Oracle Essentials, 5th Edition

Chapter 12. Oracle and Hardware Architecture

In Chapter 2, we discussed the architecture of the Oracle Database, and in Chapter 7, we described how Oracle uses hardware resources. Your choice of servers and storage will ultimately help determine the scalability, performance tuning, management, and reliability options you will have. Where systems are configured without consideration of the proper balance of CPUs, memory, and I/O for projected workloads, database management and tuning becomes more complicated and limited in effectiveness.

Over the years, Oracle developed new features in its flagship Enterprise Edition Database to address evolving platform strategies, including clustered systems, grid computing, and cloud deployment. In 2008, Oracle introduced its first engineered system, the Oracle Exadata Database Machine, featuring Database Server nodes, Exadata Storage Server cells, and Oracle Database 11g with Exadata Storage Server software that are uniquely optimized to work together. This chapter provides a basis for understanding how Oracle Database 12c can take advantage of commodity systems and each of the Oracle engineered systems on which the Oracle Database is supported. The engineered systems most often used for deploying the Oracle Database are the following:

• Oracle Exadata Database Machine

• Oracle SuperCluster

• Oracle Database Appliance

First, we’ll discuss systems basics and the impact on performance. This portion of the chapter will be relevant for deploying commodity servers ...