Oracle Expert Blog: On Oracle Engineered Systems and Appliances

A Dossier

to Customizing

New Oracle Systems

The following is an excerpt from an on-going independent review on Oracle engineered systems and appliances.

Providing an expert and custom DBA guide on how to match and optimize computing, storage networking and networking resources on Oracle Sun productline is a task that requires product knowledge and extensive experience on Oracle and Sun productline and expertise with an objective and independent perspective. Enhancing the matched resources and capabilities, whether you use a comprehensive middleware, extensive virtualization, or emerging files systems technologies such as Hadoop HDFS, and underlying technologies such as partitioning and Hybrid Column Compression (HCC), you have the opportunity to analyze, establish, and further research an expert's opinion with a different viewpoint with a comparable potential for a successful infrastructure and implementation for optimal performance, reliability and availability, and subsequent deployment.

Certainly, it is time for a major investment on information technology to walk on the cloud. It is time for a change! Thus, providing a custom independent guide to match and optimize the use of Oracle Sun systems including appliances, high-availability, and storage networking solutions with respect to OLTP or Datawarehousing and Business Intelligence Solutions, with an futuristic view on technologic sustainability and predictable economic trends.

If you information technology infrastructure hinders a focus upon datawarehousing, there are various solutions all of which could meet the DBA desires to have the best storage, storage networking and main computing resources, such as CPU power, enough RAM memory, and high quality flash and solid state storage (SSS) with convenient capabilities to attain the optimal custom solution. Whether you are looking at Exadata, the Oracle Database Appliance, the NoSQL Appliance, or the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance as a potential solution, your investment will pay back on reliability and performance for the next years, opening a door to an easy upgrades to new version, editions, and the next generations of database technologies. Exalogic is appropriate to attain the perfect middleware goals, and Exalytics can drive the appropriate built-in resources to attain the best desirable outcome for business intelligence, data mining, data discovery, and analytics in general. The implementation of in-memory database machines, with Oracle SQL or NoSQL, enhances the ability to integrate with new file systems, such as Hadoop HDFS and the ability to implement associate mapsets and derive intelligent reports. The amount of hardware resources customizing high-end resources at any level, and the ability to leverage those resources for the best return on investment (ROI) and extended return on assets (ROA) at the lowest possible total cost of ownership (TCO) in today's market.

Because, these appliance and engineered systems have been designed to work together both CAPEX (Capital Expenditure, i.e., investment) and OPEX (Operational Expenditure) are significantly optimal in today's information technology market.

The same remarks could be applicable to online transaction processing (OLTP) systems, where the Exadata database machine and the Oracle Appliance can provide a significant level de customization for a dedicated or hybrid purpose.

In general, companies regardless of its size can successfully consider an important investment in IT at the moment, which could bring this sector to its best moment in ten years, and have more confidence than ever that their ROI.

In essence, what is important is to plan a recommended acquisition quite ahead of time, considering, importance concerns such as capacity (memory and storage), and for each one customize every technology available; as such for the former, what amount of conventional RAM and flash memory will be required, so you could decide on a quarter, half or full Exadata machine; or customize your RAC on a third-party hybrid solution choosing the appropriate Solid State Storage (SSS) technology, but always looking about the convenience of systems that are engineered to work together; likewise, for the latter, carefully research what are your options for secondary storage (e.g. the ZFS Storage Appliance) and tertiary storage (e.g., tape libraries), including customizable archiving models. In terms of storage capacity, Exadata has the ability to easily expand and interconnect the enhanced machines storage networking via Infiband, the fastest and most flexible provding the best bandwith as well. On the other hand, processor power is no longer the only main factor in attaining optimal database performance, and architects, DBA, IT Managers, and other influencers or recommenders need to look at a variety of factors before a final decision is made. There will be plenty of time to make a decision.

Exadata Machine X.2-8

Currently, the most powerful and scalable machine with capabilities for both datawarehousing and OLTP databases with leading TPC-H and TPC-C benchmarks.

Exadata Machine X.2-2

Exadata X.2-2 is the traditional Oracle database machine solution, most widely used in the market. The Exadata machines can be either expanded through an Expansion Rack and several machines can be networked through Infiniband.

Oracle Database Appliance

The Oracle Database Appliance is the natural path to upgrade your RAC or RAC OneNode environment and utilize a variety of built-in features on the fly, simplifying your future upgrade path as well.

RAC

Although it is predicted that Oracle Database Appliance will take over a good percent of RAC's market, it is also predicted that many customers will still customize their RAC ground up to meet certain business process model requirements or simply to perform in-house tasks such as security customization.

STORAGE

There is a need to categorize storage into primary, secondary, and tertiary; and determine whether a bounded, resilient archiving model is required to attain automation.

Oracle Sun Servers

Companies that wish to customize database solutions from ground up with native OS, and build their own virtualization environment, either bare-metal or on top of the native OS-layer can do so as well.