Does cloud free you from understanding IT infrastructure?

06 September, 2017
Doug Bloom
IBM

As many investors discovered when the dotcom bubble burst, fundamentals still matter.  Companies eventually had to generate revenue, manage expenses and realize profits.  Those who invested blindly in enterprises with rising stock prices without evaluating the underlying business model’s propensity to generate profit lost money.

So it is with cloud computing and the fundamentals for IT infrastructure.  Software decision makers and IT professionals still need to evaluate (for public cloud) or build (for private and hybrid cloud) the underlying architecture to ensure that their IT environment doesn’t go bust because they overlooked the fundamentals.

Using Oracle software workloads, as an example, here are some IT fundamentals that must be evaluated:

Fundamental #1: Systems architecture

An Oracle software environment only performs as well as the systems architecture on which it is deployed. 

Systems architects still have to balance attributes such as scalability, performance, mission-critical availability, time to deploy, the delivery model (on premises or public, private or hybrid cloud) and cost to create the ideal solution.

Fundamental #2: Best components

The infrastructure components need to be optimized for each Oracle software workload. 

Database, web serving, application serving, online transaction processing (OLTP) and online analytics processing (OLAP) each have unique characteristics.  Detailed evaluation of cache sizes, memory and I/O bandwidths, single points of failure, multi-threading and other capabilities should be used to identify which is best for a given Oracle workload.  Just because commodity components are available to run Oracle workloads, doesn’t guarantee that the customer’s response time, throughput, availability, security, manageability and cost requirements will be met.

For customers with the most demanding Oracle Database requirements, they should seriously evaluate IBM LinuxONE, the industry’s most secure Linux server, engineered to move data fast and instantly scale — capable of running thousands of Oracle Databases on a single server.

For those with high-performance application requirements, IBM Power Systems provide 2-4 times the performance of commodity processors, given its leading per-core performance in application and database-centric benchmarks such as JD Edwards, Siebel and E-Business Suite.

Server performance needs to be complemented by industry-leading storage performance.  Oracle software customers have turned to the DS8000 family of storage systems. They can achieve microsecond response time and 99.9999 percent availability, quickly accessing and reliably protecting the Oracle database.  Similarly, thousands of Oracle customers are selecting IBM FlashSystem with 5-10 times performance compared to traditional disk-based products to improve interactive response times or meet tight batch job time-windows.

Fundamental #3: Responsiveness to dynamically changing business requirements

The biggest driver of new delivery models such as cloud has been the ability to rapidly deploy new workloads and balance computing power across workloads.

The underlying technology for cloud and workload management is virtualization.  For Oracle customers, license cost optimization requires virtualization that supports hard partitioning. This is available on all IBM Z, LinuxONE and IBM Power Systems, and can assist Oracle customers in only licensing the processor cores that their individual Oracle workloads require.

Rapid deployment is the other key to business responsiveness.  For instance, using IBM’s PowerVC, a customer can deploy a new AIX LPAR and an Oracle Database instance within minutes.

For some customers, there’s a need to rapidly deploy the hardware with appliance-like ease. The entire environment can be pre-built at the IBM factory, with the Oracle Database pre-installed so that the time from system arrival in a customer data center to an up-and-running Oracle Database is only a few hours.  The Vendita Database Cloud Server brings this capability at a lower total cost than other appliance or engineered systems offerings.

Designed to meet your needs

Experienced architects understand how business requirements can be translated into an architecture. 

Recognizing that workload drives the architecture, IBM’s Oracle specialists can design optimized solutions for customers based on sizing, capacity planning and input from customers.

See it in action!

At Oracle OpenWorld, you will see solutions built upon all of the above, and have the opportunity to meet with our architects who can help design an optimal Oracle and IBM solution to meet your business requirements.

Visit with IBM Systems at Booth 1107 in Moscone South Exhibit Hall at Oracle OpenWorld 2017!oracle diamon partner cloud elite

The post Does cloud free you from understanding IT infrastructure? appeared first on IBM Systems Blog: In the Making.