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Oracle M6-32 Server and Oracle FS-1 Storage

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Executive Summary

A modernized IT infrastructure enables better TCO, performance and reliability for business-critical applications providing at the same time a flexible foundation to roll out quickly and efficiently new IT services to fast changing business demands. Increasing performance and service levels for applications requires that server and storage I/O throughput, virtualization flexibility, quality of service and ease of provisioning keep pace with the business demands. Oracle M6-32 and Oracle FS-1 address and solve all these needs.

The SPARC M6-32 server is the largest scale and highest availability enterprise server in Oracle’s SPARC portfolio, with up to 32 processors, 32 TB of system memory and 64 PCIe 3.0 I/O expansion slots. This uniformly accessed large pool of computing resources provides higher system performance versus conventional networking across clusters of small servers, due to higher bandwidth system interconnects and lower latencies. With more than a terabyte/sec of memory and I/O system bandwidth, the M6-32 provides terabyte-scale computing without the price premium found on large-scale servers from other vendors.

With such a powerful server the bottle neck moves to existing storage.

Oracle just launched the Oracle FS1 Flash Storage System, next generation enterprise-class SAN storage, specifically architected to maximize the power of flash and the economics of disk without impacting the predictable performance expected from an all-flash array. Oracle FS1 leverages the most intelligent management framework in the industry to efficiently move data in fine-grained blocks across four tiers of storage media with different performance and cost metrics.

FS1 has an advanced high-availability scale-out architecture that grows with Customer business:

- Up to 16 HA nodes

- Petabytes of Flash

- Up to 2M 50/50 R-W IOPS

- Up to 80GB/sec Throughput

- Full Suite of Data Services included in the base system at no additional charge

Please take a few minute to see why IT researchers at Wikibon said: “The new Oracle FS1 is like no other array we've ever seen on the market.”

Oracle SPARC M6-32 and Oracle FS1 are co-engineered with Oracle Solaris operating system, applications, and databases to provide Oracle-unique functionality that delivers significant business value leveraging the optimizations possible in an integrated stack deployment.

Oracle SPARC M6-32 server combined with Oracle application engineered FS-1 storage can help IT organizations deliver more value in the following ways:

- High Performance throughout the entire stack. No bottlenecks in the throughput of the server or in the I/O bandwidth and latency of the storage

- Simplify IT and reduce TCO. Oracle’s co-engineered server, storage and software stack simplifies consolidation and management, reducing associated costs.

- Increase service levels. Oracle SPARC M6-32 server and Oracle FS-1 storage are designed for enterprise availability, with world-record price/performance in numerous industry benchmarks.

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Server and Storage High Performance

Oracle’s SPARC M6-32 server is best described as a big memory machine: it is the largest scale server in Oracle’s SPARC system portfolio, and provides up to 32 processors and 32 terabytes of memory for hosting databases and applications entirely in system memory. That is twice as much memory per processor than any other data center server. Unmatched system virtualization capabilities on the SPARC M6-32 server include Dynamic Domain hardware partitions and Oracle VM Server for SPARC logical domains. Additionally, Oracle Solaris Zones can be used with both Dynamic Domains and Oracle VM Server for SPARC logical domains for greater workload isolation and increased system utilization.

The SPARC M6-32 server provides the highest level of enterprise-class RAS features including redundancy, hot-plug capability of most major components, Dynamic Domains for hardware fault isolation, end-to-end ECC memory protection, and Oracle Solaris Fault Management Architecture. These capabilities enable server self-healing, and no single system failure can prohibit system recovery, which is a requirement for mission-critical computing.

Last but not least, all these scalability and RAS features are supported with a massive system scale:

- 1440 GB/s memory bandwidth - 384 cores / 3072 threads - 1024 GB/s I/O bandwidth

enabling industry-leading performances confirmed with full set of world record benchmarks, as for example:

- Oracle's SPARC M6-32 server set world records on three different Oracle Applications benchmarks running simultaneously. It is the first server to achieve this level of performance while running these three separate benchmarks simultaneously (1)

- Oracle's SPARC M6-32 server produced a world record two-tier result for 32 processors on the SAP Standard Application Sales and Distribution (SD) Benchmark, beating out the two-tier results of the IBM Power 795 32-chip system (2)

The Oracle FS1 is a high-performance flash storage system with advanced scale-out architecture and the capability to support multiple types of disk media concurrently. It delivers extremely high levels of predictable performance, storage consolidation, and automated management in addition to superb $/IOPS and $/TB price-performance. For example, when compared to EMC XtremIO, Oracle FS1 delivers as much as 9.7X higher performance—at half the price, as shown below.

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With Oracle FS1 Series’ purpose-built flash architecture, QoS Plus, and Storage Domains you can help your business grow by:

accelerating queries for business analytics, data warehousing, complex SQL statements, accelerating time to actionable intelligence

placing 100s of Databases in flash, ensuring that all reads come out of flash, and leveraging QoS Plus to manage priorities

running more workloads in flash at a lower cost than HDD-based legacy SAN storage.

QoS Plus is a policy-based virtualization feature incorporating business priority I/O queue management

fused with sub LUN automatic tiering into one simple management framework. Each FS1 has built-in

intelligent I/O management that manages I/Os based on business priorities vs. First Come First Served

(FIFO). Each application workload is designated as a premium, high, medium, low, or archive priority. The

FS1 re-orders the I/Os according to those designations. So if a low or medium I/O comes in just ahead of

a higher premium I/O, the FS1 will change the order to address the premium and high I/O requests first.

QoS Plus helps execute your business priorities far beyond just frequency of use. Built on Oracle’s

patented storage quality-of-service technology, QoS Plus collects detailed information on your storage

usage profile, evaluates data granules for movement to four different storage tiers, then automatically

migrates data to the most cost-effective media (flash or disk) from a $/IOP and $/GB standpoint based on

the usage profile and the importance of that data to the business. QoS Plus performs data collection,

evaluation, and movement based on the most efficient data granularity in the storage industry—up to

1,600 times more granular than competitive systems, making it the most efficient auto-tiering system in

the market.

Oracle FS1’s QoS Plus Provide Priority Tiering BEYOND Just Access Frequency

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Simplify IT

Only Oracle offers co-engineered products that span every layer of the enterprise IT stack from

applications and middleware to servers and storage, so that organizations can take advantage of

optimizations that will make their applications run faster and more reliably.

The combination of Oracle SPARC M6-32, Oracle Solaris and Oracle FS-1 represents an integrated

infrastructure that has been designed and tested to deliver maximum performance and reliability for

enterprise applications. Not only are the components designed to run well together but they also simplify

IT by providing integrated virtualization capabilities and ease of management.

These types of optimizations simplify IT by reducing the need for IT administrators to spend time tweaking

server and storage configuration parameters to increase performance. The components are already

designed to perform well together using a one-click per LUN provisioning, and the fact that they are

already tested to work together reduces the likelihood of problems in a production environment.

One Click Provisioning with Proven Best Practices

The Oracle FS1-2 flash storage system comes with predefined application profiles that provide tuned and

tested out-of-the-box storage optimization for Oracle Database and key enterprise applications, including

non-Oracle applications such as Microsoft Exchange. With one-click provisioning you can optimize flash

performance and manage Oracle Applications with a minimum of administration. The Oracle FS1-2 flash

storage system database storage profiles can disaggregate database components such as index files,

database tables, archive logs, redo logs, control files, and temp files so provisioning automatically

optimizes Oracle Database performance without requiring detailed knowledge of the database

components. New application profiles can be added to Oracle FS1-2, existing ones can be modified, and

all profiles can be exported to other Oracle FS1-2 systems to standardize storage provisioning across

global data centers.

Consolidation and virtualization are important ways to reduce IT complexity and improve system

utilization, which also lowers costs. Oracle’s SPARC M6-32 server includes free advanced virtualization

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with physical domains (PDoms), Oracle VM Server for SPARC (LDOMs) and Oracle Solaris Zones,

enabling IT organizations to take full advantage of the extreme performance and scalability of the SPARC

servers. Oracle FS1 is fully engineered with Oracle VM and supports other third party hypervisors

FS1 Storage Domains are engineered to isolate data within drive enclosure virtual resource pools. You

can combine different drive types (All SSDs, Mix SSDs/HDDs and All HDDs) in any way to form a domain

within an FS1. The data stored in a storage domain is physically segregated in that domain within the

FS1 storage pool. No data in one domain can trespass into another domain. This avoids data co-mingling

for customers who wish to isolate data within the FS1.

All key FS software applies uniquely to a domain – such as QoS Plus autotiering. In other words, a

storage domain can act like its own virtual FS1-2 within an FS1-2 with its own set of data management

rules and not conflict with any QoS Plus migration settings in force in other domains. This gives your

customer extreme flexibility in how to implement the FS-1‘s advanced data management features and

tailor them to exactly meet their business requirements.

The legacy solution to segregating different workloads to the most appropriate type of storage (Tier 1,2,3

etc) was to buy multiple types of arrays; all typically with different UIs. This silo deployment approach

often leads to an inefficient use of resources with more complexity and manual intervention. With FS1 and

Storage Domains, you can create different tiers of storage within the same array, adjust the capacity of

these domains as needed and only have a single platform to manage. True Multi-tenancy can only be

achieved through “noisy neighbor” elimination and, where required by regulations, elimination of any risk

of data co-mingling.

Additionally, Domains can be used to easily and non-disruptively upgrade to new drive technology as it

becomes available. For example, to upgrade old 900 GB HDD trays to new 1.8 TB (hypothetical) drives,

just move the 900 GB trays to a new domain and tell the FS1 to migrate the data off the 900 TB drives to

the new 1.8 TB drives seamlessly.

Oracle’s no-cost virtualization technologies can also provide significant cost savings through software

license savings and simplified management. For example, a major telecommunications customer

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estimates they are saving at least $500 in provisioning costs for each VM deployed in their enterprise.

With roughly 40,000 VMs in their infrastructure this can result in more than $20 million in savings.

Simplified Management is another very important aspect in reducing the IT complexity and at the same

time reducing TCO. From Application to Disk, the entire Oracle stack can be managed through Oracle

Enterprise Manager, which provides complete visibility and control for provisioning and managing the

hardware and software components of the infrastructure, including the virtualization environment.

In addition to simplifying management, running Oracle Database with Oracle storage can take advantage

of storage efficiencies and thus reduce storage capacity requirements. Only Oracle storage systems

enable “database aware” compression through the innovative Hybrid Columnar Compression and

Automatic Data Optimization, a feature of Advanced Compression Option.

While storage costs are an obvious tangible benefit of compression, with an Oracle integrated stack like

Oracle DB, Oracle M6-32 and Oracle FS-1, compression can also reduce resource requirements,

including memory, backup and network bandwidth, enabling exponential savings in costs and great

improvement in performances. This is accomplished because in a full Oracle stack data is utilized in

compressed format throughout the entire suite of Oracle hardware and software.

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Increase Service Levels

Oracle SPARC M6-32 running Oracle Solaris and Oracle FS-1 is a highly scalable platform for delivering

high performance and availability for business workloads.

Increased performance can enable completely new ways of performing business functions such as

finance, procurement, HR, customer care, manufacturing, sales, and marketing. With a SPARC M6-32

and FS-1 platform they are able to change the way they deliver services to their clients and to support

more concurrent users.

Oracle SPARC servers and Oracle Solaris operating system have been continuously improved over the

last two decades to enhance performance, reliability, scalability and integration with the Oracle DB and

applications. This has enabled Oracle SPARC systems to continue driving performance leadership as the

best platform to run Oracle software. Recent optimizations introduced in Oracle Solaris include for

example critical thread technology, which enables key database threads and transactions to be executed

faster on the SPARC processor, a new memory management subsystem enabling 2GB memory pages

for in-memory database, and the cryptographic framework, that enables wire speed management of

encrypted tablespace. Optimizations to support faster database maintenance and recovery have also

been implemented throughout the stack. Oracle’s SPARC systems now have the ability to shut down and

start up databases eight times faster than previously possible.

When used together with Oracle storage, the performance of SPARC servers can be further enhanced by

storage optimizations that make Oracle Database run faster. Oracle’s optimized storage platforms have

been engineered to work together with Oracle Database and Oracle Applications to optimize overall

system and application performance in addition to reducing costs through storage efficiency.

Co-engineered with Oracle Database and Oracle Applications, the new Oracle FS1 Series optimizes data center performance and Oracle software investments with Oracle-specific features such as:

Hybrid Columnar Compression compresses data by 10x to 50x

Application Profiles accelerate deployment and streamline management with single-click provisioning and deployment of Oracle Database and Oracle Applications

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FS1’s co-engineering features with the Oracle Database and Business Applications delivers unique advantages to reduce risk, complexity and cost:

Less risk for your business:

○ Oracle FS1 Application Profiles let administrators optimally set up new environments with a single click – vastly reducing the opportunity for human error.

○ QoS Plus’ ability to pin files in place when response times become unpredictable lowers the risk of customer loss and increases employee productivity.

○ T10PI ensures against data corruption/bit rot and there’s NSPOF.

Less complexity:

○ Hybrid Columnar Compression (exclusive to Oracle Storage) can reduce the data warehouse capacity requirements by up to 40% and accelerate queries by up to 5x!

○ The Enterprise Manager plug-in enables monitoring and provisioning storage all from the EM UI.

○ Application Profiles speed the deployment of new environments with a single click – and accessible via Enterprise Manager.

○ Application Profiles with one-click provisioning are available for Oracle Database, Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle's PeopleSoft, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Siebel and other third-party applications.

Significantly less cost:

○ Integration with the Oracle Database and exclusive feature/functionality (like QoS Plus) mean more workloads accommodated on fewer storage systems.

○ All embedded software features included with FS1 – including copy services for Development/Test/etc.

○ QoS Plus Auto-Tiering at 640KB “chunks” is 400x more efficient at managing precious flash resources.

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FS1 Key Feature/Function/Benefit

Feature Function Benefit

Four Tiers of flash and disk:

Performance Flash

Capacity Flash

Performance HDD

Capacity HDD

Purpose-built enterprise flash

storage architecture with four tiers

of flash and disk

Delivers low-latency and high-

throughput at low-cost without

compromising expandability

QoS Plus

Dynamically tunes data

placement, protection, and access

priority based on business value

Simultaneously optimizes

efficiency, performance, and cost

to meet changing business needs

Storage Domains Isolate data into physically distinct

resource pools

Secures data, manages resource

contention and delivers predictable

performance in multitenant cloud

and consolidation environments

Granular autotiering at 640

KB increments

Up to 400x more efficient than the

competition in optimizing

application data location

Enhances operation efficiency;

reduces both CAPEX and OPEX

costs; improves performance by

placing more of your business

critical data in the appropriates

tiers of flash

Application Profiles

One-click provisioning of Oracle

Database LUNS and key

applications

Expedite deployment—spend less

time setting up and

HCC - Hybrid Columnar

Compression: Co-engineered

with Oracle Database

Reduces capacity and upfront

costs by 3x to 5x and speeds

queries up to 5x;

Maximizes return on Oracle

software investments; Reduces

both CAPEX and OPEX

Enterprise-grade Design

Rapid failover, no single point of

failure, warm start, end-to-end T10

PI data integrity validation

Maintains highly available 24x7

operations; protects against silent

data corruption

Synchronous and

asynchronous application

consistent data replication

Flexible and robust data protection Keep your business running in the

event of catastrophic events

MaxMan

Easy-to-use graphical user

interface (GUI) for multi-system

management

Manage multiple, geographically

dispersed systems from a single

location and pane of glass

Oracle Enterprise Manager

Integration

Seamless cross-stack

management, provisioning,

snapshots, and replication

Maximizes return on Oracle

software investments; Reduces

both CAPEX and OPEX

All inside-the-box software

included at no extra cost

All inside-the box software

features are fully enabled

Lower TCO than competitive

systems, which charge for

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Feature Function Benefit

separate licenses

Trusted Technology

Oracle is the only vendor to offer a complete, open, and integrated technology stack, from applications to disk. Only Oracle can innovate and optimize at every layer of the stack to simplify operations, drive down costs, and accelerate business innovation. Oracle software is optimized to run on Oracle hardware.

Oracle Premier Support

Oracle Premier Support for Systems provides single price support for system hardware, integrated software (such as firmware) and operating system software (Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux).

24/7 technical support from Oracle's system experts

Two-hour onsite hardware service (your system must be within an Oracle 2-hour service coverage area to receive 2-hour service as a standard feature)

Integrated software (such as firmware) updates

Personalized, proactive support tools via My Oracle Support

Oracle has won more awards for customer support than any other IT vendor over the past 10 years (award count over the past 10 years; primary source: Technology Services Industry Association).

Software, Hardware, Complete

Oracle products provide flexibility and choice to customers across their IT infrastructure. Our solution provides maximum flexibility and choice to align the value of your data assets with the most appropriate storage media in order to reduce costs and effectively manage data throughout its lifecycle.

Oracle’s goal is to connect all levels of enterprise technology to help customers access the knowledge they need to respond to market conditions with speed and agility. We will continue to innovate and lead the industry—while always making sure that we are focused on solving the problems of the customers who rely on our products. Our financial strength enables us to invest heavily in the research and development of our products and services, which will allow our Customers to have a competitive advantage using our products for decades to come.

Leaders Run Oracle Storage

10 of the top 10 Financial Institutions

10 of the top 10 Telco Companies

10 of the top 10 Pharmaceutical Companies

10 of the top 10 Governments

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Oracle FS1 Flash Storage Systems: Customers Speak

Julien Mousqueton, CTO, Groupe AGRICA

"With over 164,000 affiliated companies, Groupe AGRICA serves more than 1.45 million subscribers and clients with pension and insurance products. Business continuity is critical to us. We are extremely pleased with our experience with the new Oracle FS1 flash storage system and will be deploying it as the foundation of our virtualized, highly available private cloud infrastructure. FS1 will enable us to standardize on an intelligent storage platform that simplifies storage services and SLA management for our private cloud to support our company's future growth."

Olivier Parcollet, information system architect, Keolis

"Keolis is France's largest private sector transport group. As such, we need a high performance and highly available storage infrastructure to support all of our booking and ticketing systems, communications, passenger information and video security systems in a heavily virtualized environment. We are impressed with the Oracle FS1 flash storage system's performance and ease of deployment with our current infrastructure. To protect our data, we plan to implement a three-way disaster recovery configuration based on FS1 as a highly scalable storage platform combined with the FS1 high-availability data-replication features."

Oracle FS1 Flash Storage Systems: Analysts Speak:

Steve Duplessie, Enterprise Strategy Group

“If your storage were smart and self-optimizing, and could deliver QoS at a granular level, you'd be perfectly aligned. With the launch of [Oracle] FS1, Oracle seems to have built just that.”

David Floyer, Wikibon

“The new Oracle FS1 is like no other array we've ever seen on the market. Not only is the system engineered specifically for Oracle software, but also it's uniquely optimized for both performance and cost, depending on the workload. With built-in orchestration, the array is designed to dramatically speed deployment and simplify ongoing tuning.”

http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/Oracle_Announces_the_FS1_Flash_Storage_System_with_a_Unique_SAN_Design

Deni Connor, Storage Strategies Now

“Application Profiles encompass the expertise that takes years to develop and learn in regards to application and database provisioning skills and it’s all incorporated right into the FS1. Instead of spending more time on application and database administration, Oracle has put all the smarts enterprises need in the FS1. Application Profiles are a result of Oracle hardware and software co-engineering and further expand Oracle’s Application Engineered Storage capabilities, now encompassing both the database layer and the app layer.”

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/san/oracle-fs1-report-ssg-now-2340432.pdf

Marc Staimer, Dragonslayer Consulting

“QoS Plus is specifically architected to get the most possible value out of multiple tiers of flash in an AFA or Hybrid configuration. QoS plus is an autonomous fully automated tiering software that adapts data movement to the most cost-effective $/IOPS and $/GB tier based on business value. Doing this effectively requires highly intelligent software optimized for multiple flash tiers and multiple HDD tiers, which is exactly what the FS1 QoS Plus software does.”

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http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/san/dragon-slayer-storage-analyst-2341734.pdf

Arun Taneja, Taneja Group

“But more importantly, we are seeing storage offerings come from Oracle for the first time that are world-class and compete head on with the likes of EMC, IBM, HP and NetApp (and the new all-flash-array vendors), without asterisks and caveats. If it wasn’t clear before it should be now: Oracle wants its own applications running on Oracle storage and is microscopically focused on that strategy.”

http://tanejagroup.com/news/blog/blog-systems-and-technology/oracle-fs1-throws-the-gauntlet-down-against-emc#.VC8Au_ldWn4

Mark Peters, Enterprise Strategy Group

“It appears that Oracle has built a smart, self-optimizing storage system that combines the right amount of intelligent caching, flash, and disk with granular QoS Plus that aligns to contemporary application, operational, and financial needs. But then the Oracle FS1 starts adding functionality that really drives application-specific business value. While some other vendors might have some element(s) of these advanced capabilities, the overall package that Oracle has constructed is both relevant and compelling.”

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/san/esg-oracle-fs1-launch-brief-2331520.pdf

Jerome Wendt, Data Center Infrastructure Group

“The Oracle FS1 stands apart from its competitors in this space by providing a highly available and scalable architecture backed by mature and proven suite of data management services that are part of its base system, not separately licensed options. With Oracle FS1, enterprises can finally move ahead with their plans to bring flash storage arrays to run multiple applications and workloads at the core of their SAN environments, not just as single-application point products.”

http://www.dcig.com/2014/10/oracle-brings-out-the-big-guns-rolls-out-the-fs1-flash-storage-system.html

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For More Information

Visit: www.oracle.com/fs1

Or click on the links below:

-- Oracle FS1 Infographic

-- Oracle FS1-2 Flash Storage System Interactive 3D Product Tour

-- Oracle FS1-2 Flash Storage System Data Sheet

-- Oracle FS1-2 Flash Storage System Software Data Sheet

-- Oracle MaxRep for SAN Data Sheet

-- How to Configure Oracle FS1-2 Based on Data Skew

-- Oracle Storage--A Smarter Choice Than EMC

-- Oracle FS1 Feature Story: Maximize the Power of Flash and the Economics of Disk

-- Video: Mike Workman Presents FS1 at OOW14’s Engineered Systems General Session

-- Video: Larry Ellison Introduces FS1 at OOW14’s Sunday Keynote

(1) Oracle's SPARC M6-32 server running Oracle Database 11g Release 2 on Oracle Solaris 11 set world records on Oracle's PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) 9.1, PeopleSoft 9.1 Payroll (North America), and Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1.3 Standard Extra-Large benchmarks. Results as of April 23, 2014. Visit http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/performancescalability/sparc-m6-32-world-record-2020359.html for more details.

(2) 2 Benchmarks executed using SAP enhancement package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0. Results as of Wednesday March 26, 2014. See http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/performance-scalability/sparc-m6-32-best-32-chip-2182583.html for more details.