Oracle Grid Computing Achieved
Evolution of the next generation
data center
Enterprises around the world are seeing diminishing returns from traditional IT approaches, where the proliferation of departmental or application-specific computing silos has resulted in under utilization, spiraling administrative costs, and major impediments to change. In an attempt to break out of this cycle, many organizations are rushing to consolidate IT but too often end up with nothing more than larger silos in fewer locations. While this may produce some economic value, it does little to improve IT agility. Another important trend in both enterprise-application architecture and governance is adoption of a service-oriented architecture (SOA), in which services can be easily assembled into new, composite applications. SOA may be viewed as a consolidation response to the software redundancies often created by silo applications. Fundamentally, SOA changes the traditional monolithic application development model to one in which business functions are developed once and then shared across multiple business processes, dramatically improving efficiency, interoperability, and agility while driving standardization.
Maximize flexibility with shared
IT resources
Together HP and Oracle®deliver the core elements
of a broader service-oriented IT strategy. One that supports consolidation but goes further to embrace next-generation data center capabilities—a 24 x 7 lights-out computing environment in which standardization, automation, and virtualization break down silos and enable a supply chain of IT services. To help you move toward this new model, HP and Oracle offer a set of complementary strategies—the HP Adaptive Infrastructure and Oracle Grid Computing.
“When we consolidated in the [Oracle] grid
environment, we came across several great
benefits: flexibility is number one, ease of
moving our processing to where it’s needed,
we have much better uptime now … we
attribute one day of revenues saved every
year for business we didn’t lose.”
Service-oriented IT is a powerful way to transform your data center and your enterprise architecture. But as you examine the implications of SOA and Oracle Grid, you’ll soon recognize the critical part your underlying technology infrastructure will play. In the early phases of implementing an SOA strategy, the quickest returns are generally realized by creating services based on existing application functions and database definitions— for example, defining a single customer record function to be used across all business processes. Suddenly, this particular element of one existing application has an increased workload. Increasing workloads in one application silo will be matched by declining use in others, resulting in a mismatch of resources under the silo infrastructure model. That’s where HP Adaptive Infrastructure offerings combined with Oracle Grid computing capabilities come in. By implementing an Adaptive Infrastructure, you can ensure that service-level commitments to business users are met through dynamic reallocation of resources across the grid in response to changing application workloads and business priorities.
So, how do you move from your current infrastructure to an Adaptive Infrastructure that fully leverages Oracle Grid Computing and the vision of SOA? The answer is with HP Reference Architectures for Oracle.
HP Reference Architectures for
Oracle Grid
HP has developed a set of reference architectures that are integrated tightly with Oracle Grid and Oracle Fusion Middleware capabilities. The HP Reference Architectures for Oracle Grid on HP BladeSystem and the HP Virtual Server Environment Reference Architecture for Oracle Grid on HP-UX 11i enable you to support Oracle Grid in a highly dynamic SOA environment. What are HP Reference Architectures for Oracle? • Validated hardware and software integrations • Repeatable configurations and administration • Designed to deliver high availability
and manageability
• Best practices knowledge transfer
• Modular, standardized building blocks for an Adaptive Infrastructure
• Target platform for HP and Oracle service offerings
Oracle Grid on HP BladeSystem
The HP Reference Architecture for Oracle Grid Computing on HP BladeSystem is an architectural specification of a proven hardware and software environment that’s ideal for Oracle Grid computing where rapid growth and start-up costs are key decision criteria. At the core of this architecture is the HP BladeSystem, a fully self-contained infrastructure comprised of server blades, storage, and networking, all controlled by a unified infrastructure management framework. Key to maximizing Oracle Grid is the HP Virtual Connect option that virtualizes the connections between the blade servers and your enterprise network and storage area network (SAN). With Virtual
Connect, changes in your infrastructure don’t require changes in your networks because connectivity is aggregated and virtualized at the server edge, which means servers can be added, re-purposed, and replaced in an Oracle Grid in minutes, not days.
HP Virtual Server Environment
for Oracle Grid
The HP Virtual Server Environment (VSE) Reference Architecture for Oracle Grid on HP-UX 11i demonstrates the powerful integration of Oracle RAC, Oracle Fusion Middleware, and HP VSE technologies such as HP Global Workload Manager (gWLM) and HP Serviceguard Cluster File System for RAC. The architecture takes advantage of the Virtual Server Environment for the automatic migration of server resources to meet workload needs and Oracle RAC to expand database services to additional servers to handle increasing demands. Together, these technologies create an application infrastructure that demonstrates dynamic scale-up, -out, and -back as a powerful technique to share resources between workloads while meeting business requirements in real time.
running on can gain additional capacity by activating the required Oracle services on additional servers (dynamic scale out). As the database load declines, Oracle services will be deactivated on the overflow servers (dynamic scale back). When the load does not require the use of all available Oracle services, system resources can be distributed to where they are most needed. By sharing the same capacity across multiple workloads with different peak load timing, overall utilization of the utility compute resources is optimized. Thus, an environment based on the HP VSE Reference Architecture for Oracle Grid delivers peak capacity to each workload with maximum utilization of compute resources and built in availability.
Simplify administration with unified
infrastructure management
Tying everything together is HP unified infrastructure management, enabling administrators to monitor and proactively troubleshoot complex problems spanning servers, storage, and networks across an Oracle Grid.
With HP Systems Insight Manager and optional Essentials software plug-ins, HP delivers a heterogeneous, multi-OS server and storage management solution that enables you to monitor and control holistically your environment to improve
“We saw right away how resources in the [HP] Virtual Server
Environment, such as memory and CPU, were no longer fixed—
that we could start allocating them in a much more granular
way. So, the users get consistently high performance without ever
knowing anything is happening behind the scenes. It’s all very
fluid—we don’t have to get involved at all.”
For more information
For more information about HP Adaptive Infrastructure and Oracle Grid Computing visit the following sites:
HP Reference Architectures for Oracle:
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/150368-0-0-0-121.html
HP and Oracle Fusion Middleware and Service-oriented Architectures:
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/306020-0-0-0-121.html
Application Modernization Initiative:
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/423701-0-0-225-121.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN
Application Modernization Services:
http://h20219.www2.hp.com/services/cache/123120-0-0-225-121.html?jumpid= reg_R1002_USEN
Accelerate your Oracle Grid journey
As you evaluate your options for implementing an Oracle Grid environment, consider the following: • Oracle Grid is only as dynamic and flexible as
your infrastructure—realizing the full value of a service- oriented architecture requires embracing the next-generation data center.
• To maximize infrastructure efficiencies, it takes more than simply consolidating numerous small silos into fewer large silos.
• Changes at the application/service level can have serious implications on your IT infrastructure. • HP Adaptive Infrastructure helps customers achieve
better business outcomes.
