Oracle VM is built upon Xen technology, using the Xen hypervisor. The Xen hypervisor is a small, lightweight bare metal hypervisor for x86-compatible computers. The Xen hypervisor securely executes multiple virtual machines on one host computer. Each virtual machine has its own guest operating system with almost native performance. The Xen hypervisor was originally created by researchers at Cambridge University, and derived from work done on the Linux kernel.

Oracle VM insulates users and administrators from the underlying virtualization technology and allows daily operations to be conducted using goal-oriented GUI interfaces.