Virtualization's downfall could be overpopulation

Oracle jumps on the bandwagon by introducing their own Oracle VM virtualization product at Oracle OpenWorld this week. So, is every major software vendor going to offer their own virtualization product? It's certainly shaping up that way.

Oracle VM is based on Xen, the open source virtualization software from XenSource, so it's not a new or an innovative product. Oracle VM's real benefit is that Oracle's own products have been certified to run on the Xen based Oracle VM.

Now we have VMware in the data center, Citrix/Xen on the desktop, Microsoft Hyper-V Server for Microsoft servers, and Oracle VM for Oracle products, and of course KVM (Kernel Virtual Mode) coming for the Linux kernel. How is IT supposed to manage a virtualization environment with that many hypervisor products?

Until virtualization reaches some critical mass and all these products are in wide spread use, we will continue to see proliferation of all these technologies. Oracle VM I'm not so sure about (much like Oracle's own Linux has languished), but certainly the other vendor's virtualization products will prosper. With VMware in the lead, they would be the most likely to try and promote some consortium or standardization across vendors but we're a long ways from that.

Until then, chose your virtualization favorite(s).

Here are some additional posts if you'd like to read more about virtualization.