In parts one and two of this article I blogged, extensively and laboriously, about database consolidation. I talked (at length) about the business drivers for this industry trend, then went on to discuss (for some considerable time) the technical challenges. I even droned on about the different design choices faced by enterprises who are about to embark … Continue reading Database Consolidation Part 3 – It’s All About Capacity
Blog
Database Consolidation Part 2 – Shared Infrastructure Design Choices
Part one was all about the business drivers and technical challenges faced when building a database consolidation platform. Database consolidation is all about sharing infrastructure, so part two is about the design choices that are available... An important architectural decision when consolidating databases is that of where the shared infrastructure should diverge. If we assume … Continue reading Database Consolidation Part 2 – Shared Infrastructure Design Choices
Database Consolidation Part 1 – Business Drivers and Technical Challenges
Database consolidation has been a big trend in the industry for a while now. You can see this if you read the IT press, or if you listen to the relentless procession of people queueing up to talk about the "cloud". I saw it in my time at Oracle, where we had an increasing number … Continue reading Database Consolidation Part 1 – Business Drivers and Technical Challenges
The Strategic Platform for ALL Database Workloads
I was invited to Microsoft HQ in the UK yesterday to be a speaker at one of their launch event for SQL Server 2012. It's the second of these events that I've appeared at and it finally made me realise I need to change something about this blog. So far until now I have resisted … Continue reading The Strategic Platform for ALL Database Workloads
SLOB on Violin 3000 Series with PCIe Direct Attach
A reader Alex asked if I could post a comparative set of tests from my previous 3000 series Infiniband testing but using the PCIe direct-attached method. I was actually very keen to test this myself as I wanted to see how close the Infiniband connectivity method could get to the PCIe latencies. Why? Well, PCIe … Continue reading SLOB on Violin 3000 Series with PCIe Direct Attach
What Every CIO Wants
Some weeks ago I was fortunate enough to read a preview copy of Stephen O'Donnell's book What Every CIO Wants: A Guide for Global Technology Sales People. Steve is, amongst other things, the Chairman of the Industry Advisory Board for Violin Memory, as well as being the former Global Head of Data Centre Operations for … Continue reading What Every CIO Wants
SLOB on Violin 3000 Series with Infiniband
Last week I invited Martin Bach to the Violin Memory EMEA headquarters to do some testing on both our 3000 and 6000 series arrays. Martin was very interested in seeing how the Violin flash memory arrays performed, having already had some experience with PCIe-based flash card vendor. There are a few problems with PCIe flash … Continue reading SLOB on Violin 3000 Series with Infiniband
Exadata Re-Racking Service
I've heard from a few sources now that Oracle is offering a new Exadata Re-racking service for quarter and half racks. The idea, as I understand it, is that if you have your own rack equipment in your data centre and don't want to use the rack that Exadata comes preinstalled in, you can pay … Continue reading Exadata Re-Racking Service
SLOB testing on Violin and Exadata
I love SLOB, the Silly Little Oracle Benchmark introduced to me by Kevin Closson in his blog. I love it because it's so simple to setup and use. Benchmarking tools such as Hammerora have their place of course, but let's say you've just got your hands on an Exadata X2-8 machine and want to see … Continue reading SLOB testing on Violin and Exadata
The History of Exadata
I've been working on a timeline for the history of Exadata, starting with the HP Oracle Database Machine and working through to the X2 series. It's interesting to see how Oracle's presentation of the product has changed over time, particularly the marketing messages. Also, if you didn't know better you would probably think that Engineered … Continue reading The History of Exadata