Exa Logic for Dummies

Exalogic FOR

DUMmIES

‰

DLT SOLUTIONS SPECIAL EDITION

by Michael Wessler, OCP & CISSP

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Exalogic For Dummies®, DLT Solutions Special Edition Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River St. Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774 www.wiley.com Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle International Corporation, and DLT Solutions is a trademark of DLT Solutions, LLC. Under the laws of the United States these trademarks may only be used with express written permission from Oracle and DLT Solutions, LLC, respectively. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FURTHER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFORMATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ. For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Business Development Department in the U.S. at 317-572-3205. For details on how to create a custom For Dummies book for your business or organization, contact [email protected]. For information about licensing the For Dummies brand for products or services, contact [email protected]. ISBN 978-1-118-26365-5 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-27157-5 (ebk) Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Introduction

C

urrent IT systems are large, complex, slow to change, and expensive to build and maintain. Businesses need to lower costs while increasing capability and improving agility. Whether IT departments are consolidating the application infrastructure in their datacenters or building out cloud-like environments, Oracle’s Exalogic Elastic Cloud (or Exalogic in short) can be a major building block. Exalogic is an engineered system, a prebuilt and tested ­combination of hardware and software for the application and middle tier, optimized for Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Business Applications, and capable of running a wide variety of non-Oracle software. Oracle engineered high performance, high availability, and efficient manageability into a scalable hardware and software machine. Exalogic scales to meet any capacity requirement needed by the customer and grows as requirements increase. As a preconfigured and optimized solution, Exalogic drives down complexity while increasing performance at a lower cost.

About This Book This book consists of four short chapters, each written as a stand-alone chapter, so feel free to start reading anywhere and skip around throughout the book! Chapter 1: Exalogic Computing. We look at how IT systems are currently architected and their pitfalls. Then we look at Exalogic computing and why it is a better solution. Chapter 2: Exalogic’s Optimized Architecture. Here, we get into the specifics of Exalogic’s architecture and why engineered hardware and software solutions are superior.

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Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition Chapter 3: Exalogic’s Capabilities. This chapter looks at the extensive integration, reliability, and performance improvements within Exalogic that support cloud computing. Chapter 4: Ten (Okay, Five) Things to Look For in an Exalogic Solution. Here, in that famous For Dummies style, we give you the “Part of Tens” chapter detailing the benefits you’ll experience by implementing Oracle Exalogic and cloud computing within your organization.

Icons Used in This Book Throughout this book, we occasionally use icons to call attention to important information that is particularly worth noting. Here’s what to expect.



If you see an icon that says remember, you may want to, uh, remember the information. We won’t have deep meaning-oflife stuff, but it may be good to know for later.

Sometimes you just have to know a term or technical details to understand a larger topic. Or, it could just be that we want to throw in cool terms to try to impress people. Either way, this icon identifies techie stuff.



This icon usually denotes something the author wishes someone had told him before he learned it the hard way! Keep these items in mind to make life easier.

Where to Go from Here Hey, it’s your book, so feel free to jump around wherever you like, or simply turn the page and just start reading.

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Chapter 1

Exalogic Computing In This Chapter ▶ Identifying the current state and pitfalls of traditional computing

environments

▶ Introducing the Oracle family of Exadata and Exalogic machines ▶ Understanding Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud ▶ Supporting very large systems and datacenter consolidation

C

urrent enterprise IT environments are a mix of highly customized heterogeneous systems composed of various hardware and software platforms. These systems are expensive and time-consuming to establish and maintain. A better solution is cloud computing, which provides computing resources on demand as a service in an agile, elastic environment. This chapter delves into the ways that Oracle implements this architecture with Oracle Exalogic, optionally supported by Exadata.

Current State of Computing IT organizations are good at building highly specialized environments to support their applications — which has been the standard model for decades. Although some highly specialized scientific or engineering problems require customized solutions, most business practices share common requirements and don’t require highly customized solutions. However, costly in-house business solutions with the following characteristics continue to exist. ✓ Setup takes a long time given the need to design, procure, install, configure, develop, test, and finally implement a solution.

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Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition

✓ Complex computing environment may be understood only by a few individuals who have institutional knowledge. ✓ Maintenance for a custom solution is continual and often expensive. ✓ Resource consumption can’t easily be directed toward increased innovation. ✓ Features are difficult to modify and grow as business requirements change and new opportunities appear. These factors result in higher costs and complexities for the organization while providing less benefit to the business. Individual components and processes can be improved, but the negative aspects of highly customized solutions for relatively standard practices still remain.

Exalogic and Exadata Products With the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle came into a position to engineer together both hardware and software for optimized solutions. Complete products including server hardware, storage, flash technologies, operating systems, database software, middleware software, and application software could be engineered in a secure, reliable, and optimized configuration. Oracle calls these solutions Engineered Systems.

Oracle Exadata The first product to take advantage of the engineered hardware and software solution was Oracle Exadata. The Oracle Exadata database machine is an optimized database and storage solution that offers a high-performance and highly scalable configuration. Key items include ✓ A preconfigured hardware and software system using optimized Oracle settings ✓ Oracle RAC (Real Application Cluster) databases ✓ A high-performance, fault-tolerant, and optimized I/O subsystem ✓ Increased performance and throughput

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Chapter 1: Exalogic Computing

5

✓ The ability to scale capacity to meet customer requirements and grow as needed Oracle Exadata database machines support both cloud and noncloud environments. The success of the Exadata database platform paved the way to the Exalogic solution.

Oracle Exalogic Exalogic is Oracle’s Engineered System for the application and middle tier. Like Exadata, Exalogic is an optimized software and hardware machine. Instead of hosting databases, however, Exalogic is designed to host Oracle Applications, Fusion Middleware, and third-party software. Customers deploying applications on Exalogic will benefit from reduced complexity, better performance, simplified operations, and faster time to value at lower cost. The Exalogic benefits that organizations find useful can be categorized into three key areas: ✓ Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud computing ✓ Support of very large systems ✓ Datacenter consolidation

Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud One component of Oracle’s cloud solution is the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, which is engineered to support Oracle applications and middleware. Specifically, the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud is designed to support: ✓ Oracle Applications, such as Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JD Edwards ✓ Oracle Fusion Middleware and Java applications such as those using Oracle WebLogic J2EE server ✓ Custom applications, including third-party applications, not using Oracle Applications or Fusion Middleware products Figure 1-1 shows the layers of the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

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Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition

Applications Custom Web Applications

E-Business Suite

Fusion Apps

Siebel

Enterprise Manager

Middleware Platforms Integration: SOA Suite

Process: BPM Suite

Security: User Interaction: Identity Mgmt WebCenter

Shared Services

Grid Control

Cloud Application Foundation: WebLogic Suite Database Grid

Exalogic Elastic Cloud Infrastructure Operating Systems Virtualization

OpsCenter

Exalogic Exadata Figure 1-1: Oracle Exalogic in the Oracle Cloud Technology Stack.

As you can see in Figure 1-1, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud provides a platform for applications (Oracle Applications, Fusion Middleware, or custom) riding atop middleware technology. Infrastructure is provided by the engineered hardware and software solutions including Exalogic and Exadata. All components are managed by Oracle management tools. For database access within the cloud, database servers are interconnected to the Exalogic servers. When that happens, the database servers are typically Oracle Exadata database servers, although standard Oracle servers or even non-Oracle database servers can be used. Oracle’s storage solutions provide storage capacity. These solutions can take the form of external attached storage or storage internal to the Exalogic or Exadata servers. Furthermore, the solutions can exist as high-performance disk, high-capacity storage disk, high-performance solid state flash devices, or tape. Oracle offers many possible storage solutions.

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Chapter 1: Exalogic Computing

7

Oracle’s Enterprise Manager toolset handles the critical management of these components. These tools can configure, monitor, provision, tune, and proactively manage each component within the cloud. Virtualization — the ability to create environments that appear to the customer as dedicated environments but in reality are shared resources — is a key component within cloud computing. Oracle makes extensive use of virtualization with little administrative overhead. The Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud allows customers to achieve many of the cloud characteristics described in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition of cloud computing. Oracle’s solution provides customers with on-demand self-service as demand increases, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service metrics. The benefits of the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud include ✓ Shared resource environment to reduce overall cost ✓ Ability to rapidly increase or decrease capacity based on resource requirements ✓ A common, nonspecialized Oracle environment that is readily understood ✓ High availability and fault tolerance via a redundant cloud of servers ✓ High performance due to optimized hardware and software components ✓ Easy integration into the cloud because it uses technologies already present in IT organizations ✓ Ability to deploy most applications without any changes ✓ Management by Oracle Enterprise Manager technology stack, which is integrated across all components ✓ Backing and support by Oracle Support Services These factors make Exalogic Elastic Cloud a solid solution for organizations looking for a better way to manage IT.

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Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition

Support of Very Large Systems Some applications are simply too large to support on a single, conventional server. Often the computing requirements of a system exceed those which are available on a conventional server. Exalogic can be termed a “datacenter in a box” in that it contains all the necessary hardware, software, and high-speed networking in a single machine to make business sense for smaller applications but also provides the “elasticity” to support the largest systems. Customers can move their systems “as-is” to the Exalogic platform and know that the engineered hardware and software will not only support the processing requirements but also will likely improve performance and throughput.

Datacenter Consolidation It is very common for datacenters to have many more servers and operating environments than what is actually required to support the organization’s systems. Often, each application demands its own separate development, test, and production server with all the necessary support components, such as networking, storage, software licenses, and administrators to manage the system. All these components increase both complexity and costs for the organization. Exalogic excels at consolidating many smaller, independent servers into a larger shared environment. Through the use of virtualization, Exalogic allows applications to have virtual operating environments, yet they share the same hardware and infrastructure resources. The applications don’t even realize they are in a shared, virtualized environment. By consolidating multiple smaller servers onto one or more Exalogic servers, you can reduce the number of individual servers in a datacenter and simplify administration — which dramatically drives down support and maintenance costs. Datacenter consolidation is often a mandate in large government organizations as a cost-cutting measure. If you can consolidate, you will meet these mandates and reduce cost and complexity. These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Chapter 2

Exalogic’s Optimized Architecture In This Chapter ▶ Examining the Exalogic architecture ▶ Explaining how Exalogic scales to serve large environments ▶ Detailing the hardware components of Exalogic

I

n this chapter, we cover the role Exalogic plays in a typical IT environment. We discuss the types of applications it supports and functionally what it does. Finally, we describe the hardware characteristics of the Exalogic X2-2 machine.

What Is Exalogic? Oracle Exalogic is an engineered hardware and software solution. Oracle has created an application platform solution that benefits a wide range of today’s packaged or custombuilt software systems. Understanding how Oracle Exalogic machines are architected and operate lays the foundation for using them effectively. At its core, Oracle Exalogic performs the role of a high-­ performance and very efficient consolidation platform for the application tier. As such, it is typically used to run the application, web, and middle-tier components of the following software products and workloads: ✓ Oracle Applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JD Edwards

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Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition

✓ Oracle Fusion Middleware (FMW) applications such as those using Oracle WebLogic J2EE server, SOA, and Business Intelligence ✓ Custom and third-party applications not using Oracle Applications or Fusion Middleware products During application processing, access to databases is the norm. The database tier is very often Oracle, although support for non-Oracle databases is provided. Most frequently, the Exalogic server will access standard single instance Oracle databases, or clustered Oracle RAC databases, or even the high-performance Oracle Exadata database machine. Exalogic and Exadata rely on the same high-speed networking backplane. As a result, any processing between the application and data tiers is performed fast and efficiently. Figure 2-1 shows an example of Exalogic application components.

FMW and Business Applications Enterprise Manager

WebLogic Server

Coherence Tuxedo

JRockit and HotSpot

Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software Exabus and Exalogic System Utilities Linux

Solaris

Exalogic Elastic Cloud X2-2 Figure 2-1: Exalogic Elastic Cloud components.

In this example, Exalogic supports Fusion Middleware applications, Oracle Applications, and custom applications running on top of the Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software and X2-2 hardware. Not all components in Figure 2-1 need to be present to run Exalogic; you can opt not to use WebLogic Server, Coherence, or Tuxedo. A benefit of Exalogic is its flexibility to support many different types of applications.

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Chapter 2: Exalogic’s Optimized Architecture



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Exalogic is built to support cloud computing; however, cloud computing is not a requirement in order to use Exalogic. If you opt not to use the cloud computing architecture, you can still benefit from Exalogic in a traditional computing environment. Common use cases for Exalogic include the consolidation of many traditional servers into one or a few Exalogic machines and the use of Exalogic as the foundation for shared services environments within the datacenter. It is important to realize that the scope of Oracle software products is far beyond just Oracle Applications and Oracle WebLogic servers. Oracle Fusion Middleware encompasses many products including (but not limited to):

✓ Coherence Data Grid ✓ JRockit and HotSpot JVMs ✓ Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Suite and Business Process Management (BPM) Suite ✓ WebCenter Collaboration and Content Management ✓ Forms and Reports Services, Business Intelligence, and Identity Management Oracle Exalogic is a highly engineered and optimized hardware and software solution using these components and characteristics: ✓ Intel-based hardware servers called compute nodes with memory and CPU and solid state disks integrated and optimized for application tier workloads ✓ Operating System (Oracle Solaris or Linux) ✓ High-performance InfiniBand network connecting all components within Exalogic and other Engineered Systems with low latency ✓ Standard 10GbE-based client network and datacenter connectivity ✓ Shared disk storage based on a built-in Sun ZFS Storage Appliance

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Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition

✓ Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software, which is a set of crossstack software optimizations for optimized performance, better throughput, simplified application provisioning, and more ✓ Extensive Management toolset ✓ Clustering and virtualization capabilities ✓ Optimized configuration and interoperability between all components Figure 2-2 shows how these components can fit together within Exalogic. Exalogic Components Web Application Software Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications WebLogic Server

Coherence

Tuxedo

JRockit and HotSpot JVMs

OHS

Exalogic Server Software Linux

Solaris

Virtualization

Exabus and Exalogic System Utilities

Exalogic Server Hardware Memory/Flash

CPU

Eighth Rack

Quarter Rack

Disk Storage Half Rack

InfiniBand Networking Full Rack

Figure 2-2: Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud components.

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Chapter 2: Exalogic’s Optimized Architecture

13

In this example, you see how Exalogic is composed of hardware and software components. When you get an Exalogic machine, you will receive the prebuilt and tested hardware with either Oracle Solaris or Linux OS installed and configured, as well as the Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software. Applications can be installed on top of this infrastructure without any changes. Of key importance is the engineered optimization and interoperability between all these components. Because Oracle owns all the components going into the Exalogic server, Oracle has the control and resources necessary to ensure an optimal design and configuration.

Scalability for Growth Oracle Exalogic supports scaling to increase memory and CPU resources in the form of adding compute nodes, which are servers. A common technique is to add compute nodes until the server cannot be scaled any larger. Then, when no additional servers are available within one rack, new racks can be added and connected seamlessly to meet increased demand. Oracle Exalogic machines come in Full, Half, Quarter, and Eighth Rack sizes. In a Full Rack configuration, the hardware has the maximum amount of memory and CPUs installed. A Half Rack configuration has one-half the memory and CPUs installed, and the Quarter and Eighth Racks have one-fourth and one-eighth the memory and CPU installed, respectively. Exadata and Exalogic machines are designed so that additional hardware capacity can be added with little or no interruption to current processing as expansion from Eighth to Quarter to Half to Full Rack occurs. Separate Exalogic (as well as Exadata) racks can be joined together without the need for additional networking equipment.

Exalogic X2-2 Oracle Exalogic is currently offered in the form of the X2-2 model. Each machine type can be loaded with Oracle Solaris 11 Express or Oracle Linux 5. Full, Half, Quarter, and Eighth Rack sizes are available. Enterprise Manager Grid Control and

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Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition Enterprise Manager OpsCenter provide the server management. Individual hardware components through the application layer are managed via these tools and may be integrated with Oracle Support Services. Solaris zones are supported to add additional virtualization capabilities. Hardware and operating system components are configured at the factory before delivery to the customer. Additionally, Oracle provides optional Exalogic Start-Up Packs, Advisory Services, and installation, configuration, and quarterly patching assistance. The X2-2 is based on the Oracle Sun Fire X4170 M2 server. Processors are multicore X86 2.93 GHZ Xeon processors. The unit of measurement is one compute node composed of two 6 core processors with twelve 8 GB DIMMs (for 96 GB of RAM) and two 32 GB SATA high-performance MTBF solid state disk drives in a RAID 1 configuration. Shared storage is provided by the Oracle 7320 ZFS storage appliance; each Exalogic machine has 40 TB. High-performance networking is provided via InfiniBand network and switches. The X2-2 comes in Eighth, Quarter, Half, and Full Rack configurations. Table 2-1 lists the total capacity for each configuration. For more information, check out www.oracle.com/exalogic.

Table 2-1

X2-2 Server Capacity

Resource

Eighth Rack

Quarter Rack

Half Rack

Full Rack

2-8 Racks

Xeon Cores

48

96

192

360

720-2880

Memory

384 GB

768 GB

1.5 TB

2.8 TB

5.6–22.4 TB

Flash Fire SSD

128 GB

256 GB

512 FB

960 GB

1.9–7.7TB

Raw Disk Storage

40 TB

40 TB

40 TB

40 TB

80–320 TB

Compute Nodes (Servers)

4

8

16

30

60–240

Within the X2-2, all components are fully redundant, including power supply, network components, and storage. These features make for a very reliable and scalable machine. These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Chapter 3

Exalogic’s Capabilities In This Chapter ▶ Identifying performance-optimized components within Exalogic ▶ Highlighting features within Exalogic to improve processing capabilities ▶ Exploring administrative management tools and high availability

E

xalogic represents the engineering of hardware and software to produce a highly reliable and optimized application tier platform. Advanced management tools, fault tolerance, and a focus on high availability make this machine highly manageable for critical systems. This chapter takes a look at some of the individual features that make Exalogic run so fast and reliably.

Enhanced Performance Multiple components across the typical IT stack have been optimized by Oracle specifically for the Exalogic platform. This close engineering and integration between hardware and software is possible because Oracle owns many of the technologies “From Apps to Disk” and can address limitations in how various layers of the stack interact. One key item with Exalogic is that you do not have to make changes to your applications to see performance benefits — simply moving to Exalogic will improve performance of most applications. Enhancements within Exalogic are at the hardware, software, network, and integration levels; they touch all parts of an application. Any application running on Exalogic can see performance improvements as long as it is supported on the Exalogic platform. This allows a very rapid time to value for customers moving to Exalogic. These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

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Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition Performance improvements within Exalogic manifest themselves in two manners for customers:

✓ Processing times improve and the application runs faster. This makes sense because as components run faster, processes finish faster — which is what many customers expect. ✓ Efficiencies within applications are increased. Because Exalogic is a faster platform, less raw processing power is needed to support intense applications. This allows for a smaller, simpler implementation to support the same application workload. Many customers will experience both faster performance and a more efficient system because of the move to Exalogic. Coupled with the fact that customers do not need to modify their applications to take advantage of Exalogic, the benefits of a move to Exalogic are both tangible and immediate.

Key Component Optimizations Multiple components within Exalogic have been individually improved as has the integration between components. Several components that specifically stand out are networking infrastructure, Java application server components, and the operating systems.

Exabus InfiniBand backplane The one component with the greatest overall performance impact is the Exabus InfiniBand-based I/O fabric that links all the components and subsystems within Exalogic together. It is what allows any supported application deployed to Exalogic to run faster, regardless of what language that application is written in. It is also the basis for the reliability and scalability of Exalogic. Exabus is based on Quad Data Rate (QDR) InfiniBand and is composed of:

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Chapter 3: Exalogic’s Capabilities

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✓ Switches ✓ Gateways ✓ Host Channel Adapters ✓ Firmware ✓ Device drivers ✓ Operating System extensions ✓ Software libraries Exabus eliminates previous network performance boundaries that have the greatest impact on overall system performance. By reducing the network wait time, applications run extremely fast and fewer computing resources are required, thus improving overall efficiency. Exabus benefits can be seen from the web server component to the storage tier. It is considered part of the “special sauce” that makes Exalogic run so fast and be so efficient.

WebLogic Application Server In addition, WebLogic has been optimized for the Exalogic platform via improvements to the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and Operating System. Improved parallel processing, intelligent session replication, and enhanced network communication to other WebLogic and JVM instances are notable benefits. Improvements with the WebLogic Self-Tuning Thread Pool and Increment Advisor, thread locking, and less thread contention result in greater throughput. The number of data buffer copies within WebLogic has been reduced, thus improving performance within the JSP compiler, Servlet Container, WebLogic Core, and the JVM. You do not need to be running Java or WebLogic server to gain performance benefits; non-J2EE applications can run extremely well on Exalogic. For example, Oracle Forms appli cations run very well on Exalogic with improved performance merely by using the underlying enhanced hardware, software, and networking components. Oracle E-Business Suite is a great example of such an application.

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Java optimizations: JRockit and HotSpot JVMs Java applications execute with JVM during runtime. These are the runtime execution memory areas for Java programs. Obviously, the faster and more efficient a JVM executes, the faster the application will run. JRockit is the JVM highly tuned for WebLogic J2EE servers, and HotSpot is Sun Microsystems’s JVM. Both are optimized for the Exalogic platform in terms of thread management locking. A reduction in the number of data buffer copies inside the JVM reduces heap usage, resulting in improved garbage collection.

Operating systems Exalogic comes with either Oracle Solaris or Oracle Linux. Although these operating systems (OS) are certainly installed on non-Exalogic machines, the installed software images have specific Exalogic software, firmware, and device drivers. Furthermore, any software installed on Exalogic such as Oracle Fusion Middleware has specifically been tested and certified for the underlying OS. Tuned networking parameters, such as enlarged Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) size, allow for larger packets and faster communications, which is just one example of Exalogic’s specific enhancements.

Improvements in Application Responsiveness, Capacity, and Database Communication Several optimizations have occurred within Exalogic to allow more stable and improved communication between application servers and databases. These optimizations promote a more stable environment for users in which any internal failures are masked and failover is transparent. Furthermore, enhancements in communication to the database tier allow for improved application performance, capacity, and responsiveness.

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Chapter 3: Exalogic’s Capabilities

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Session replication As a user works on a web-based application connected to a web application server, that user’s session data is important. If a failure occurs, the session data can be lost and the user will need to redo what he was doing before the failure. WebLogic actively replicates that session data to a secondary WebLogic server so that if a failure occurs, the session is picked up transparently on the second server. The benefit is, the user doesn’t lose his work. Within Exalogic, that replication speed and scale are improved via the Exabus InfiniBand fabric using the Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP). A faster network speed with larger mes sages allows for improved session replication and scalability between WebLogic Servers.

RAC integration Integration with Oracle RAC (Real Application Cluster) databases has been improved and simplified. Active GridLink for RAC improves performance between WebLogic and RAC databases by allowing the WebLogic server to interface directly with Oracle RAC protocols. This provides for improved loadbalancing and failover across RAC nodes. In the event of a failure with a RAC node, the failover to a surviving node is faster and more transparent. Overall configuration of the data sources within WebLogic is also improved, thus making management simpler. The database communication and RAC integration optimizations take effect in particular when you utilize the Exadata database machine as the database tier. Remember that many of the same architectural optimizations within Exalogic are also found in Exadata.

JDBC driver and OS/Network communications Exalogic SQLNet communication to the Exadata database machine is optimized via the Exabus InfiniBand network. Using a native InfiniBand protocol, Sockets Direct Protocol

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Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition performance between the application and database tiers is greatly improved. This is especially important when large amounts of data are being returned from the database server to the application server.

Management Tools Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) is the basis for most management and monitoring activities within Exalogic. EM can monitor and manage everything from hardware components to deploying a new release of a web application to a WebLogic server or instances of E-Business Suite or PeopleSoft. Optional integration with Oracle Support allows for download and installation of patches in addition to software health checks. EM Grid Control (EMGC) is the tool specifically used for management of web application server software components and applications. EM OpsCenter (EMOC) and Oracle Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM) are focused on managing physical hardware, OS, and networking components.

High Availability and Backup and Recovery Oracle Exalogic is designed so that via hardware redundancy, clustering, and software configurations, no single points of failure exist and critical components have automatic failover. Furthermore, redundancy via additional computing servers allows maintenance, patching, and upgrades to occur with less overall risk and potential downtime and without impacting users. Finally, extensive monitoring and diagnostic capabilities of Oracle management tools and agents help prevent many minor issues from becoming more severe problems that could impact system availability.

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Chapter 4

Ten (Okay, Five) Things to Look For in an Exalogic Solution In This Chapter ▶ Identifying the benefits of an Exalogic cloud computing architecture

T

his chapter covers Oracle Exalogic’s key benefits.

Getting Oracle Elastic Cloud Computing’s Benefits Moving to cloud computing architecture is an easy argument to make when you emphasize the following points: ✓ Cloud computing provides unlimited capacity on demand as resource usage requirements increase. ✓ New environments are set up in days instead of weeks or months, allowing greater agility and faster time to market. ✓ Computing resources such as storage, processing power, and network bandwidth are shared across the cloud, making the overall cost shared as well. ✓ Usage is closely monitored and customers pay for only what they use. Customers do not pay for excess capacity. ✓ Oracle Exalogic is a major building block in the datacenter to achieve the benefits of cloud computing faster and at a lower cost. These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

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Exalogic For Dummies, DLT Solutions Special Edition

Making Use of Optimizations Because Oracle owns the hardware, operating system, storage, network, database, web, and application software, a very high degree of engineering, integration, and testing occurs between components. This is a key design principle across all of Oracle’s Engineered Systems. Exalogic provides already optimized components and configurations for the application tier.

Parallelizing Your Processing “Two heads are better than one,” and the same concept applies to Exalogic. Exalogic is fully redundant across all layers and provides a balanced set of resources for business applications to run reliably and efficiently in either standalone or highly clustered deployments.

Accelerating Middleware and Application Performance Great focus is placed on improving database performance for which Exadata can be a possible fit, but end-to-end application performance also requires a fast and scalable application tier solution. Exalogic’s optimized architecture ensures performance bottlenecks will not occur at the middleware and applications tier.

Simplifying Operations Application and systems management, patching, and operations are greatly simplified due to automation and preconfigured components. Integration with Oracle Support and rich administrative tools reduce administration complexity and costs. Visit oracle.com/Exalogic for more on Oracle’s engineered solutions for your datacenter.

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.