Futuristic Features of Oracle 10g (Grid technology)
On the database side we are hearing a voice of grid from database giant – ORACLE, It says
The central idea of grid computing is computing as a utility.
What is this Grid all about?
You shouldn’t care where your data resides, or which computer processes your request. You should be able to request information or computation and have it delivered – as much as you want, and whenever you want. This is analogous to the way electric utilities work, in that you don’t know where the generator is, or how the electric grid is wired. You just ask for electricity, and you get it. The goal is to make computing a utility--a commodity, and ubiquitous. Hence it has the name, grid computing.
FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTES OF THE GRID:
Oracle says as grid technology is evolving it is not standardized but few basic and fundamental parameters could be of these:
VIRTUALIZATION AT EVERY LAYER
Virtualization enables grid components such as storage, processors, databases, application servers, and applications to work together without creating rigidity and brittleness in the system. Rather than making static ties that determine where a database physically locates its data or which exact server the database runs on, virtualization enables each component of the grid to react to changing circumstances more quickly and to adapt to component failures without compromising performance of the system as a whole.
POLICY-BASED PROVISIONING
Provisioning means allocating resources where they are needed. Once the resources are virtualized, resources need to be dynamically allocated for various enterprise tasks based on the changing business priorities. In the context of hardware resources, hardware resources such as storage and servers need to be allocated to databases and application servers. In the context of data, data needs to be allocated to where it is needed.
RESOURCE POOLING
Some definitions of grid computing stop with virtualization and provisioning. Oracle believes, however, that pooling resources is the third fundamental attribute that constitutes a grid. Consolidation and pooling of resources is required for grids to achieve better virtualization and provisioning and hence better utilization of resources. Once you have pooled individual disks into storage arrays and disk farms, it is easier to virtualize and provision storage. NAS and SAN technologies have already shown some benefits of pooling of storage. Similarly pooling individual servers together makes it easier to virtualize and provision these servers to various databases. Pooling data together makes it easy to virtualize and provision data.
ORACLE DATABASE 10g: THE DATABASE FOR THE GRID
AUTOMATIC STORAGE MANAGEMENT (ASM)
You can use single ASM to manage storage for multiple Oracle databases. Instead of managing many database files, ASM only requires you to manage a small number of disk groups.
PORTABLE CLUSTERWARE
Clusterware is the software that provides clustering services for communication between servers in a cluster. Prior to Oracle Database 10g, you were dependent on hardware vendors for clusterware on their platforms except for Linux and Windows. Oracle provided clusterware only for Linux and Windows.
Oracle Database 10g now offers portable clusterware; that is, Oracle offers a clusterware that runs on all platforms. You don’t need to depend on vendor-offered clusterware. This has many benefits:
HIGH-SPEED INFINIBAND NETWORK SUPPORT
With Oracle Database 10g, you can now use Infiniband for your application server to database server communication, for server-to-server communication in a clustered database, and for server to storage communication. This provides you with all round performance improvement and flexibility in your data center.
EASY CLIENT INSTALL.
The easy client install feature simplifies deployment of applications in a grid. Clients of the database only need to download or copy a very small subset of Oracle client files and set an environment variable. These applications – OCI or JDBC applications – can access a database on your grid. You no longer need to go through the install process on the database client. This feature is especially useful for deployment of ISV applications. ISVs can include these Oracle client files in their install process and customers need not install Oracle client separately. Also in grid environments where client machines are dynamically identified and configured, this feature simplifies the installation and configuration of Oracle client software.
EASY ORACLE DATABASE INSTALL
Oracle Database 10g has simplified the installation of the Oracle database. You can install the Oracle database with a single CD. Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) can also perform multi-node install of the clustered Oracle database. During the install you identify the hostnames where you would like to install the Oracle database. OUI will then install the Oracle Database software on all those nodes. You
ORACLE SCHEDULER :
Oracle Database 10g introduces Oracle Scheduler, which provides you with many advanced capabilities to schedule and perform business and IT tasks in your grid.
Using Oracle Resource Manager, you can define your resource plans and assign these resource plans to these job classes.
ULTRA LARGE DATABASE SUPPORT:
Oracle Database 10g now supports a single database with up to 8 exabytes (8 million terabytes) of data. This virtually removes a limit on how large your consolidated database can be.
Additionally, the Bigfile Tablespace simplifies the management of datafiles in large databases, minimizes scalability issues related to having a large number of datafiles, and simplifies management of storage utilizing such features as Automatic Storage Management and Oracle Managed Files.
SELF-PROPELLED DATABASE :
Oracle Database 10g offers a new self-propelled database feature. This feature utilizes Oracle Transportable Tablespaces and Oracle Streams and offers you an easy way to share processing across distributed hardware resources. In addition, it offers an efficient way for migrating your applications to the grid.
ORACLE DATA PUMP
With Oracle Database 10g, Oracle introduces a new data movement facility that greatly improves performance when getting data into and out of a database. Oracle Data Pump is a high-speed, parallel infrastructure that enables quick movement of data and metadata from one database to another. This technology is the basis for Oracle's new data movement utilities, Data Pump Export and Data Pump Import, which have greatly enhanced performance over Oracle’s original Export and Import.
DISTRIBUTED SQL, GATEWAYS, AND DISTRIBUTED TRANSACTIONS
Oracle Distributed SQL allows grid users to efficiently access and integrate data stored in multiple Oracle and non-Oracle databases. Gateways provide transparent remote data access with Distributed SQL to grid users to run their applications against any other database without making any code change to the applications.
ORACLE ENTERPRISE MANAGER GRID CONTROL
Grid control provides a simplified, centralized management framework for managing enterprise resources and analyzing a grid’s performance. With Grid Control, grid administrators can manage the complete grid environment through a Web browser throughout the whole system’s software lifecycle, front-to-back, from any location on the network.
With Grid control, administrators can launch and execute any number of integrated Oracle Database features such as Data Pump, Resource Manager, Scheduler, Transportable Tablespaces, etc. Administrators can also monitor, diagnose, modify, and tune multiple databases throughout the grid. Administrators can also schedule tasks on multiple systems at varying.
What products Oracle has with 10g?
There are several products on 10g from oracle like Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Application server 10g, Oracle JDeveloper 10g etc.
Oracle Application Server 10g:
Oracle Application Server 10g is the first middleware platform designed for grid computing. New integration and automated management capabilities deliver the flexibility you need to more quickly respond to changing business requirements. Oracle Application Server 10g helps you to:
- Lower costs with grid computing on the middle-tier
- Manage systems more easily with new manageability features
- Develop applications more flexibly as re-usable Web services
- Integrate applications and optimize business processes
Find more about Oracle Application Server 10g at http://www.oracle.com/appserver/features/index.html?appserver_10g.html
Oracle Database 10g:
Oracle Database 10g, next-generation database, is the industry's first designed for grid computing. Grid computing reduces the cost of IT by clustering servers together to act as a single large computer, dynamically shifting server resources between applications on demand
Find more information on Oracle database 10g at
http://www.oracle.com/ip/deploy/database/oracle9i/
Terminology:
Blade Servers: Blade server technology provides much higher density computing at a very low-cost as compared to their SMP equivalents.
NAS and SANs: Networked storage: Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Networks (SANs) are popular in today’s data centers. Storage is no longer tied to a single server.
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