Oracle Engineered Systems for Govies - Knowledge. Advice. Clarity
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Knowledge. Advice. Clarity
Oracle Engineered Systems
for Govies
Presented by Discover and explore how
Oracle’s engineered systems can
help public sector organizations
transform and simplify complex
IT environments, while delivering
unparalleled performance
and results across the
technology stack.
Written by Caron Beesley
About Oracle and DLT Solutions About Oracle Oracle is shifting the complexity from IT, moving it out of the enterprise by engineering hardware and software to work together—in the cloud and in the data center. By eliminating complexity and simplifying IT, Oracle enables its customers—400,000 of them in more than 145 countries around the world—to accelerate innovation and create added value for their customers. By engineering out the complexity that stifles innovation, Oracle is engineering in speed, reliability, security, and manageability. The result is best-in-class products throughout an integrated stack of hardware and software, with every layer designed and engineered to work together according to open industry standards. Oracle’s complete, open, and integrated solutions offer extreme performance at the lowest cost—all from a single vendor. For the public sector, Oracle provides a complete, open, and integrated suite of applications, servers, and storage solutions engineered to work together to optimize every aspect of government operations. For customers needing modular solutions, Oracle’s open architecture and multiple operating system options provide unmatched benefits from best-of-breed products in every layer of the stack. This allows customers to build the most optimized infrastructure possible for their enterprise. About DLT Solutions With more than 20 years of Oracle partnership, DLT Solutions combines comprehensive knowledge of the Oracle product portfolio with license acquisition expertise to deliver mission critical IT solutions to the public sector. Featuring specializations in key Oracle technology, solutions experts and dedicated professional services, we are your premier, go-to-Oracle partner. For more information, contact DLT Solution at 800-262-4358 or email sales@dlt.com, or visit www.dlt.com.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1:
The Challenges of Today’s Government IT Environment Page 5
Chapter 2:
Engineering your IT Stack for Extreme Performance Page 6-9
— What Oracle engineered systems are
— The benefits they deliver
— How the component parts work together to deliver
extreme performance
Chapter 3:
Exadata – The Fastest Database Machine for
Warehousing and OLTP Page 10-17
— Consolidate and simplify IT resources with a complete
“in-the-box” database solution
— Boost the performance and lower the cost of data center
management and private clouds
— Deploying systems faster and with growth in mind
— Public sector agencies save $$ with extreme performance
Chapter 4:
Exalogic – The Best Foundation for the Government Cloud Page 18-23
— The right foundation for your cloud strategy
— Consolidate and deploy hundreds of applications in a
seamless, automated fashion
— How Oracle has applied its expertise to develop a data
center “in-a-box”
Chapter 5:
SuperCluster – Speed Consolidation and Cloud Deployments Page 24-28
— Consolidate diverse IT environments on one
powerful machine
— Eliminate the risk associated with “do-it-yourself” solutions
— Deliver multi-tenant cloud services faster while
simplifying application deployment
3
Table of Contents
Chapter 6:
Oracle Database Appliance – Deploying the World’s #1
Database at the Department-Level Made Easy Page 29-32
— Easily deploy a high-availability database solution for
mid-range workloads and smaller departments
— Minimize implementation and management headaches
— High availability and performance features
Chapter 7:
Oracle Big Data Appliance and Exalytics –
Analyze Government Data at the Speed of Thought Page 33-38
— Make informed decisions fast with a data management
and analysis systems
— Big government data is made useable and available to
key stakeholders
— The business intelligence capabilities of Oracle Exalytics
— San Diego Unified School District saves $$$ with Oracle Exalytics
Chapter 8:
Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliance –
Unmatched NAS Storage Capabilities Page 39-42
— Meet growing storage requirements while delivering
high performance
— Reduce your storage footprint by 10-50 times with high
compression levels
— Flexible options based on your environment and budget
Chapter 9:
Conclusion Page 43-44
4
Chapter 1:
Introduction-The Challenges of Today’s Government IT Environment
Government IT departments are often littered with database servers, storage
networks, business applications, and network infrastructure – all running with
a variety of hardware, software, and configuration settings. Not only do these
systems struggle to provide the performance and high availability necessary for
enterprises large, small and remote, they also make the IT stack cumbersome
and difficult to deploy, manage and maintain – which ultimately compromises
government service delivery.
In the private sector, IT advancements have revolutionized the efficiency,
convenience, and effectiveness with which businesses serve customers. But
the public sector has lagged in embracing this transformation due to poor
management of technology
investments and IT projects often
costing much more than they
should, taking years to deploy and
becoming obsolete by the time they
are completed.
Today, the public sector is changing.
Driven by a number of government
initiatives, including Cloud-First
mandates, the federal data center
consolidation, and the never-
ending pressure to do more with
less, agencies are increasingly
seeking ways to simplify their IT
environment and pave the way for
innovation – across the IT stack.
In this book, we’ll introduce and
discuss how Oracle’s family of
engineered systems can help
agencies simplify IT with “in-the-
box” solutions that optimize at every
layer of the stack to simplify data
center operations, drive down costs,
and accelerate innovation.
5
Chapter 2:
Engineering your IT Stack for Extreme Performance
Learn about:
> What Oracle engineered systems are
> The benefits they deliver
> How the component parts work together to deliver
extreme performance
“Hardware and Software Engineered to Work Together” – this is Oracle’s motto for
its family of engineered systems which interlace servers, storage, and networking
equipment in integrated boxes.
The idea is simple, and, on first impression, may not seem that new. In essence,
these systems allow you to:
3 Build a compute platform that’s optimized to run your
agency’s technologies
3 Develop application aware, intelligently caching storage components
3 Interconnect a fast networking technology with the compute nodes
3 Tune the application to scale with the nodes to yet unseen performance
3 Reduce the amount of data moving via compression
3 Provide this all in a pre-integrated single product with a single-pane
management interface
Sounds impressive, but these ideas have all been around in IT for a while. The real
Oracle advantage comes from pulling all these capabilities together – “Engineered
for Extreme Performance” (Oracle’s other motto for these systems). Using
Oracle’s best-of-breed building blocks,
Oracle’s engineered systems run its
technologies (including hardware,
software, firmware, cables, and so on)
like they’ve never been run before.
These systems deploy faster,
integrate seamlessly with existing IT
environments, and provide the kind of
user experience that the private sector
has enjoyed for some time – letting
them do everything faster, better and
more efficiently.
6
Chapter 2:
Engineering your IT Stack for Extreme Performance
Here are some of the key benefits of Oracle engineered systems:
Benefit #1: Reduce Risk and Lower Costs
One of the significant benefits of Oracle’s engineered systems to government
agencies is that because the software and hardware – at every level of the
technology stack – have been architected, integrated, tested and optimized to
work together, there’s no guesswork or finger crossing or, hoping everything works
with your existing infrastructure.
This massively reduces the risk involved in implementing the solution you need.
Benefit #2: IT Environments Simplified
Consolidating resources – in the datacenter or the cloud – is a proven way to
simplify government IT environments, reduce costs, and transform service delivery.
With Oracle engineered systems you can consolidate database workloads on
Oracle Exadata Database Machine or business applications on Oracle Exalogic
Elastic Cloud (a pre-configured cloud foundation) – reducing workloads from
multiple machines onto a single, system that works faster and is less expensive to
maintain over the life of the product.
And with a smaller IT footprint, agencies can do more with less – whether it’s
power, IT administrators or floor space.
Benefit #3: Highest Availability
Extreme performance is at the heart of Oracle’s engineered system and is due
in part to the extreme parallelism built into every solution. More than just
performance, extreme parallelism also provides redundancy that can dramatically
reduce both planned and unplanned downtime.
Benefit #4: Transforming Government Service Delivery
Throughout this book, we’ll show, by example, how agencies are experiencing a
real difference in how they operate and achieve their goals. From IT administrators
who benefit from managing the entire IT stack from a single console, to program
managers who make more informed decisions using the data they already have but
were previously unable to assimilate, explore and analyze. The opportunities for
innovation and a transformation in the way government services are managed and
delivered is a key benefit that we’ll explore in the following chapters.
7
Chapter 2:
Engineering your IT Stack for Extreme Performance
Benefit #5: Laying the Foundation for Successful Cloud Deployments
High availability and performance underpin any successful cloud deployment
and ensure that users have access to the applications they need anytime, from
anywhere. Oracle’s engineered systems are essential foundations for all types
of cloud deployments. Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, for example, lets you run
multiple applications in virtualized, isolated environments, so that hundreds of
applications can be consolidated onto a single system (with quick and automated
deployment). Deploying storage in a cloud infrastructure is also made easy thanks
to the seamless integration between the Oracle Sun ZFS Storage and industry
leading virtualization products.
Benefit #6: Engineered Systems Working Together
To return to the motto: “Hardware and Software Engineered to Work Together”,
this is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the way these “in-the-box”
solutions work together.
For example, we’ll explain later how Oracle Big Data Appliance (a useful
solution for managing big government data) uses InfiniBand to connect with
Oracle Exadata for high-speed transfers of massive amounts of data. Once the
data is in a useable format, Oracle Exalytics provides “speed-of-thought” data
access and interactive visualization.
Then there’s Oracle SuperCluster (a platform for consolidating Oracle and third
party applications) which brings together the database optimization of Oracle
Exadata storage servers, the accelerated processing of Oracle Exalogic, and the
performance of Sun ZFS Storage Appliance – in one easily managed rack. The
latter is also pre-integrated into Oracle SuperCluster and Exalogic to simplify
deployments.
So you can already see , how Oracle engineered systems connect and scale
to provide the right combinations for your mission needs. There’s not just
one product, process or technology that’s solely responsible for the extreme
performance in Oracle engineered systems, it’s “all of the above” working together
in new ways that are unmatched in the market place.
8
Chapter 2:
Engineering your IT Stack for Extreme Performance
Traditional and non-optimized systems of the past were great in their time,
and for non-critical applications will continue to do competent work for some
time to come. But with Oracle’s family of engineered systems, government IT
departments are finding a solid justification to move in a new direction. In the
following chapters, we’ll introduce each of the systems, dive into their features and
specifications, and showcase use studies from public sector organizations who are
reaping the benefits of extreme performance at a lower cost.
What is “extreme performance”?
Oracle uses the term to describe its engineered systems, but what does it
mean? If you think about everything you are doing now – then kick it up
a notch or two. You’ll also see these words mentioned a lot: faster, better,
lower, and fewer. Put them together and you get the benefits of extreme
performance:
3 Faster processing 3 More transactions
3 Lower costs 3 Better analytics
3 Less risk 3 Faster data loading
3 Faster deployments 3 Faster query results
3 Higher throughput 3 Better data compression
3 More storage capacity 3 Higher availability
3 Smaller footprints 3 Less downtime
9
Chapter 3:
Exadata - The Fastest Database Machine for Warehousing and OLTP
Learn about:
> Consolidating and simplifying IT resources with a complete
“in-the-box” database solution
> How Exadata helps boost the performance and lowers the cost
of data center management and private clouds
> Deploying systems faster and with growth in mind
> Exadata helps public sector agencies save $$ with
extreme performance
As we set about introducing Oracle’s Oracle Exadata
engineered systems, let’s start with one of X3 Key Benefits
the original solutions – the Oracle Exadata Exadata X3 offers the
Database Machine. following benefits for
consolidating government IT
Enclosed in a single cabinet, Oracle Exadata resources, simplifying IT and
Database Machine X3 is a complete improving performance:
package of preconfigured and integrated • Reduce IT costs – Exadata
database servers, storage servers, network is the ideal platform for
infrastructure and supporting software. consolidating databases
Because all the component parts are included • Deploy systems faster and
and engineered “in-the-box”, there’s no save time by eliminating
requirement for additional, external storage, systems integration trial
and error
networking or software components.
• Store up to 10 times
more data
A true workhorse, Exadata is the only database
• Perform up to 1,500,000
machine that contains all the components database read I/O operations
needed to house your agency’s database, per second
data warehousing and OLTP applications • Improve response times by
(online transaction processing – think of it as up to 40%
thousands of users simultaneously executing • Reduce power and cooling
small, quick transactions), and because it costs by up to 30%
handles mixed workloads, is an ideal platform • Easily upgrade to meet the
for consolidating database workloads in needs of any size application
private clouds as well as the data center. or cloud computing
• Scale by connecting database
or storage racks
10Chapter 3:
Exadata - The Fastest Database Machine for Warehousing and OLTP
Exadata also goes one step further to deliver system scalability and growth. Using
a scale-out architecture for both database and storage servers, CPUs, storage and
networking can be added in a balanced fashion so that you can scale to meet your
operational needs, without bottlenecks.
This architecture makes Exadata ideal for dealing with the unpredictable workloads
of cloud computing because you can expand out from small to extremely large
configurations with uninterrupted performance and no single points of failure.
Exadata Core Components – Configured, Optimized and Ready to Use
The Exadata appliance includes the following components, each of which is pre-
configured, pre-tuned, and pre-tested by Oracle experts, eliminating the weeks or
months of effort that is typically needed to deploy a high performance system:
3 Exadata Database Machine – Because the machine runs the standard Oracle
Database, you can seamlessly migrate any application that runs on the Oracle
Database today to the Exadata Database machine with no impact or changes to
the application.
3 Exadata Storage Servers – To overcome the limitations of conventional
storage, Exadata storage servers use a massively parallel architecture that
dramatically increases data bandwidth between the database server and
storage.
3 InfiniBand Network – A high-bandwidth low-latency 40 Gb/second InfiniBand
network allows you to connect multiple Oracle Exadata Database Machines to
form a larger single system image configuration. Each InfiniBand link provides
40 Gigabits of bandwidth – many times higher than traditional storage or server
networks
3 Exadata Smart Scan – This function allows you to improve query performance
by offloading intensive query processing and data mining scoring to the
system’s storage servers.
3 Exadata Smart Flash Cache – This feature automatically caches frequently
accessed data to fast solid-state storage, improving query response times and
throughput.
3 Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression – Reduce the size of data
warehousing tables by 10x, and archive tables by 50x, to improve performance
and lower storage costs for primary, standby, and backup databases
11Chapter 3:
Exadata - The Fastest Database Machine for Warehousing and OLTP
It’s important to understand that
Exadata contains both the database
and storage servers supported by the
network and software. Figure 1 shows
the appliance and its component parts.
The Exadata Database Machines
Exadata Database Machines are
available in two models: the newer
X3-8 and X3-2. Both machines include
the same database software options,
in addition, the storage server
architecture and version used is the
same, although the number of storage
servers and capacity vary. The main
difference between Exadata X3-8 and
X3-2 is related to capacity in terms of
processor type, number of processors,
memory, and underlying server type.
Figure 1: Oracle Exadata Machine
1. Exadata Database Machine X3-8 –New!
The new Exadata Database Machine X3-8 is designed for database deployments
that require very large amounts of data, delivering extreme performance and
petabyte scalability for all applications including OLTP, Data Warehousing (DW)
and consolidation of mixed workloads. It comes complete with two 8-socket
database servers, 14 Oracle Exadata Storage Servers, InfiniBand switches and
more than 22 terabytes of Exadata Smart Flash Cache to support extremely fast
transaction response times and high throughput.
Features include:
• 160 CPU cores and 4 TB of memory for database processing
• 168 CPU cores dedicated to SQL processing in storage
• 2 database servers
• 14 Oracle Exadata Storage Servers
• 22.4 TB of Exadata Smart Flash Cache
• QDR (40 Gb/second) InfiniBand Switches
• Uncompressed usable capacity of up to 224 TB per rack
• Uncompressed I/O bandwidth of up to 100 GB/second per rack
• Hybrid Columnar Compression delivers 10X-15X compression ratios
• Complete redundancy for high availability
12Chapter 3:
Exadata - The Fastest Database Machine for Warehousing and OLTP
2. Exadata Database Machine X3-2
The Oracle Exadata Database Machine X3-2 comes in eighth, quarter, half, and full
rack configurations to meet any application requirements and to enable users to
easily scale as those requirements change. The full rack comes complete with eight
2-socket database servers, 14 Oracle Exadata Storage Servers, InfiniBand switches
and more than 22 terabytes of Exadata Smart Flash Cache to support extremely
fast transaction response times and high throughput.
• Up to 128 CPU cores and 2 TB memory for database processing
• Up to 168 CPU cores dedicated to SQL processing in storage
• From 2 to 8 database servers
• From 3 to 14 Oracle Exadata Storage Servers
• Up to 22.4 TB of Exadata Smart Flash Cache
• 40 Gb/second (QDR) InfiniBand Network
• Uncompressed and mirrored usable capacity of up to 224 TB per rack
• Uncompressed I/O bandwidth of up to 100 GB/second per rack
• Hybrid Columnar Compression delivers 10X- 15X compression ratios
• Complete redundancy for high availability
• Oracle Linux or Solaris based database servers
Tip: As the need for capacity grows, multiple racks can also be connected to form
even larger configurations. The Exadata Storage Expansion Rack X3-2 can also be
deployed to support additional storage for large data including historical or archive
data, backups, documents, images, XMLs, LOBs, etc.
Note: Technical hardware specifics do
change over time, so be sure to check
out the Oracle website for the latest
specifications and data sheets
Exadata Case Studies
How are public sector organizations
leveraging Oracle Exadata Database
Machine? Below are just two examples
of Exadata at work:
13Chapter 3:
Exadata - The Fastest Database Machine for Warehousing and OLTP
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Avoids $2M in
Technology Expenses and Boosts System Performance
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is one of the
largest organizations in the country for offender management—operating 33 adult
institutions and 3 juvenile facilities with approximately 132,500 inmates. In addition,
CDCR supervises approximately 55,000 parolees.
Like many public sector organizations, CDCR
has faced budget constraints in recent years and
continually looks for opportunities to optimize
use of available resources in its IT department and
elsewhere. In 2012, the IT department migrated
several databases that support business-critical
applications, including its parolee management
system, to Oracle Exadata Database Machine.
With the move, CDCR significantly improved the
availability and performance of applications that
must be available around the clock.
Cost Savings
With Oracle Exadata Database Machine, CDCR has consolidated five databases
and 12 servers onto a single machine, each with its own instance. As a result, CDCR
avoided US$400,000 in annual license support costs. As important, since CDCR
requires fewer Oracle database licenses with Oracle Exadata, it was able to transfer
those legacy licenses that are no longer required to its business information
system program (an enterprise resource planning solution), which is migrating to
Oracle Database. In doing so, CDCR avoided the need to purchase $1.5 million of
additional technology licenses. The department expects to achieve full return on its
investment in just two years.
Optimized Performance and System Availability
The benefits that Oracle Exadata delivers to CDCR extend far beyond financial
savings. For example, the department has gained a new level of hardware stability
for its critical applications, enabling 24/7 availability for systems. Running two
nodes on Oracle Exadata Database Machine, CDCR ensures redundancy and
immediate failover for databases that support critical applications. Previously, when
a database failed, it required CDCR IT personnel intervention to restore the system.
Today, failover is automatic, ensuring availability and enabling IT personnel to focus
on other mission priorities.
14Chapter 3:
Exadata - The Fastest Database Machine for Warehousing and OLTP
Application performance has also improved analyst efficiency. On average,
CDCR now completes reports involving large data extractions 100% faster than
it could have done with the legacy environment, while some reports show time
improvements above that. t.
Joe Panora, Director, Enterprise Information Services, CDCR had this to say about
his organization’s decision to migrate to Exadata:
“Oracle Exadata presented an ideal solution for our critical inmate, juvenile, and
parolee data and management systems. We achieved significant performance
gains—including the ability to run reports up to 70% faster—and ensured
system redundancy. We also consolidated servers, reduced the number of Oracle
licenses needed for legacy applications, and transferred those licenses to another
initiative, reducing costs as well as avoiding the need to purchase an additional
$1.5 million in technology licenses.”
Exadata at Work: Denver Regional Transport District
Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) was organized in 1969 and is the
regional authority operating public transit services in eight of the 12 counties
surrounding Denver, CO. It operates a bus and light rail system that has a service
area of 2,337 square miles.
RTD provides safe, clean, courteous, and cost-effective transportation services to
the public, and relies on cost-effective IT to assist in doing so. The organization
runs many of its critical business
systems, including its Oracle
E-Business Suite environment, as
well as security, dispatch and control,
and other systems on Oracle. The
organization’s IT environment was
growing rapidly, and would continue
to accelerate as it prepared for a $6
billion expansion to its rail lines in the
coming years.
Image courtesy of RTD
15Chapter 3:
Exadata - The Fastest Database Machine for Warehousing and OLTP
Storage and Processing Demands Put a Strain on the District’s IT Infrastructure
In the short term, RTD was beginning to plan for an upgrade to Oracle E-Business
System Release 12 and it was facing some acute challenges. Its 12 IBM database
servers were nearing end of life and the organization was running low on storage
area network (SAN) capacity. In addition, new and existing demands from the
business for storage and processing power were growing too rapidly to manage,
and the organization projected that its disk storage requirements would grow
40-fold in the next 10 years. To meet operational requirements, RTD’s business
applications increasingly required higher availability and recovery capabilities. The
organization was also concerned about the cost of managing its rapidly growing
environment, including an expanding need for database administrator (DBA)
resources, which are increasingly difficult to find and expensive.
Exadata Provides Support for Changing IT Requirements
To support its changing IT requirements, RTD is migrating its core business
systems to Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 running on Oracle Linux. The
Oracle system provides a secure environment to support the migration of RTD’s
online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads while enabling the organization
to deploy a data warehouse without the need for a separate environment. Oracle
Exadata is also simplifying RTD’s infrastructure dependencies, as the storage,
operating system, and software are in a single integrated system that streamlines
administration, patching, and monitoring. Further, RTD no longer requires SAN or
network-attached storage (NAS), reducing overhead for fiber channel switches and
storage cards in each server.
The Result? Unparalleled Performance Improvements
With the move to Oracle Exadata, RTD is consolidating the vendors it works with
and reducing the management tools required to support its database platforms
from four to one. By 2013, it will have reduced
its number of database servers from 12 to
three, representing a four-fold decrease Results
in operations and management (O&M) • 6x performance improvement
requirements. It will also reduce complexity for payroll processing
and risk by eliminating 50% of the server-to- • 2-3x performance
server interfaces. improvement for DB
backups, clones, refreshes
RTD is already realizing a two-fold gain in • 4x decrease for O&M
data compression out of the box. It also has requirements
achieved performance improvements of two-
16Chapter 3:
Exadata - The Fastest Database Machine for Warehousing and OLTP
to three-fold for database backups, clones, and refreshes, as well as long-running
processes—such as Gather Schema Statistics—for Oracle E-Business Suite. In the
future, RTD looks to use Oracle Exadata’s Automatic Storage Management (ASM)
and Flash Recovery Area (FRA) capabilities to speed up these processes even
further.
With Oracle Exadata, RTD has realized a
six-fold performance improvement in its Customer Perspective
payroll processing. In addition, it runs its “Deploying Oracle Exadata
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Database Machine was amazingly
Edition data warehouse on Oracle Exadata. easy because everything is
The system provides expanded insight into optimized for Oracle.”
critical business data, such as the state of “In just one week, we had the
assets on which RTD must report to the system in service, helping to
Federal government. RTD also uses its Oracle speed time to value for our
Business Intelligence environment to analyze organization.”
various funding scenarios. Trent Ratcliff, Senior Manager,
Information Technology, RTD
RTD is moving its Oracle E-Business Suite
environment to Oracle Exadata, which is
expected to go into production later this year..
Denver Regional Transportation District is migrating its core business systems to
Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 Quarter Rack running on Oracle Linux.
It is consolidating the vendors it works with and reducing the management tools
required to support its database platforms from four to one. By 2013, it will have
reduced its number of database servers from 12 to three, representing a four-fold
decrease in operations and management (O&M) requirements in this area. It will
also reduce server-to-server interfaces by 50%.
17Chapter 4:
Exalogic - The Best Foundation for the Government Cloud
Learn about:
> Why Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud is the right foundation
for your cloud strategy
> Consolidating and deploying hundreds of applications in a
seamless, automated fashion
> How Oracle has applied its expertise to develop a data
center “in-a-box”
As we discussed in Chapter 1, by and large, government IT environments are made
up of a blend of custom heterogeneous systems comprising a number of hardware
and software platforms which can be costly to deploy and maintain. A better
solution is cloud computing.
Unlike many hot technologies that rapidly cool off and disappear almost as fast as
they burst on the scene, cloud computing is predicted to become the dominant
platform for new applications, as well as the most popular solution for existing
applications as they age and need to be replaced.
In the public sector, cloud platforms help to reduce costs and transform business
processes completely, improving the flexibility and security on a large and dynamic
scale. It also enables greater collaboration and transparency in data analytics and
information sharing capabilities between various government agencies.
Oracle is widely recognized as one of the leading vendors for supplying cloud
solutions to governments.
This chapter explores how Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud can help agencies meet
federal, state and local cloud computing policies and mandates while establishing
an optimized foundation for running mission-critical applications.
What is Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud?
Oracle Exalogic allows organizations to run multiple applications in virtualized,
isolated environments and consolidate hundreds of applications onto a single
system. As such, it is typically used to run the application, web, and middle-tier
components of the following software products and workloads::
18Chapter 4:
Exalogic - The Best Foundation for the Government Cloud
• Oracle Applications – Including Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, etc.
• Oracle Fusion Middleware – including Business Intelligence,
Service-Oriented Architecture, and more.
• Custom and third-party applications
What makes Oracle Exalogic unique is its high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnect
fabric that enables complex, distributed applications to run with a responsiveness
that is not achievable with traditional servers used in data centers today.
And because Oracle Exalogic is part of Oracle’s family
of engineered systems, it provides a complete solution
of hard¬ware, software, networking, and storage in a
single machine. So that everything in Oracle Exalogic—
from applications to disk—is engineered, integrated,
optimized, tested, and certified to work together.
The result? Oracle calls it extreme performance:
business applications are deployed faster, users start
to work with their applications sooner, and those
applications run significantly faster.
With Exalogic agencies can cut costs, reduce complexity, and protect IT
investments, thanks to:
• Automatic application deployment processes in a virtualized
environment that lowers risk and get users up and running with a few clicks
• True application isolation that protect sensitive data at both the
software and hardware levels
• Comprehensive management of the entire solution – from applications
to disk – from a single console
How it Works
From an architectural standpoint, as you can see in Figure 2, Exalogic integrates
compute, networking and storage hardware with virtualization, operating system
and management software – quite literally, it’s a data center in a box.
When you get Exalogic you’ll receive the pre-built and tested hardware with
Oracle Solaris or Linux OS installed and configured, as well as the Exalogic Elastic
Cloud Software. Applications can be installed on top of this infrastructure without
any changes.
19Chapter 4:
Exalogic - The Best Foundation for the Government Cloud
Of key importance, is the engineered optimization and interoperability between
all these components. Because Oracle owns all the components going into the
Exalogic server, Oracle has the control and resources necessary to ensure and
optimal design and configuration.
Middleware and Business Applications
WebLogic Coherence Tuxedo Traffic
Director Exalogic
Control
Enterprise Manager
Exabus Exabus Exabus Exabus
Integration Integration Integration Integration
Oracle Linux (Virtualized)
Oracle Linux or Solaris
Exalogic Hypervisor (Bare-metal)
Exabus Integration
Exabus
Exalogic Elastic Cloud Hardware
= Exalogic Elastic Cloud Hardware
Figure 2: Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software (Image courtesy of Oracle)
Exalogic Core Components
Exalogic is a highly engineered and optimized hardware and software solution
using these components and characteristics:
• Hardware: Intel Xeon x86 compute nodes, InfiniBand and Ethernet
switches, integrated storage system
• Operating Systems: Choice of Oracle Linux or Solaris
• Cloud Software: Complete Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) management
• Server Virtualization: High performance Type I Exalogic hypervisor
• Storage Software: Complete storage management, including clones,
snapshots and replication
• Management Tools: Configuration management, diagnostics and
remote health monitoring
• Oracle Enterprise Manger Integration: Integrated support for end-to-end
Oracle middleware and application management
These components are engineered to produce a highly reliable and optimized
application tier platform. Advanced management tools, fault tolerance, and a focus
on availability make this machine highly manageable for critical systems.
20Chapter 4:
Exalogic - The Best Foundation for the Government Cloud
Exalogic: An Essential Foundation for Cloud Computing
Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud is built to support cloud computing. In the time it
takes to read this chapter your users could literally have deployed the applications
they need to use today. And, because the hardware and software are engineered to
work together, you save months of integrating, testing, and benchmarking.
Faster deployment is just one benefit. Oracle Exalogic’s extreme performance,
massive scale, and hardware-based application isolation make it the ideal platform
for consolidating many existing applications on a single platform. Applications can
be migrated unchanged and then run with higher performance and reliability at a
cost that can be as much as 60 percent lower than for traditional environments.
Exalogic’s management automation coupled with the dynamic scalability of Oracle
WebLogic Server and Oracle Coherence, make it the ideal foundation for elastic
cloud infrastructure.
Note: Not deploying cloud computing? Exalogic doesn’t have to be used to support
the cloud, it can also provide benefits in a traditional IT environment, for example
if you need to consolidate servers into one or a few Exalogic machines and use
Exalogic as the basis of shared services within the datacenter.
21Chapter 4:
Exalogic - The Best Foundation for the Government Cloud
Enhanced Performance
In real-world settings, Exalogic has been shown
to outperform other platforms by wide margins,
often delivering two to ten times (sometimes
even more) application performance. Not only
do applications become more responsive and
deliver a greatly improved user experience,
they also become more resource efficient.
With Exalogic, enterprises are able to support
application workloads with less hardware,
power, heat, data center space and software.
Being fully pre-integrated by Oracle, Exalogic is
also easier to provision, manage and maintain,
which further accelerates time to value and
higher TCO for new projects. Exalogic is
designed for high availability and zero-down-time maintenance and can be scaled
linearly from a single, Quarter-Rack configuration to a large system of 8 Full-Racks
without any service disruption or additional external hardware requirements.
10 Reasons why
Exalogic is the Right
Choice for Your Cloud
Foundation and More!
Exalogic is at the
forefront of an industry-
wide shift from costly
and outdated piece-
meal application
platforms toward
engineered systems.
So what are the key
benefits of the Exalogic cloud computing architecture? The table below highlights
the capabilities and benefits of the individual features that make Exalogic run so
fast and reliably – making it the ideal system for cloud computing, support of very
large systems, and data center consolidation.
22Chapter 4:
Exalogic - The Best Foundation for the Government Cloud
Feature Benefit
• Fully integrated compute Save months of integration, benchmarking and
nodes, storage and testing, and get a system fully optimized and
networking certified for your applications
Increase production deployments capacity with
• Built-in linear scalability zero downtime and zero need for additional
to hundreds of processors external switching capacity
• Superfast, low-latency, Achieve maximum transaction throughput on
secure InfiniBand critical applications, and eliminate concerns about
networking running multiple applications on the same system
Seamless data center network connectivity
• Exabus high-performance with extreme high performance, security, and
communications backplane dramatically lower management complexity
Increase density and lower management costs
• Built-in, mission-critical
by partitioning your system, so workloads are
virtualization with
consolidated while you still maintain application
Oracle VM
isolation
• 100% Oracle Linux and Out-of-the-box support for thousands of Oracle
Oracle Solaris application and third-party applications
compatibility
Gain an applications-to-disk view of your system
• Complete application- with proven management tools. Get users back
to-disk management with to work faster by troubleshooting issues 2X faster.
Oracle Enterprise Manager Use cloud control capabilities to offer on-demand
self-service.
Seamless integration with Oracle Exadata via
• Native leveraging of Oracle Oracle InfiniBand technology, for superfast
Exadata Database Machine application performance
Deploy applications 6X faster by provisioning
• Rapid deployment with application assemblies that are preconfigured
Oracle Virtual Assembly and optimized for your environment. Make
Builder your application deployment process reliable,
predictable, and repeatable.
Fast, reliable, secure, and scalable load balancing
• Load balancing with
that doesn’t require any additional hardware or
Oracle Traffic Director
software
23Chapter 5:
SuperCluster – Speed Consolidation and Cloud Deployments
Learn about:
> Consolidating diverse IT environments on one powerful machine
> Eliminating the risk associated with “do-it-yourself” solutions
> The possibilities of delivering multi-tenant cloud services
faster while simplifying application deployment
Do you need to consolidate large numbers
of applications, databases, and middleware With Oracle SuperCluster
workloads? Is your agency deploying you can:
complex, multi-user development, test, and
• Consolidate diverse
deployment environments? workloads – including
database, middleware, and
Cloud infrastructure, on-demand services, web applications – on a
and the ability to rapidly deploy and manage single server
business applications are all key approaches • Efficiently consolidate
that enable agencies to reduce IT costs while different tiers of an
enterprise application
dramatically improving performance and and securely consolidate
increasing service levels. multiple applications without
sacrificing performance
The problem is that a disjointed, • Increase server utilization
heterogeneous IT infrastructure can get and reduce the number of
in the way of these opportunities because servers you need to manage
and maintain
IT managers spend all their time having to
maintain, patch, and manage a disparate
collection of products while worrying about
interoperability and deployment details – all of which can be both time consuming
and expensive. The good news is that many IT problems can be addressed by taking
a solutions-focused approach to infrastructure, and the Oracle SuperCluster T5-8
provides an ideal platform for this.
What is Oracle SuperCluster?
Just as the name implies, Oracle SuperCluster is a complete engineered system
that’s ideal for the consolidation of databases, applications, and private cloud
deployments. Like Oracle’s other engineered systems, it delivers extreme
performance, high availability and efficiency, and eliminates the risks of build-it-
yourself architectures.
24Chapter 5:
SuperCluster – Speed Consolidation and Cloud Deployments
A pre-integrated “in-the-box” appliance, Oracle SuperCluster T5-8 comes complete
with servers, Oracle Exadata storage servers, networking and software built-in
and pre-tested. Each component is optimized together to run Oracle Database,
Java, and enterprise applications unchanged. This consolidation approach lowers
TCO and delivers secure multi-tenant cloud services up to five times faster than
traditional build-your-own IT infrastructure.
With SuperCluster you can expect:
• Faster database performance with bundled Oracle Exadata storage servers
• Faster Java application performance with optional Oracle Exalogic
Elastic Cloud software
• High-availability configuration options with remote disaster recovery
Because all these component parts are built-in, consolidating data center
environments using SuperCluster greatly reduces the risk, cost and hassle of
managing your IT systems. SuperCluster also simplifies application deployment
thanks to its low-overhead virtualization and powerful system management tools
which allow users to rapidly deploy high-performance applications, consolidate
complex workloads, and replace aging servers.
How it Works
Like all Oracle engineered systems, Oracle
SuperCluster T5-8 is a complete solution Tip: If you are an
optimized to provide the best performance, existing SPARC/Oracle
availability, and security for running agency- Solaris customer Oracle
SuperCluster offers a
critical Java and enterprise applications. In
migration path that’s backed
fact, Oracle Database and Java perform up by Oracle’s unique guarantee
to 10 times faster than on other platforms, of binary compatibility. You
improving user response times and applications can run on
helping to meet service level agreements. Oracle Solaris 10 or 11, or
Agencies deploying Oracle SuperCluster on a mix of the two. Any
T5-8 can achieve 99.999 percent application third-party, custom, or Oracle
availability, minimizing both planned and applications running on a
unplanned downtime and providing the SPARC/Oracle Solaris-based
highest service levels for core business system today are ready to
applications across all tiers of the run on Oracle SuperCluster
engineered system.
data center. .
25Chapter 5:
SuperCluster – Speed Consolidation and Cloud Deployments
If your enterprise comprises multi-tier enterprise applications including web,
database, and application components, Oracle SuperCluster T5-8 is worth
consideration.
Oracle SuperCluster T5-8 is offered in a choice of modular configurations (half-rack,
full-rack, and multi-rack) that can scale and expand easily. This modular approach
helps ensure the highest quality for integration and testing.
Other Vendors
SUPERCLUSTER
Applications
and Middleware
+
OS Layer OS, Kernel, Patch, Level?
Integrated + Different
Compute and
Tuned Virtualization CPU, RAM, Flash, Blade, Rack? Every
Optimized Layer Time
Identical
+
I/O Layer Ethernet, InfiniBand, FC?
+
Storage
NAS, SAN, SSD, HDD?
Layer
=
Exalogic Hypervisor 160+ Seperate Parts
Months from start to production
Figure 3: Oracle SuperCluster T5-8 accelerates the entire Oracle technology stack, and provides
simplicity and savings over multi-vendor build-your-own approaches (Image courtesy of Oracle)
Features and Benefits of Oracle SuperCluster
The platform includes a number of key advancements and innovations that help
drive better performance, higher consolidation ratios, and lower power and cooling
costs. The table below highlights the complete features and benefits of Oracle
SuperCluster T5-8:
26Chapter 5:
SuperCluster – Speed Consolidation and Cloud Deployments
Feature Benefit
Speed your time to value by up to 5x and
• A complete engineered accelerate your database and application
system with integrated performance by up to 10x compared to build-it-
hardware and software yourself system architectures
• Best-in-class Oracle SPARC
T5-8 servers, Exadata and ZFS
storage, InfiniBand networking Leverage the best available technology to improve
and Oracle Database and your data center service levels
systems software
• Standardized configurations Avoid the delays and risk of trial-and-error system
validated by 1,000 of hours integration
of tuning and testing
• Designed for highly efficient Lower your TCO up to 5x by running Oracle
database and application Database and enterprise applications together on
consolidation a single system
• Run both Oracle Solaris 11 Protect your application software investment
and Solaris 10 with support by moving your existing Solaris applications
for Solaris 8 and 9 in legacy unchanged to a faster system using the
zones guaranteed binary compatibility of Oracle Solaris,
the #1 UNIX OS
• Automated provisioning Transform data center processes with easily
of cloud services and Oracle deployed application and database cloud services
Database instances that run 5x to 32x faster than manual procedures
• Based on servers running the
SPARC T5 processor that has Upgrade your datacenter with 10x the price
set 17 different world records performance of a comparable IBM Power 7+
and are 2.5x faster than the based solution
previous generation
• Zero overhead virtualization Maximize your system utilization by avoiding
with Oracle VM Server for virtualization overhead and improve consolidation
SPARC efficiency by up to 50%
• Oracle Exadata Smart Scan Increase your database performance by offloading
processing to intelligent storage servers
• Oracle Exadata Smart Improve your database response times and
Flash Cache throughput
27Chapter 5:
SuperCluster – Speed Consolidation and Cloud Deployments
Feature Benefit
• Hybrid Columnar Lower your database storage requirements by
Compression up to 10x
• Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud
software capabilities Accelerate your Java applications up to 10x
• Complete application-to- Proactively monitor, manage, and troubleshoot
disk management with Oracle your entire hardware and virtualization
Enterprise Manager 12c environment
• Fast, low-latency, secure
InfiniBand networking Avoid network performance bottlenecks
Dramatically reduce your time, effort and
• Oracle Optimized Solutions risk when deploying Oracle and third-party
applications
• Fiber channel connectivity Protect your investment in legacy SAN storage
and simplify data migration
• Oracle Platinum Services Improve your service levels with 24/7 fault
monitoring, faster response times, and patch
Three Ways Oracle SuperCluster can Support Any Stage of your Agency’s IT Lifecycle
Whether your goal is improving system utilization, reducing energy consumption,
conserving data center floor space, or creating a cloud computing infrastructure
Oracle SuperCluster offers a fast, tested, and certified platform that offers
flexibility at every stage of your agency’s IT and business operations:
Operational needs Start with an Oracle SuperCluster half rack then
still growing? expand to a full rack later on, and even connect to eight
Oracle SuperClusters using high-speed InfiniBand.
Need more storage? Use your existing fiber channel, storage or connect to
additional Oracle Exadata Storage Expansion Rack or
Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliances.
Existing applications? Don’t worry about migration, Oracle SuperCluster is
compatible with all previous SPARC/Oracle Solaris
systems and runs existing SPARC/Oracle Solaris
applications.
28Chapter 6:
Oracle Database Appliance – Deploying the World’s #1 Database at
the Department-Level Made Easy
Learn about:
> Deploying a high-availability database solution ideally suited
for mid-range workloads and smaller departments
> Ways to minimize implementation and management headaches
with automated processes and wizards
> The high availability and performance features of this one-of-a-kind
engineered system of software, server, storage, and networking
Oracle’s engineered systems aren’t just limited to data center consolidation, cloud
computing infrastructures, and large scale database needs – meet the Oracle
Database Appliance (ODA). This “in-a-box” solution is particularly suited for mid-
range database workloads and smaller agencies or departments; enabling them to
reduce the time, risk, and costs usually associated with building a high-availability
database or solution in a box.
What is Oracle Database Appliance?
Providing access to information 24/7 and protecting databases from unforeseen as
well as planned downtime can be a challenge for many state and local government
agencies, as well as smaller federal field offices. Indeed, manually building
redundancy into database systems can be risky and error-prone if the right skills
and resources are not available in-house. The Oracle Database Appliance X32 is
designed for simplicity and reduces that element of risk and uncertainty to help
customers deliver higher availability for their databases.
As a part of Oracle’s family of engineered systems, ODA delivers a complete
package of software, server, storage, and networking – all engineered for easy
deployment. ODA’s high availability database services support a wide range
of homegrown and packaged online transaction processing (OLTP) and data
warehousing applications.
ODA also now includes a Virtualized Platform, built on Oracle VM, which allows
your agency to quickly deploy complete, highly available solution appliances to
field offices and other remote locations where IT resources are limited.
Oracle is offered on a “capacity on demand” software licensing model that lets
you decide how much product you need. Choose from 2 to 32 cores, and if your
needs change later, simply license and “turn on” as many of the additional cores as
demand dictates. There’s no hardware to buy and no need to shut the system down
for upgrades.
29Chapter 6:
Oracle Database Appliance – Deploying the World’s #1 Database at
the Department-Level Made Easy
How it Works
ODA can be deployed in a single operation;
the set-up process is entirely automated $$$ Savings!
including all configurations for the clustered
Oracle Database Appliance
database. An installation wizard guides saves agencies up to 2000
assists with the process which can take as hours of labor over a three year
little as an hour! period with simple deployment,
maintenance, and support of
Managing the ODA is also easy, thanks to the database workloads, all
built-in Appliance Manger which automates
many time-consuming admin tasks including
the deployment of Oracle’s clustering software, Oracle Real Application Clusters
(RAC). In the past, Oracle RAC was typically used by larger organizations with
IT specialists trained in database cluster implementations, but with ODA, the
Appliance Manage feature provisions RAC automatically.
Other admin tasks are also automated. With a touch of the button Appliance
Manager takes care of patching firmware and software for the entire appliance.
Oracle Database Appliance – Core Components
The Oracle Database Appliance X32 hardware is a 4U rack-mountable system
containing two Oracle Linux servers and one storage shelf. Each server features
two 8 core Intel Xeon E52690 processors, 256 GB of memory, and 10Gigabit
Ethernet (10GBaseT) external networking connectivity. The two servers are
connected together via a redundant
10GbE interconnect for cluster
communication and share direct-
attached high performance SAS
storage. The appliance contains 18
TB of raw storage that’s double-
mirrored or triple-mirrored, offering
9 TB or 6 TB, respectively, of resilient
usable database storage. There
are also four 200 GB solid-state
disks for the database redo logs to
boost performance. The appliance
is also designed with mission-
critical requirements in mind, with
hot-swappable and redundant
components.
30Chapter 6:
Oracle Database Appliance – Deploying the World’s #1 Database at
the Department-Level Made Easy
The Oracle Database Appliance X32 runs Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, and
customers have the choice of running Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle
RAC) or Oracle RAC One Node for “active-active” or “active-passive” database
server failover.
You can also double the storage capacity of the system to 36 TB with an optional
storage expansion shelf. To expand storage outside of the appliance, external NFS
storage is supported for online backups, data staging, or additional database files.
Figure 4: The Oracle Database Appliance (Image courtesy of Oracle)
The complete features of the X3-2 Appliance include:
• Fully integrated database appliance
• Simple one-button installation, patching, and diagnostics
• Oracle Database, Enterprise Edition
• Oracle Real Application Clusters or Oracle Real Application
Clusters One Node
• Oracle Automatic Storage Management
• Oracle Enterprise Manager
• Oracle Linux
• Oracle VM
• Two database servers
• 32 processor cores
• 512 GB of memory
• Up to 36 TB SAS disk storage with optional storage expansion
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