Hi There!

I've been a little quiet for the last 2 weeks, working on a decent size Siebel deployment plan. (including Oracle DB, Siebel, Fusion middleware components, as well as integrated 3rd party applications)


The partner came to Sun requesting sizing for the hardware infrastructure (putting Oracle on Sun makes sense for many, many reasons!).
The request was for x86 servers, running RedHat and 'we'll virtualise everything'. I guess that was fine, except for one little detail? Oracle doesn't provide explicit support for most of its applications when running in virtualised environments, unless its Oracle VM.
Now this partner didn't have skills in Oracle VM, so what alternative was available?


Answer: LDOMS & Containers.


Thats right, Sun's hardware partitioning & OS virtualisation technologies are supported for the deployment of most Oracle applications (support for LDOMs, Containers, or both, depending on the particular application itself).


So how does this affect the infrastructure solution?


Well, the x86 solution could not take advantage of virtualisation and thus required almost 100 physical servers (1RU or blades).
The SPARC CMT solution required less than 40 blades, provided a massive reduction in the number of physical systems that needed to be managed, took up much less floorspace in the datacenter (5 B6000 chassis vs 10), greatly reduced the number of Ethernet & FC SAN switch ports & cabling required (saved approx. 200k on FC switches alone), etc.


And it turned out cheaper too!


Lesson learned?


Not all enterprise applications & ISV's support running their products within virtualised environments (or will require you to replicate the issue on physical hardware first). LDOMS & Containers are recognised by Oracle & other major ISV's as a supported method of application & OS isolation & consolidation.


Using these technologies to consolidate workloads can significantly reduce the number of physical systems you need to manage, while providing the legendary RAS features of SPARC hardware & the Solaris OS. This usually translates into better uptime which means happier users and happier admins and also saves money which means happier IT Managers & CxO's!


Bottom Line: LDOMS & Containers = Happiness!



For more info on running Oracle with LDOMS/Containers, go here or here




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