Win in the “Always On” World
The ubiquity of data usage, growth and anywhere access demands a simpler IT paradigm, one that capitalizes on technology capabilities and enables opportunities to innovate. When compute, network
and storage resources are cohesively managed within one converged platform, the business wins with faster results and greater value. Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) Select for Oracle RAC With Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) helps to lower operating expenses (opex) and reduce infrastructure footprint. It is ideally suited to accelerate infrastructure deployment to support Oracle databases, enterprise apps, data warehousing, analytics and business intelligence. Hitachi UCP Select is the new gold standard for the modern data center, delivering a simplified, intelligent and flexible converged infrastructure that encourages faster product cycles, better business agility, and secure
anytime access to information anywhere it is needed. In this document, we consider the Hitachi solution as it applies to Oracle 11g RAC.
Expedite Business Value for Oracle Database Environments
Oracle databases and applications are integral to many, if not all, facets of your organization. To meet ever-increasing demands for high availability, continuous operations and dynamic workloads, enterprises frequently turn to Oracle RAC. This clustered version of Oracle Database
makes an ideal foundation for shared infrastructure, business continuity, missioncritical deployments and database cloud environments. The compute, networking and storage resources that support Oracle RAC must exude the highest levels of flexibility, performance, scalability and resilience.
Ensuring zero application downtime, lowlatency access and scalable growth across workloads, virtual machines (VMs) and clusters is essential. Delivering massive throughput across Oracle RAC ecosystems requires predictable, repeatable and reliable performance, even as the number of database nodes increases. Rather than running on an outdated hardware architecture or managing sprawling and siloed resources, tech-savvy organizations want integrated solutions that are pretested and certified.
Hitachi UCP Select for Oracle RAC
With Cisco UCS is a validated reference architecture, a proven blueprint of tightly integrated compute, network and storage. Intended to address the specific needs of Oracle RAC, this scalable best-in-class
solution stack speeds the installation and deployment of databases, applications and private cloud offerings while lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO), simplifying management and reducing Oracle license sprawl.
Superior TCO
As the data center transitions from being a cost-center to a business-enablement resource, IT expects highly responsive technologies, reduced opex and supreme efficiencies. Hitachi UCP Select for Oracle
Database RAC With Cisco UCS empowers organizations to drive tremendous consolidation and continuous operations, regardless of database growth. This solution’s innovative virtualization, intuitive active-active storage and intelligent fabric computing architecture cohesively support
more Oracle instances with less to manage, license and maintain. Initial investment and costs are dramatically reduced. Business agility and data mobility soar.
Leading Performance
Performance is king as minutes or seconds can make all the difference between being an industry leader or a struggling laggard. Hitachi UCP Select for Oracle RAC With Cisco UCS delivers industryleading performance to enable faster insight into your valuable information assets for
better decision-making. Advanced cloudready capabilities allow administrators to easily size, move and adjust resources to match demand at any time for optimal data dexterity. Compute resources scale out while storage with enterprise-class Hitachi Accelerated Flash (HAF) expands dynamically to accommodate high-intensity workloads, consistency across nodes, massive throughput and flexible real-time allocation of IT resources.
Highest Resilience
Not all converged platforms can deliver the required levels of performance, quality and availability required for Oracle Databases to execute properly. Hitachi UCP Select for Oracle RAC With Cisco UCS is purposely engineered for Oracle mission-critical reliability and responsiveness. Continuous operations and nondisruptive migration mean that entire databases, specific data sets and applications are always available when needed. VSP G1000 provides 99.999% availability to help meet stringent online transaction processing, analytics and scalability requirements without the worry of unplanned downtime, application outages or data loss.
Automation and Efficiency
Intelligent yet simple automation and operational efficiency are vital for organizations hoping to thrive in the alwayson, always-changing digital universe. Hitachi UCP Select for Oracle RAC With
Cisco UCS accelerates time to value by streamlining management operations, reducing risk and reducing manual processes. Hitachi UCP Select boosts power efficiency, eliminates infrastructure
silos, and automates provisioning, data tiering and service profiles. Now, IT is better equipped to substantially reduce setup time, drive higher levels of consistency, and meet strenuous workload and service level demands without compromise.
One Platform for All Data and Workloads
The Hitachi Unified Compute Platform solution family is a broad portfolio of converged infrastructure solutions that allow future-ready businesses to standardize and optimize the data without sacrificing
technology, innovation or savings. Hitachi UCP solutions provide one platform for all data and workloads across virtualized applications to protect your most valuable corporate information assets. All Hitachi UCP solutions are built with best-inclass compute, networking and storage components, and exceptional software management of virtual and physical assets for mission-critical workloads. Hitachi UCP solutions alleviate the guesswork that organizations often experience when deploying
new infrastructure, for worry-free and immediate implementation. And Hitachi UCP solutions can be rolled off the delivery truck, set up and provisioned in hours, not days or weeks like many alternative solutions.
Scalable Performance
- Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC) 1240 – for policy-based, stateless service infrastructure flexibility that presents up to 256 PCIe standards-compliant interfaces to the host and can be dynamically configured for NICs or host bust adapters (HBAs) to meet a range of application requirements.
Unified Management
- Cisco UCS Manager – embedded centralized system management uniquely integrated into components to simplify administrative tasks. Employs an intuitive GUI, with options to use command-line interface, along with a robust API for system configuration and operations.
Manage just-in-time provisioning in minutes with role- and policy-based service profiles and templates. Implement infrastructure policies to automate energy consumption, hardware health, security, identity, networking and more. Gain highly efficient IT and business value. - Service Profiles – this feature of UCS Manager separates workloads from assigned system resources or servers. Service profiles enable the database administrator to move workloads within minutes and repurpose systems resources as needed to meet service level agreements (SLAs). A profile for Oracle RAC could be copied to as many servers as required, around the world, to ensure uniformity of setup. New instances of Oracle database can be created in minutes.
A Closer Look at the Technologies
Hitachi UCP Select for Oracle RAC With Cisco UCS includes a comprehensive suite of key technologies from Cisco and Hitachi Data Systems (see Figure 1).
Cisco Unified Computing System
Cisco UCS is a next-generation data center platform designed to cohesively unite compute and network resources with storage access and virtualization in one highly available system for better business aptitude and lower TCO. With a long innovative history of delivering integrated systems using the network as the platform, Cisco provides foundational technologies for some of the world’s largest and most demanding data centers. Cisco UCS integrates low-latency, lossless 10Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) unified network fabric with enterprise-class, Intel Xeon x86-architecture servers in a multichassis platform. The system unifies and manages all participating resources, and includes:
Scalable Compute
- Cisco UCS 5100 Series Blade Server Chassis – to support up to 8 blade servers and 2 fabric extenders in a 6RU enclosure without need for additional management modules.
- Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Servers – with multi-core Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v2 for up to 24 processing cores, and industry-leading 80 Gb/sec throughput bandwidth for uncompromised expandability, in a half-width blade form factor for nimble scalability and performance.
Scalable Fabric
- Cisco Nexus 5500UP Series Switch – part of Cisco unified fabric technology with innovative architectural flexibility and simplicity, enabling “wire once” deployment, with a 1RU 1 or 10 GbE switch with 32 fixed unified ports on base chassis and 1 expansion slot totaling 48 ports for support of unified ports, 1, 2, 4 or 8 native Fibre Channel, and Ethernet or FCoE.
- Cisco UCS 6200 UP Series Fabric Interconnects – with 10 Gb/sec Ethernet switches that consolidate I/O within the system and accommodate expansion modules for Fibre Channel and 10 GbE
Ethernet connectivity.
- Cisco UCS 2200 Series Fabric Extenders – bring unified fabric into the blade server enclosure and provide multiple 10 Gb/sec connections between blade servers and fabric interconnects, to simplify diagnostics, cabling and management.
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G1000
The next evolution in truly dynamic enterprise storage is here. Built on legendary quality and pioneering innovation, Virtual Storage Platform G1000 provides a rocksolid foundation and 99.999% guaranteed uptime for your Oracle environments. VSP G1000 supports continuous operations
requiring unconditional availability, flexibility and automation. VSP G1000 combines the industry’s best software-defined enterprise storage, advanced global storage virtualization, and highly scalable, high-performance hardware. VSP G1000 uses built-in intelligence and progressive software capabilities to orchestrate a seamless unified storage experience for mission-critical environments,
such as Oracle RAC. Unlock data center potential, meet and capture lowest TCO with state-of-the-art VSP G1000.
Scalable Dynamic Storage
Hitachi VSP G1000 Series industryleading storage architecture provides unprecedented performance, availability and scale, and zero downtime. VSP unifies block, file and object data in one platform
with software-centric native functionality and dynamic scalability for seamless growth. It delivers 4x internal bandwidth, 3x IOPS capacity, 40% higher density and 25% better power efficiency than the
previous generation, with:
- Global storage virtualization. It enables complete separation between host and storage independent of connectivity, location, system or vendor to promote pervasive scalability and an always-on infrastructure. It virtualizes over 100 storage systems from a variety of vendors to extend usable life spans, reduce costs and repurpose existing assets.
- 3D Scalability. It is designed to adeptly scale up for increased performance, scale out for increased capacity, and scale deep to pool external storage and extend functionality.
- Hitachi Accelerated Flash (HAF). It dramatically speeds up multiapplication and virtualized environments for optimal Oracle Database performance. Hitachi embedded flash memory controller technology with greater flash density delivers cost-per-bit savings, faster access to data, and improved reliability, as compared with traditional enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs) or single-level cell (SLC) flash.
- Automatic Storage Management (ASM). It is fully integrated with the Oracle ASM feature, to automatically mirror writes to flash and HDD storage, and pull reads directly from flash storage for unsurpassed sub-millisecond performance. Advanced Virtualization Software Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating System (SVOS) powers all the necessary enterprise functionality in VSP G1000 to maximize cost-performance targets and meet 100% availability demands. With unified system element management and complete virtualization and autotiering capabilities, SVOS supports current and future IT strategies. SVOS abstracts and manages heterogeneous storage for a unified virtual storage layer, resource pooling and automation, at enterprise scale. Self-optimizing and highly intelligent software enables fluid data mobility and a better return on the storage investment. Important technology highlights include:
- Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning allows physical capacity to be allocated on a just-in-time basis for simplified provisioning operations, automatic performance optimization, increased utilization rates, and improved application SLAs.
- Hitachi Dynamic Tiering supports finegrained automation of data movement and migration between storage tiers, according to workloads, so the right data is always at the right place at the right time. It automatically assigns inactive “cold” data to lower, cost-efficient storage tiers (SAS, for example) and active “hot” data to faster, highperformance tiers (HAF).
- Optional global-active device enables continuous operations and rapid recovery with integrated active mirroring for volume extensibility between systems and across multiple sites. It also enables provisioning and management of active-active volumes up to 100km apart.
- Hitachi Device Manager facilitates singlepoint management for all Hitachi physical and virtualized storage, and seamless interfacing for integration with other management systems.
Use Case Highlights
Whether new to Oracle RAC or seeking to improve infrastructure performance and availability, Hitachi UCP Select for Oracle RAC With Cisco UCS is ideally suited for the following use cases (see Figure 2):
Consolidate Resources and Reduce Oracle License Sprawl
Hitachi UCP Select for Oracle RAC With Cisco UCS eliminates the burdens of managing siloed resources that often require separate and incompatible tools. Oracle environments benefit when servers, storage and database assets are
consolidated in a single virtualized platform. Gain increased efficiency and availability of resources, and higher utilization and performance while reducing Oracle licensing and maintenance requirements for dramatic cost savings.
Implement Oracle RAC to Meet Business Demands
Unexpected downtime or disruption to operations can equal lost revenue, lost customers and disastrous service issues. Hitachi UCP Select for Oracle RAC With Cisco UCS bolsters IT responsiveness and lowers risks using Cisco’s service profile capability to add additional cluster nodes
rapidly and address spikes in performance requirements.
Data Center Migration
Organizations grappling with aging or obsolete infrastructure, and the costs and complexity to maintain it, may already be considering a move away from legacy systems or upgrading storage. Hitachi UCP Select for Oracle RAC With Cisco UCS immediately improves sluggish, pricey
data center environments so IT can safely capitalize on unified technologies and rapid results.
Business Agility to Meet SLAs and Accelerate Deployment
Environments that are overprovisioned and slow to adapt are most likely failing to meet SLAs or to accelerate the release of new applications. A lack of flexibility across resources means IT cannot capitalize on the benefits of private cloud or infrastructure standardization to meet business initiatives. Hitachi UCP Select for Oracle RAC With Cisco UCS utilizes customizable service profiles to easily reprovision system resources and enforce policies, and leverages standards and common
management for faster go-to-market speed.
Enable Private Cloud Flexibility
Relentless data and application growth, and subsequent resource sprawl and poor utilization, can hinder IT and business goals. Organizations look to private cloud business models to improve resource utilization and sharing, to track usage or implement chargeback functionality, and to improve flexibility and scale across IT infrastructure. Hitachi UCP Select for Oracle RAC With
Cisco UCS has been optimized for Oracle workloads to support private cloud elasticity requirements and readily align business and IT.
KEY BUSINESS BENEFITS
- Superior TCO with extreme consolidation, fewer Oracle licenses, greater agility.
- Lower risk, increased confidence.
- Faster time to deployment, production and ROI.
- Outstanding performance and protection of the entire Oracle environment.
- Support for continuous operations and nondisruptive migration.
- 100% uptime and ubiquitous automation ensure critical database availability.
- Flexible infrastructure and private cloud computing capabilities.
- Enable faster database migrations.
- Reallocate system resources “on the fly” to meet seasonal performance requirements.
- Enforce IT policies across the data center.
- Ease of implementation, integration and administration even as environments grow.
- Expedited and sustained productivity and operational efficiencies.
- Complete control, visibility and data protection for virtual and physical resources.
- Validated design and reference architecture.
- Leverages best practices of Cisco, Hitachi Data Systems and Oracle.
- Enterprise-class reliability, availability and scalability (RAS).