Removing the physical 1:1 relationship between Oracle database instances and server hard-ware unlocks several vital enhancements to improve the effectiveness of DBAs and storage administrators in Oracle environments. Combining VMware® with EMC® storage hardware and software enables faster provisioning of Oracle instances, scaling and protecting Oracle without application impact, and higher utilization at reduced cost. Today, with the latest generation of EMC Symmetrix® VMAX™, EMC and VMware can deliver these virtualization benefits while also dramatically increasing performance and improving Oracle licensing return on investment (ROI).

1. MAXIMIZE PERFORMANCE WHILE MEETING SLAs The nature of Oracle Database 11g OLTP environments is that application workloads will change over time, often requiring Oracle users to constantly monitor and tune the database to maintain SLAs. EMC developed FAST VP technology as a means to deliver more efficient storage management.

EMC FAST VP identifies highly-active Oracle data and moves it to high-performing Enterprise Flash drives (EFDs), while inactive or less active data is moved to a storage tier more suited to its performance requirements. EMC FAST VP uses EMC Virtual Provisioning™ thin pools (virtual pools) to provision storage. These virtual pools allow tiering of Oracle database workloads at a sub-LUN level, allowing a finer granularity of storage tiering for significantly more efficient storage provisioning in virtualized environments.

These features enable the underlying storage resources to alleviate the DBA’s management burden and maintain maximized performance, over time as workloads change, with minimal tuning required.

TOP FIVE REASONS WHY CUSTOMERS USE EMC AND VMWARE TO VIRTUALIZE ORACLE ENVIRONMENTS

Get 44 percent more performance and lower management costs by virtualizing your Oracle environment

EMC and VMware have jointly tested and documented a series of solutions that demonstrate how to combine the benefits of EMC FAST VP with VMware for Oracle Database 11g RAC envi-ronments in order to provision more Oracle instances and storage resources, while deliver-ing more Oracle performance in a virtual machine environment.

The combination of EMC FAST VP with VMware provides the following performance advantages:

•Applicationscanextract44percentmoreperformance(TPM)withnegligiblechangeinresponse times

•Systemperformancescalesmoreefficientlyasworkloadsincrease(singleinstanceorRAC)•VMwareandEMCFASTVPreduceSLAperformancetuningrequiredbyDBAsfromhoursto

minutes

(*Measured transactions per minute in a complex OLTP workload)

Software: VMware vSphere™4.1;EMCVMAX,EMC Enginuity™5875;Oracle11g R2 11.2.0.2

2. DEPLOY MORE ORACLE IN LESS TIME Every Oracle environment requires the constant setup and management of test and develop-ment and maintenance environments, in support of production environments, which can be very time consuming. VMware and EMC replication software allow more of these Oracle envi-ronments to be set up and managed in less time and with less effort. With virtualization, new capabilities include the ability to set up and deploy more instances of Oracle on the same hardware in less time. Virtualization also improves the mobility of databases by allow-ing Oracle to be moved quickly and seamlessly across servers and storage infrastructure, enabling the setup of new instances of Oracle without application impact.

EMC and VMware developed a solution that can deploy new Oracle instances in a matter of minutes as opposed to days that would be required to acquire and set up an additional application server. By combining VMware virtual machine templates with Oracle Rapid Clon-ing methodologies and EMC replication software, the solution enables DBAs to deploy up to 10 virtual machines in 10 minutes, recreating a full Oracle database, middleware, and applications environment.

3. SCALE AND PROTECT APPLICATIONS WITHOUT IMPACTComplementing the value to test and development, EMC and VMware solutions greatly enhance the ability to increase database server and storage capacity on demand, while improving overall system availability.

Instead of setting up and mounting the database along with the other steps necessary in a physical environment, DBAs can provision a new VM, instantly creating additional server and storage capacity faster and more efficiently.

In addition, EMC storage offerings and VMware offer improved high availability through accelerated failover between virtual machines while applications remain online. In the event of a server failure, the entire load of virtual machines will fail over to a backup server in a matter of minutes.

4. IMPROVED LICENSING ROI WITH FULL ORACLE SUPPORTMany Oracle customers deploying Oracle on x86 must fully license their servers for Oracle database software use. In this model, being able to deploy as many instances of Oracle as possible on that server is imperative to maximizing ROI on their Oracle software investments.

A virtualized environment preserves DBAs’ skills: 98 percent of Oracle database physical optimization and tuning is directly applica-ble in the virtual environment. In addition, VMware virtual machines enable DBAs to leverage more Oracle instances on the same hard-ware and deploy virtual machines in a variety of ways depending on the Oracle application use.

A top customer concern regarding private cloud computing is ensur-ing tight integration and support. Today, Oracle supports the use of VMware in both Oracle RAC and single-instance environments. All Oracle technologies supported for use with VMware are documented on Oracle MetaLink* and EMC.com. In addition, EMC engages regu-larly with both VMware and Oracle support organizations with defined escalation paths ensuring customers the strongest levels of joint support among the three companies.

EMC2, EMC, Enginuity, Symmetrix, Virtual Provisioning, VMAX, the EMC logo, and where information lives are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. VMware, ESX, and VMware vSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc., in the U.S. and other jurisdictions. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.©Copyright2011EMCCorporation.Allrightsreserved.PublishedintheUSA.02/11HandoutH7494.1

CONTACT USSee EMC Solutions in action. Visit either EMC Solution Centers or schedule a visit to EMC’s Executive Briefing Centers to see for yourself how the combination of EMC, VMware, and Oracle provides a strong foundation for all your business needs. Contact your EMC representative for more information.

5. INCREASE SERVER UTILIZATION AND REDUCE COST THROUGH CONSOLIDATION Given the time and complexity of provisioning new Oracle instances in a physical environ-ment today, many Oracle environments will typically run their Oracle servers at less than 20 percent utilization to allow for spikes in performance and headroom for growth. Utilizing vir-tual machines for Oracle environments allows for more Oracle instances on the same server hardware and enables instances to be deployed and/or removed quickly and efficiently with far less configuration steps required than in physical environments. Oracle customers utiliz-ing VMware can typically increase utilization rates from approximately 20 percent to as much as 80 percent, allowing for server consolidation savings.

Through deploying VMware in a range of environments**, EMC IT, one of Oracle’s largest cus-tomers, has reduced its data centers’ server count by over 90 percent, while increasing over-all server utilization and productivity. By reducing servers from 210 physical application servers to 20 VMware ESX® virtual servers, EMC IT determined that virtualization has reduced costs by 82 percent due to decreased server expenditures, power and cooling costs, and rack and overall data center space.

*RefertoOracleSupportStatementMetalink/MyOracleSupportDocumentID#249212.1. **Production, Test, Development, Patch, and Reporting

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