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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Oracle is, as we say here in Boston, wicked fah behind in the virtualization market. Building a strong, integrated virtualization portfolio is the best way — and maybe the only way — for the company to catch up.

The Sun acquisition brought lots of hype about the future of Oracle-Sun virtualization. Now, after months of talk, we’re starting to see some actual work.

Oracle is certifying Sun’s Solaris 10 as a guest OS in Oracle VM 2.2.

The Oracle virtualization strategy focuses on integration across the company’s vast hardware and software stack. No other vendor can provide so much, from the servers to the applications to the hypervisor to the operating system. But the key is, they all have to work together and talk to each other.

Oracle VM support for Solaris, the popular UNIX OS for Sun’s SPARC systems, is a solid first step in that direction.

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2009 was the year of Microsoft vs. VMware. Is 2010 shaping up to be the year of Oracle vs. VMware?

During yesterday’s five-hour Oracle-Sun press conference, Oracle’s chief corporate architect Edward Screven took aim at VMware: “VMware is integrated with nothing. It’s a point solution.”

Of course, that’s not entirely true. VMware integrates with lots of stuff, both hardware and software, but it’s usually other vendors making that other stuff. (The Cisco Unified Computing System is a prime example.) Judging by VMware’s longstanding dominance in the market, this is a strategy that has worked out pretty well for them.

Now that it has Sun’s virtualization and hardware assets, Oracle is taking a different approach: stressing the value of integrated management (with Oracle Enterprise Manager) and virtualization-specific hardware/software bundles, all from one vendor.

Alone, Oracle and Sun never had much success in virtualization. (When Screven touted Oracle VM as “the best virtualization solution for databases” yesterday, my colleague Bridget Botelho responded on Twitter: “Then why doesn’t anyone use it?”)

And they didn’t announce anything revolutionary yesterday that would immediately cause people to jump on the Oracle-Sun virtualization bandwagon. (Sounds like underwhelming press conferences was the theme of the day, eh, Steve Jobs?)

Clearly, Oracle needs to do more to become a major player. The whole trend of integrated hardware and software for virtualization is something the vendors are pushing; it’s not something a whole lot of customers want now.

Larry Ellison and his Oracle execs know they can’t take on VMware just by talking a good game. So they must have bigger plans in the works. Will they build Oracle VM up using the Virtual Iron technology they acquired last year? Or will they make an even bigger splash by acquiring Citrix?

VMware once enjoyed free reign of the market. Then along came Microsoft, the biggest software company in the world, which became a serious challenger in just a few short years. Now the third-biggest software company, Oracle, is making a similar move. Whatever happens, things are about to get very interesting.

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Xen.org posted the Xen 4.0 Release Candidate this week, and the new hypervisor code should be finalized by the end of next month.

Xen 4.0 will feature fault tolerance and the Open Virtual Switch, among other new features. Open source virtualization expert Sander van Vugt said the Open Virtual Switch “will take networking in Xen to the next level.”

“I’m convinced that this release is going to be huge,” he wrote in an email.

The new release comes at a crucial point for Xen. Citrix, the company most closely associated with Xen, faces constant questions about its commitment to XenServer and the server virtualization market as a whole.

Meanwhile, as virtualization.info’s Alessandro Perilli points out, Oracle is looking to become a bigger player in virtualization. Its Oracle VM is also Xen-based, so Xen 4.0 could help its charge into the market. (But then again, so could the rumored Oracle-Citrix acquisition.)

Xen also has an emerging open source challenger on its in hands in KVM, which is built into the Linux kernel. Although van Vugt took the side of KVM in our recent Xen vs. KVM debate, he still predicts good things for the future of Xen.

“Currently, VMware clearly is the more complete virtualization solution,” he wrote in his email. “Releasing the Xen 4 hypervisor will put Xen completely back in the picture, not only for Citrix, but for all other players in the Xen area as well.”

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