Oracle made a big step forward by officially supporting running Oracle Linux on both VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V. Per October 9 2013 Oracle has certified both for Joint Support.
There has been many discussions about supporting Oracle software running on hypervisors. Those discussions are on licensing as well as on technical support. Oracle cannot being accused of being very transparent in their licensing policies. When an Oracle Director was very clear about licensing during a taped interview at VMworld 2012, the video was removed from the VMworld TV site within a few hours after publication. Guess who ordered the removal.
This video however was captured by License Consulting (Dutch firm with knowledge on software licensing) and the full story can be read here.
Besides licensing there is as well a lot of misunderstanding (FUD) about support by Oracle on Oracle software running on hypervisors others than Oracle VM.
A big step forward made by Oracle was when in June 2013 both Microsoft and Oracle made an announcement. Oracle stated it will certify and support running Oracle software on both Hyper-V and Windows Azure.
At October 9 2013 another step forward was made by Oracle.
Oracle now fully supports running Oracle Linux 6.2 on VMware ESXi 5.0 and ESXi 5.1.
Also Oracle Linux 6.4 is Certified for Joint Support by Oracle for running on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V. Joint support means both the hypervisor vendor and Oracle support this configuration. Oracle will accept the support call and will if needed work with VMware/Microsoft to solve the issue. So customers are not required to reproduce the issue on physical hardware first.
This is a major step made by Oracle. It seems Oracle is aware they will at the end benefit from a more relaxed support policy. The customer wins. Lets hope the licensing get more clear as well.