In Pakistan, enterprises face a lot of problems with maintaining business information such as transactions, different records, documents, voice recordings, xml data, print streams and other type of structured and unstructured data because of its exploding growth which consumes a lot of space, energy and the fiscal framework is such that to keep records of 5 years when the cases are in litigation for 10 to 15 years; these documents must be retained which is a challenging task.
Back up is thought to be a temporary solution to this sometimes but that is also not very reliable and difficult to access sometimes. Software companies have come up a number of content management solutions but Oracle being the best solution provider for such issues of data storage has come up with the Oracle Data Base Appliance (ODA).
Oracle Database Appliance is a highly available all-in-one cluster, database, and storage server. It provides appliance-like ease of use for installation and management, greatly simplifying the deployment and maintenance of an enterprise-level highly available relational database system. It is built using industry-standard Sun Fire X Series hardware from Sun, and intelligent database and storage software from Oracle, Oracle Database Appliance is a complete package of software, servers, and storage, optimized for simple deployment and easy maintenance.
Following are its features:
Base Configuration
- Two servers, each contain
- 16 CPU cores
- 256 GB memory
- 600 GB mirrored boot disks
- Redundant 100 GBase – T interconnect
- External 10 GBase – T networking
- Storage shelf
- 800 GB SSD
- 18TB HDD
Zero Admin / Online Storage Expansion
- Double Available Storage Capacity
- Additional 18TB HDD, 36 TB Total
- Additional 800 GB SSD, 1.6 TB Total
- Zero Administration
- Automatically integrates when plugged in
- Data automatically distributes to new shelf
- Online Expand Storage
- Hot – plug storage expansion shelf
- No database downtime
Built-in Software
- Oracle Database 11g Enterprise edition
- Real Application Clusters
- RAC One Node
- Signal Instance
- Oracle Grid Infrastructure
- Automatic Storage Management
- Oracle Clusterware
- Oracle Linux and Oracle VM
- Oracle Appliance Manager
Built-in Hardware
- Two dual – socket Oracle Linux servers
- Redundant 10 – GbE interconnect
- Double mirroring or triple mirroring storage redundancy
- Redundant hot – swappable, power cooling and fans
Hardware Comparison:
The hardware costs $60,000 which is way less than any other product of the same category that might cost $79,000 – $80,000. The software licensing and support is up to 2 – 32 cores, the design setup takes up to 4 hrs. costing $400 only while other products may take up to 194 hrs. costing $19, 400. Quarterly maintenance will take 5 hrs./year costing $500/year while other products take up to 148 hrs./year costing $14,800/year. The operating expense might take 12 hrs./year costing $1200/year while other products in the similar category might take up to 76 hrs./year costing $7,600/year which is saving your time and $100K per year.
Oracle Database Appliance, hence, is the most efficient and cost effective solution for the big data storage for today’s day and age with simple implementation; price isn’t a stumbling block, self-contained appliance and modern and high spec software.
Image source: slideshare.net/ODA & oracle.com
