Appliance science

We all know that core based licensing can be expensive, but balancing that with the efficiencies of scale - being able to run up any number of instances (without impacting performance) - has its benefits. At what point though should that scale be reconsidered? Perhaps a shift to processor based licensing with a fully architected physical HA platform, or even a move to purpose built appliance infrastructure?

Oracle database is a case in point - commonly a large investment in sizeable organisations. With Oracle still not recognising the likes of VMware as a soft-partioning solution under their licensing model options are limited, basically you either adopt an authorised virtualisation alternative (ah, maybe Oracle Cloud?), or run it on dedicated physical machines. But what advantages might the Oracle Database Appliance offer?

First introduced in 2011 the latest fifth generation X6-2 appliance  models (www.oracle.com/goto/databaseappliance) are simplified, optimised, and  more affordable making them now a serious option as an integrated database and application system. Apart from the technology and administration benefits you can now license on an on-demand processor core basis, anywhere from 2 to 40 cores to support the workload you need across both Oracle Standard or Enterprise editions, with Oracle Real Applications Clusters available on the X6-2-HA model offering an active-active or active-passive configuration for database failover.

With an easy pathway for deployment to Oracle Public Cloud your software investment can be extended providing both an on-premise and off-premise platform that works particularly well for dev/test or even DR environments.

So if its time to reassess your Oracle platform its worth taking a look at the Oracle Database Appliance range. An evaluation of your current investment against an integrated and scalable solution like the X6-2 might end up saving you not just money, but a lot of valuable time as well.