to work and get my groceries?” Courville said.

The VMex delivers the equivalent of a “commercial car” that meets the needs of the branch office, at a reasonable price, he said.

That said, if market demand proves VM6 wrong, “there’s nothing technically preventing us from going with VMware down the road,” Courville added.

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Our recent blades vs. rack servers face-off between Chris House and Rick Vanover has spurred some hot debate. Virtualization blogger Aaron Delp, a senior engineer at ePlus Technology, submitted this response on the topic of blades vs. rack servers:

Here is how I see the rack vs. blades debate: No solution is right all the time! There are situations in which racks are better, and there are situations where blades are better.

Before I go into the use cases, let me clarify one or two points for both architectures:

• Everyone’s prices are different based on a million different factors. No one pays list. Cost comparisons must be made on a customer-by-customer, situation-by-situation basis. That being said, from my experience, blades will be cheaper overall once you meet a break-even point — usually in the five- or six-blade range.
• Power can be difficult to understand, but the following statement always holds true: The more blades you have in the chassis, the more power-efficient it will be. Blade chassis power supplies are designed to be at least 90% efficient; most rack servers are 75% at best. (See part one and part two of my articles on the calculations involved.)
• Management of BIOS and firmwares: With the exception of the Cisco UCS platform, both racks and blades are still flashed in pretty much the same way. There isn’t a huge advantage to either platform. Cisco UCS and its stateless model really changes the game and should serve as a model to all other server vendors.

Racks are better under the following conditions:

• Small number of servers: If you are only buying a small number of servers (three or four, maybe), the savings brought by blades are negligible.
• Power constraints: Some older data centers and many co-los don’t like or can’t support 208V power.
• High I/O requirements: I see this going away as 10G and converged fabrics come into play, but sometimes you need so many I/O cards that a blade solution is not appropriate.

Blades are better under the following conditions:

• Consolidation of the chassis and one-time setup: Install the chassis in the rack, and you have consolidated cable runs for KVM, power, networking and FC.  This reduces the costs of wiring everything up every time a server is added and saves time.
• I/O Virtualization: All major blade systems (HP, IBM, Cisco) can now virtualize the MAC address and FC WWPNs. This leads to a true “wire-it-once” solution.  There’s no need to involve the SAN and network teams to redo VLANs or LUN masking because of a blade hardware change.
• Power efficiency: As I covered above, blades will always be more power efficient above a certain number of blades.

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