Re: What's the advantage?
Power8 technology is roughly 2X greater performing over x86. Factor that in with hypervisor options of No hypervisor, PowerKVM or PowerVM then look at the cost of the Linux only servers and your assumption they are more expensive is no longer the case. Look at http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/linux.html to see for yourself. Remember these prices are list. Also note the performance, scalability and reliability capabilities which Power is known for and you can see Power8 has redefined itself.