How Oracle Engineered Systems Go Beyond Conventional Converged .

HOW ORACLE ENGINEEREDSYSTEMS GO BEYONDCONVENTIONAL CONVERGEDINFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONSINTRODUCTIONThe need to simplify IT complexity hascreated a whole new market for convergedinfrastructure solutions that bring togetherservers, storage, networking, and systemssoftware into a unified solution that is easierto deploy and manage. While these solutionscan indeed help reduce operational costsand increase agility, Oracle believes there isa better approach.The problem with ordinary converged infrastructuresolutions is that they are not optimized for a specificset of applications. Why not run your most criticalapplications on systems that are purpose-built to runthat workload faster, better, more securely, and morecost-effectively?This paper describes seven ways that Oracleengineered systems go beyond ordinary convergedinfrastructure solutions to make Oracle Databases andOracle Applications run better. No other convergedinfrastructure solution is purpose-built to runOracle software.

OPTIMIZED FOR CRITICAL WORKLOADSOrdinary converged infrastructure solutions aredesigned for generic workloads. This may be finefor non-critical applications, but why not take itanother step for your most important applicationsand databases? We’ve optimized performance,availability, flexibility, data protection, operations,support —and most importantly, overall cost.Since Oracle engineered systems are optimized on all ofthese levels, there’s simply no comparison with runningyour Oracle Databases and Oracle Applications on any othersolution. And while Oracle software runs better, faster andcheaper on Oracle engineered systems, there’s no vendorlock-in. You are free to run Oracle software on any platformyou choose, and it can be easily moved from an Oracleengineered system to another platform if there’s a need tochange at some future time.“ Oracle Exadata cost us 31 percent less than products from othervendors. By using it to run Oracle’s JD Edwards ERP system wecan create daily sales reports 60 faster, introduce products 36 faster, and increase IT productivity by 40 percent.” D. V. Jachak, General Manager, IT, Sai Prasad Group“ Oracle engineered systems offered an integrated solution capableof consolidating and virtualizing the platform quickly and costeffectively—for a 5 better price/performance ratio than the othersolutions we evaluated.“ Vinicio González, Systems Director, Portic Barcelona S.A.A PRODUCT—NOT AN ASSEMBLY PROJECTSome vendors offer an alternative to prepackaged convergedinfrastructure solutions in the form of reference architectures,which offer a cookbook approach to building an infrastructureof components from multiple vendors and then configuring itaccording to predefined rules. This approach has numerousdrawbacks. Firstly, with only minimal technical specifications,the evaluation and integration work (which is expensiveand time-consuming) is left to the customer. Therefore, theprocess of purchasing and deploying a reference architecturetakes longer than with a modern converged infrastructuresolution or a purpose-built Oracle engineered system.Secondly, you’re inevitably dealing with multiple vendors.The servers, storage, networking, operating system,hypervisor, data protection, management tools, and databaseare often from different vendors. This not only complicatesthe task of getting all the pieces working together, but alsomakes it hard to keep everything running. These assembledenvironments are inherently painful to support, upgrade andmaintain, with potential finger-pointing. In addition, it’s hardto find the right people with all the right skills to maintain acomplex multivendor environment.One of the biggest drawbacks of a build-your-own convergedinfrastructure solution is that there is no guarantee ofspecific results in a specific timeframe at a specific cost.Without optimizations between each of the components,the resulting infrastructure performance can be bottleneckedby the lowest-performing element. By contrast, an Oracleengineered system is a single product with definedcapabilities, defined costs, and defined results.

ARCHITECTED FROM APP TO STORAGEBY A SINGLE ENGINEERING TEAMOracle is the only vendor that offers a full solution in which it owns anddevelops all the critical IP in the stack. This includes everything from thedatabase to servers, operating system, hypervisor, network, storage,management, security, and more.With many converged infrastructure solutions, the engineering is spreadacross multiple companies and each component is developed in a silo.Development teams can’t see under the hood of the other components,so there is not much that can be done to optimize the stack.By contrast, Oracle optimizes performance and availability across all thecomponents of large systems, such as Oracle Exadata. This rigorousengineering of Oracle Exadata workloads produces opportunities forincreasing throughput all the way from the database software to serverand storage firmware.For example, Oracle’s database engineers have worked with Oraclestorage engineers to optimize the storage controller firmware and driverstack to support extreme throughput while ensuring the highest levels ofreliability, availability and diagnostic capability. This coengineering efforthas optimized performance in Oracle Exadata systems as well as Oraclex86 servers by resulting in a “database-hardened” storage controller thathas been implemented in both products.Oracle Database software benefits from this database optimization at alllevels of the stack—from the database software itself to the Oracle Linuxkernel, the compute system, the storage firmware, and more. This is onlypossible by having all the engineering under one roof. No other vendorcan make this claim.

APPLICATION-AWARE, COMPLETE AND SECUREAn Oracle engineered system is aware of Oracle software andapplications, and vice versa. This awareness unlocks numerouscapabilities and benefits that are just not possible with an ordinaryinfrastructure. Two good examples of this are Oracle HybridColumnar Compression, and in-memory computing with Oracleengineered systems.Hybrid Columnar Compression allows database tables to becompressed both in memory and on disk. This means that whenOracle Database is deployed with an Oracle storage platform, thedatabase tables are stored in the compressed format on the storagedevice. This results in 10 to 50 storage savings, as well asdramatically faster database read performance due to the reducedI/O traffic.In-memory computing provides maximum performance, scalability,efficiency, and reliability when running Oracle software on Oracleplatforms. For example, Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database isembedded in Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine, enabling datato be stored in application-tier main memory. This allows OracleBusiness Intelligence users to perform complex analytic queries atreal-time speeds because there is no network latency or disk I/O.Transactions take just microseconds.Another benefit of this holistic approach to computing is thatOracle engineered systems offer a complete approach to the ITlifecycle. Security and data protection are engineered in at all levelsof the stack to help protect your most critical information assets.From an operations perspective, Oracle’s integrated managementenvironment and single-vendor support can help simplifymanagement and operations, as well as ongoing maintenanceand support.

ENTERPRISE CLOUDDESIGNED INCOMPELLING CAPABILITIESUNIQUE TO ORACLEMany organizations are looking to ensure thatthe applications deployed in their data centertoday have a clear path to the cloud. Oracleoffers a seamless transition to the cloudbecause Oracle Cloud is built on the sametechnologies as Oracle engineered systemsand uses the exact same operational model.Coengineering across the Oracle stack has enabled Oracle to develop some compelling capabilities that are uniqueto the Oracle offering:Oracle engineered systems and OracleApplications were designed for the cloud,and Oracle Cloud includes precise equivalentsfor each offering. Therefore your choice ofon-premises versus cloud is simply a matterof choosing the right consumption model forthe same offering. And if you start with anon-premises approach, you can migrate tothe cloud without a hiccup because none ofthe underlying technologies or operationalmodels will change. And, you have powerfuloptions to use Oracle Cloud for test anddevelopment, temporary extra capacity—or anything else that comes along.Smart ScanOracle ExabusOracle VM TemplatesSome functions of Oracle Database queryprocessing are offloaded to the storage layerof the database stack to allow queries and otherdatabase operations to be executed muchmore efficiently.This unique I/O subsystem employs a convergednetwork fabric to provide all I/O services to theapplications running within Oracle Exadata andOracle Exalogic systems.Oracle VM Templates and assemblies utilizeOracle VM server virtualization technology toprovide ready-to-run application profiles thatcan be provisioned in minutes. Preconfiguredtemplates for Oracle Applications allow you totake advantage of best practices for tuning andperformance when running Oracle Applicationson Oracle systems.Hybrid Columnar CompressionDatabase tables are stored in compressedformat on the Oracle storage device, enabling10 to 50 storage savings and dramaticallyfaster database read performance due to thereduction in I/O traffic.Oracle Intelligent Storage ProtocolOracle Intelligent Storage Protocol enablescontinuous communication between OracleDatabase and Oracle storage systems toautomatically and dynamically optimize criticaltuning parameters in real time, enablingsignificant savings in storage administration.Virtual LicensingThis helps you reduce costs in virtualizedenvironments because Oracle provides isolationfor consolidated workloads that need hard limitson CPU/memory or independent admin/OS.No other system can bring this much value to your Oracle software.Oracle Enterprise Manager 12cOracle offers a single pane of managementthat can manage on-premises systems as wellas public and private clouds.