We've been using Oracle VM in production for years with very few issues. Their management software is total garbage, but it's still xen underneath which has been very solid for us. We've used xen for our virtualization of non-production servers well before Oracle came out with their product, so I use the command line to manage vm's more than that horrible web app. When Oracle offered support their database running on what amounts to xen with Oracle branding, we moved over and haven't looked back.

No, technically they weren't. But the specs fit the need.

Very true. But the cost of buying out the lease of existing servers to use as dom0's was more cost effective than leasing new servers that would be overkill for the entire length of the lease. It's cost justification. Next leasing cycle, specs need to be re-evaluated.

Wrong. The CPU's still work great with paravirtualization for creating linux vm's. Just because everyone tends to ignore xen's ability to paravirtualize, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It works very well and is very ideal for some needs.

Why would I want to spend money on buying new servers when the ones I own already work fine? Just because the next servers I buy will probably have vt-x, doesn't change the fact that the ones I currently own don't.

Using the argument that people just need to upgrade their hardware is garbage. Virtualization is supposed to CUT costs, not incur new hardware costs. The fact that I could take old machines that have run their course as database servers and convert them into several virtual machines for more lightweight stuff (web,dns,ldap,etc.) is what drew me into virtualization in the first place.

No, those of use with older servers (without vmx/svm processors) are not. The machines work just fine and XEN allows us to paravirtualize several linux machines on each one. Unfortunately RedHat has lost sight of those customers. As far as I'm aware KVM still requires the intel vt/amd-v technologies to create any guests, which XEN only requires for HVM guests (i.e. windows).

He used to be a hilarious DJ on WXDX in Pittsburgh that I listened to in college.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cox_(radio_presenter)

oh wait...

Xen virtualization is still strong, fedora just isn't porting the kernel patches upstream anymore. I believe Novell has a 2.6.27 kernel with xen patches. I would think it to be possible to pull down the kernel source from Fedora, build the config, then pull in suse kernel source, run make oldconfig, and compile your own kernel for fedora using the suse sources. I've never tried it and fully understand that this is an unacceptable option for most fedora users.

I've been following the fedora-xen mailing list and they would still like to put xen back in, but not until it's in the upstream kernel. As stated at the F9 release, they feel it is counterproductive to maintain 2 different kernels, which I can't disagree with them on. The latest news I heard is that they were hoping the 3.4 release of xen to have pv_ops dom0 in the kernel. Wether or not that it's Linus' kernel, they haven't really stated. If fedora is waiting for pv_ops dom0 to make it into Linus' kernel, then I would have to agree that xen will slowly dissapear and KVM will be the way to go. I see that as an uphill battle for the xen team since kvm is already in the kernel.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Virtualization for more information on f10 virtualization.

Burn her anyway!