The press release details new EMC Proven Solutions for Oracle / VMware environments
One that shows how to use FAST to run faster, cheaper and simple. Another one that details how to use a Celerra NS-960 to create a business continuity environment.One that shows how Data Domain integrates with Oracle's RMAN capabilities.
And finally, enhanced verification and support for joint EMC / VMware customers running Oracle in production environments.
I'd encourage you to follow the links -- there's some meaty goodness to be had if this interests you.
But I think there's more to the story ...The Irresistible Force Meets The Immovable Object
My father liked logical paradoxes. When I was young, he liked to pose the question of what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object somewhere in space.
My answer? The irresistible force finds a way around (or through) the immovable object. The irresistable force continues as before. The immovable object doesn't have to move. Things continue as before.
That's probably the most accurate way to describe the forces in play here.
One one hand, we've got the classic "immovable object": Oracle's decidedly negative stance on customers who want to run their software in hypervisors other than the one that Oracle happens to sell. As doing so might undermine Oracle's strategic stack visions (and it reportedly comes directly from Larry Ellison), it's about as immovable an object as you'll find in the IT industry.
On the other hand, we've got an irresistible force at work here -- the need for IT organizations to fully virtualize their infrastructure, and change their operational and consumption model to a private cloud. And, no surprise, VMware is leading this transition. From my perspective, this qualifies as an "irresistible force" for most IT organizations -- there's no stopping its progress.
Unfortunately, customers are usually at "ground zero" where these two concepts are meeting. That's not good.
So, how can EMC and VMware, working together, help the irresistible force go around (or through) the current immovable object?
Chad Sakac does a fantastic job of getting into the details in this post, so I'd encourage you to go read what he's got to say. It's not a perfect world, but it shows we're making great progress in helping the irresistable force get past the immovable object.
We're creating enough confidence with some of our customers to put production Oracle workloads on fully virtualized environments. Not small, dinky ones -- big hairy workloads. That's cool, in my book. Numbers will increase over time, and we'll all move beyond this point in time.
Which brings me to my next topic ...
Oracle Meets Virtual Servers ... And Virtual Storage
If you followed Pat Gelsinger's discussion around virtual storage concepts from a while back, you'll probably remember that FAST (fully automated tiering of storage) was one of the key tenets.
That may sound nice for non-critical applications, but how does this play out with big, gnarly Oracle production databases?
That's what this EMC Proven Solution is all about -- showing how we did it, as well as the results. In a nutshell, the environment was significantly faster, cheaper and simpler than before. Hard to argue.
... And Building A Highly-Resilient Production Environment ...
Going a bit further, the next EMC Proven Solution brings together a lot of useful pieces: Oracle databases, VMware, snaps and replications, DNFS, and disaster recovery using NFS on the Celerra NS-960.
I know this will disappoint some of our competitors, but -- yes -- EMC has been recommending NFS for demanding transactional workloads for some time :-)
And Backing Them Up With DedupeSome customers may have been curious about using Data Domain's product with big Oracle databases and RMAN. Hopefully, they'll be interested by this EMC Proven Solution which shows not only how we set up the environment, but the results: performance, capacity savings, etc.
Useful, detailed stuff IMHO.
Who Are You Going To Call When There's A Problem?
All of this integrated goodness is certified by EMC's E-Lab as well as fully supported by EMC's mission-critical customer support organization.
We've been doing mission-critical Big Oracle for many, many years -- it's our heritage, and we think we do it the best. Only now, we're just doing it in fully virtualized environments.
Netting It OutNew technologies and operational models usually get tried out in non-mission critical environments before being turned loose in critical production environments. Doing anything less is usually not advised for continued career success :-)
Highly virtualized environments and private clouds are no exception.
With this announcement, I think we're seeing clear evidence of the mainstreaming of these technologies (and associated operational models) into serious bet-your-job production environments.
The irresistible force continues onwards ...
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