No arguments from me.  I would think a virtual machine would be less complicated from a hardware perspective, but just wanted to make sure you were aware of Oracle's published position on support in a virtual environment.  Funny thing is, they also officially don't support RAC, which is their own product.

On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 11:17 AM, Eugene Vilensky <evilensky@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 8:40 AM, Bill Holland <hollandwl@gmail.com> wrote:
> 1.  Be aware that Oracle's official position is that they do not support
> Oracle in a virtualized environment beyond the operating system.  If there
> is a problem and you need Oracle's support, they may very well tell you to
> put it on a physical server before they will support you.

One could (and I will) argue that this is no different than running
Oracle on ProLiant or PowerEdge; neither are certified or supported
beyond the OS.  You may be asked to replicate your error on a
different machine altogether.